Killerbienen!

I don't know when I've laughed so hard at pathetic "effects". Those black blobs (bees??) flying in formation were just too funny! I was surprised to learn this was made in 2002; the effects were reminiscent of something out of a low-budget 50's or 60's movie. Unfortunately, the title Bees were the best actors in the movie. Their human costars were at their best after they were dead. The lucky ones died early in the movie; the rest had to keep screaming in terror, as they realized they were trapped in an atrociously bad movie, with no script to work with, or acting skills for that matter. Besides the swarming black blobs, there were also a few laughs in the "plot"; it was both humorous and painful to watch them try to take seriously the tired, over used, simplistic plot line. There's no need to go into detail: bees arrive in small rural town, people scream, people die... About half way through the movie, I wished I could join them! Rating: 2 out of 10. (It would have been a 1, but those bees so put their little hearts into it!)

According to this hilariously awful disaster movie, a swarm of African killer bees looks like a bunch of chocolates doing a Mexican wave. At least, that's what Sheriff Lyndon Harris finds when he spots a truck full of the insects crash. He must try to warn the people of his town before a Honey Festival (a really lame excuse to attract the bees) takes place.

Even the '70s thriller 'The Swarm' had better special effects than this, probably because the makers didn't automatically switch to a digital solution every time a stunt was involved.

All in all, the acting is terrible, the plot is awful and the best special effect in the whole movie is the farmer's decomposing body after he swallows a bee in his beer.

Killer Bees is a stinging remake of Jaws even going as far as having a town mayor warning the sheriff not to frighten the locals.

C Thomas Howell is the sheriff in question and he has thing against bees as he saw his father die from an attack by a swarm of bees as a child.

After a truck driven by what seems like a drunk driver from South America is involved in an accident, a crate or two filled with South American killer bees are unleashed.

The Sheriff is suspicious as one or two bodies turn up dead with what looks like bee stings. He calls in a bee expert, she happens to have the hots for our sheriff. Fortunately although the sheriff is married with kids, he is available as it seems that he and his wife are not together any more.

Of course the nasty Mayor who spends his time buying up land from poor farmers will have none of these deadly bee tales. He is organising the Honey Festival and everyone is going to show up for that including the local media. I think the Mayor failed to tell the bees not to show up as that leads to the stinging finale.

There is no suspense here as initially a few stray people get attacked and killed before a member of the sheriff's family is under attack. The CGI bees are poor but the whole movie is still a lot better than an Asylum film made for the Sci-Fi channel.

Its corny, its predictable but its also cheesy fun.

My review of KILLER BEES!, a silly and no-budget TV movie from 2002, will go off on a tangent because of personal reasons. I found the tone of the script particularly offensive, particularly in the depiction of multiple sclerosis. I write as somebody married to an MS sufferer, and I can report that the MS portrayed in this film is even more ridiculous than the stuff involving the killer bees. The character doesn't act like somebody with MS in the slightest, the symptoms as described are wrong, and to top it all they describe MS as a 'terminal illness'. It's sloppy writing, and had me fuming.

Still, at least it enlivened what is otherwise an entirely forgettable movie. KILLER BEES! follows the same old hackneyed storyline with a single character (THE HITCHER'S C. Thomas Howell, looking old and tired) who recognises the impending threat while nobody else believes him. Inevitably, there's a big event coming up, and the greedy Mayor refuses to cancel it. What makes KILLER BEES! stand out is how poorly the action is staged, in addition to the terrible calibre of the special effects.

The PG rating is the final insult; if this had contained some proper gore effects a la PIRANHA 3D, I could have forgiven it for the rest of the problems. Instead, it plays it safe throughout, and the shots of bees are limited to just a few CGI clouds in the skies. It's nonsense and the cast of badly-acting townsfolk hardly serve to increase the entertainment value. In a world of bad films, KILLER BEES! is the worst bee B-movie yet.

I remember from my youth watching a film on Svengoolie (for those unaware, it's a Chicago-based horror, TV program that airs cheesy and low budget films from back in the day) called The Swarm, but it was reissued as Attack of the Killer Bees. Not having seen it in so many years, I can't remember a lot of it off the top of my head. I remember it having a creepy and eerie presence to it, but that's about it.

Why do I bring this up? Because killer insect films have always fascinated me, while at the same time legitimately making me uncomfortable. I hate bees, wasps, snakes, and many other insects - but to have them become the main enemy in horror films is actually a very creative and smart thing. Unlike your monsters like Jason, Freddy, and Myers - mine's real.

Sadly, from the looks of it, I'm not sure there are very many, if any, good killer bee films, and the simply-titled mess Killer Bees doesn't reassure the genre in any way. It's purely a made-for-TV-film, and that's it. It has the production budget of what appears to be a television pilot, and it accomplishes even less than one could imagine. Even the opening sequence feels like one of those odd, unknown CBS TV miniseries's.

The story is about a sheriff (Howell) who has to protect the town when a swarm of killer bees is freed. The bees are freed because of town drunk crashing his car into a bee-truck, and knocking over a box filled with them. The rest of the film is mindless, contrived, predictable, and an utter waste of potential.

Right off the bat, just from the style of filming, one can tell that not a huge budget was put to use here. I recall a shot where you see a man driving, and on the side of his car you can see he is approaching a parking lot or a driveway. The next shot is in the car and you can clearly see out the window which is now looking at a vast, empty, lifeless field of grass and weeds. I believe the same truck is carrying a group of trouble-making teenagers later in the film after the owner of it dies.

Killer Bees still succeeds in making your skin crawl at the thought of hundreds of little, pesky, stinging bugs on your skin at one time, but the shock value alone doesn't sustain a movie that hopes to be good. It's a TV film, but that doesn't give it any right to be bad and carefree. If variety, continuity, acting, and effects had all been things the film-makers payed a bit more attention to, this could easily go from pretty bad to horrible.

Starring: C. Thomas Howell. Directed by: Penelope Buitenhuis.