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**SPOILERS** One of the first "Killer Bee" movies to come out in the late 1970's "The Savage Bees" starts out with this Brazilian banana boat, the Cornila Rios, limping into New Orleans Harbor with everyone on deck being either missing or dead.

later in the movie a local Sheriff Donald McKew, Ben Johnson,finds his dog Zeth dead and despite it being Fat Tuesday and the Mardi Gras parade he takes Zeth's body to the City Coroner's Office to find out what killed him. Assistant Coroner Dr. Jeff DuRand, Michael Parks, sees something in Seth's stomach that truly disturbs him and calls his girlfriend and entomologist Jenny Devereaut, Gretchen Corbett, to check it out. It turns out that his as well as the city of New Orleans, worst fears are borne out. Zeth was killed by a swarm of deadly killer African Bees.

With a number the crew of the Corlina Rios bodies recovered from New Orleans Harbor it becomes more and more evident that the banana boat has a colony of African Bees hidden in it's hull.

Trying to keep the story of the invading African Bees under wraps Sheriff McKew has a number of his men fan out in the countryside to find the African Bees hive and at the same time both Jeff and Jenny get in touch with bee expert Dr. Rufus Carter, Paul Hecth. Dr. Rufus warns them not to disperse the deadly bees, with fire and insecticide, because it would only have them invade friendly European or Italian Bees hives and take them over and start dozens, if not hundreds, of African Bee colonies. Thosesbees would attack and kill thousands of people and livestock all around the state.

Dr. Carter gets in touch with the biggest authority on the killer African Bees Brazilian professor & Dr. Jorge Meuller, Horst Bucholtz,and has him come to the city's rescue but it turns out that the Killer Bees were a lot tougher, and more dangerous, then even Dr. Meuller thought that they were.

Even though a bit lacking in production values "The Savage Bees" is a lot better then the far more expensive and star studded Killer Bee deserter movie "The Swarm" that turned out to be a real disaster and bombed out in the movie houses a few years later. Dr.Meuller is killed when trying to catch the Queen African Bee when a couple of drunken Mardi Gras party goers accidental cut open, with a plastic sword, his anti-bee protective suit thus being, together with the two party drunks, stung to death.

Jenny ends up being stuck in her red Volkswagon,the color red attracts the killer bees. Jeff in a last act of desperation has her drive the car with him in a police car pushing her Volkswagon, the last mile, through the now empty streets of New Orleans into the Superdome.

The temperature inside the enclosed sport facility is lowered to 45 degrees immobilizing the killer bees and having them collected and brought into the custody of Dr. Rufus Carter's lab for further study. It's just too bad that one of the killer bees survived capture and escaped to start the entire horror of attacking African Bees all over again in about a dozens or so movies that followed "The Savage Bees".

This was my third killer-bee-flick in a row, back when the urge overtook me to watch some of those. So this made-for-TV flick from the 70's ended my Killer Bee Trilogy. At the time of its release, it would've probably deserved a 6/10 rating. But it didn't age well, plus it borrows just a bit too much from the "Jaws"-plot (again!). Still, it's a rather serious film and at no point it becomes really ridiculous. You could say it contains a lot of clichés that every killer bee movie seems to have: The bees always invade a small town first. There's a male/female duo of scientists that discover the phenomenon. The authorities won't believe them. There's always a big festivity planned or going on in the town. The two scientists will eventually kiss each other. And if you're lucky, you'll get to see the bee-threat stopped/destroyed in an original way (which was more or less the case in "The Savage Bees"). So I'll be mild in my final rating. But I have to say: the most fun killer-bee movie I saw, out of these three, was "Swarmed" (2005). The lame "Killer Bees!" (2002) pretty much sucked.

The other half of a double-bill in UK cinemas with the other film being the far better The Incredible Melting Man. This was actually made for television in America.

Killer bees have flown into America and are claiming their first casualties disturbingly close to New Orleans when their Mardi Gras is due to kick off. A bee expert (of course) and a guy who isn't quite a coroner yet (so he isn't taken seriously) are on the case but come up against obstacles in the form of sniffy officials who don't want to see Mardi Gras cancelled- at any cost (hints of Murray Hamilton's character in Jaws here).

We learn that the bees don't like noise and the colours black and red. The first human victim is a coloured girl in a red dress blowing a toy horn. Not her lucky day.

The finale involves Ms Bee Expert being nudged into a sports stadium in her red Beetle which the bees have covered as she was earlier using the horn near them (doh!). The temperature of the Super Dome is then lowered as the bees die when temperatures reach below 35 Degrees Fahrenheit. This sequence is very unexpected and works well with tension being ramped up as the temperatures come down (we see this on huge displays which show the actual countdown).

This is an above average TV movie which received a video release in some territories. There aren't enough action sequences and some of the more talky bits are quite pedestrian. But when it gets going its quite exciting. Because I saw it on TV when I was a small child and loved it then it will always hold a special place in my little black heart.

Look out for the scene in which someone in fancy dress tries to take on the bees with a sword. Yes, a sword!

When Sheriff McKew (Ben Johnson) finds his dog dead, he sets out to prove that it was poisoned. With the help of the coroner (Michael Parks), the hideous truth is learned.

Enter Bee expert, Jeannie Devereaux (Gretchen Corbett), and the tiny culprits are identified.

Oh no!

This is all taking place in New Orleans! During Mardi Gras! Will the big party have to be cancelled? Of course not! Let the good times ro... Bzzzz! Eeeaaghh!

THE SAVAGE BEES was made during the "killer bee" craze / scare. As made-for-TV-movies go, it's not bad. Having Johnson, Parks, and Corbett in it, helps to lift it above the average fare.

BEST SCENE: The farmer in the lake sting-o-thon!

Co-stars James Best as a slow-moving politician...

It still seems ridiculous that after all these years of cinema and all its advancements, that we are still waiting for a good killer bee/wasp/hornet movie. As it turns out, The Savage Bees, in spite of its TV budget production, is the best on offer.

Plot in a nutshell sees a strain of African Killer Bees sneak over to the deep south of America via freighter. Once child and pet meet with nasty ends courtesy of the buzzing menace, the authorities come to realise what is going on and must do something before The Mardis Gras celebrations becomes a lambs to the slaughter type scenario.

Cast are strong enough for the material, with "name" actors such as Ben Johnson and Horst Buchholz lending their support to the production. The science isn't half bad, the threads involving colour rage and water are interesting, and even though the Bee Genocide finale goes out with a whimper, the idea behind it is at least well thought out.

Disposable and forgettable, but enjoyable enough while it's on. It was popular enough to spawn (or should that be swarm?) a sequel, Terror Out of the Sky (1978). 4/10

"The Savage Bees" is a somewhat peculiar entry in the long list of nature-running-amok/animals-going-wild horror movies from the 70s. On the one hand, it's a very prototypic tale, with aggressive animals - African killer bees, to be exact - going on a violent murder spree in a small town near New Orleans just at the same time as the annual Mardi Grass celebrations. But, on the other hand, it's a much more intelligent and scientifically accurate film that often opts for realism and tension instead of sensationalism and gratuitous action. The lead characters, played by veteran Ben Johnson and a young Michael Parks, are plausible and even likeable, the sequences with massive swarms of real bees are more than impressive, and the buzzing killers cause for a couple of atypical victims in town. It's harsh and painful to witness young kids or innocent workmen getting attacked and killed by a swarm, but also admirable. In many comparable movies, the wild animals only seem to wipe the bad, arrogant, and corrupt people. How realistic is that, honestly? The downside of the film's approach, however, is that it's slow and occasionally rather boring, and that the grand finale (albeit imaginative) is very UN-spectacular.

Talk about unintentional hilarity; take a shot every time they mention the "Africans."

Eh, it's a slow-paced version of horror I happen to love: When Animals (or Insects) Attack or WAIA. And the best of those honey bunches are the ones where it's real animals and not 50' ants. I wanna be scared because this really could happen.

But this by the numbers WAIA isn't one of the better ones. In fact, I must've fell asleep several times and thank goodness it was free on YouTube.

Basically, it's Mardi Gras and thanks to two ships colliding in the night, killer bees are headed to the street party. How will our "Hey! I know those actors!" heroes stop the hive before it's too late and become the Carnival's buzz kill?

Admittedly, it's not all bad, and I love the practicals - of course, this is YEARS before CGI which 100% would've ruined any frights for me. Looks like they used real bees to attack the actors and bravo to them for taking it so I can be entertained.

Only (BARELY) recommended because, again, free on YouTube.

***

Final thoughts: Well, I should bump the recommendation up a bit for the wacked out finale and how they "solved the pest problem." Plus, it did have creepy end-credits. Always a plus for movies like these.

This is not just another cheapy television movie from the 1970s, but actually an intelligent, scary horror film worth seeing, something along the lines of "Kingdom of the Spiders" or "Phase IV" - 2 other very good underrated insect attack movies. There is some good location filming of New Orleans and the swamps of Southern Louisiana, and veteran Ben Johnson is solid in the lead role of the local sheriff. Movies like this need to know how to push the right buttons, and this one does, containing one scene with a scientist in a protective suit poking a giant beehive that really impressed me with how skillfully it was set up. This ain't Shakespeare, but it is the finest quality you will find for this genre.

One of the stranger movie trends of the 1970s were the killer bee movies. All this hysteria was spurred on by erroneous reports on the news that these Africanized bees would be invading America and reeking havoc very soon...perhaps in the next year or two. In reality, decades later, only tiny pockets here and there arrived in the States and the bees never became a major health issue. In spite of the reality, Hollywood made a lot of killer bee movies...such as "The Swarm", "The Bees", "The Deadly Bees", "Killer Bees", "Terror Out of the Sky" as well as the soft core porn "Invasion of the Bee Girls"! All of these films have one thing in common (apart from beeing about bees) is that they all were pretty bad films! Is "The Savage Bees" any better? Or, would you bee better off watching something else?

The film begins with the Sheriff (Ben Johnson) finding his dog dead. He insists that the coroner to an autopsy and it's determined the dog was not poisoned but killed by bees! However, when the Sheriff tells officials about this, they couldn't care less. After all, this is happening around New Orleans...and the local officials are more concerned about a happy Mardi Gras instead of the possibility of bee attacks. What's next? See the film...or not.

This is an okay film....not exactly good, but not as bad as many of the other bee films. It has the obligatory idiots stumbling into swarms of bees scenes that you'd expect...and a really DUMB one involving a sword (you'll have to see it to believe it) as well as a DUMB car horn scene immediately after! And, actress Gretchen Corbett does a particularly dopey (and sexist) job of acting/crying...when she's supposed to be a competent scientist! She's not a bad actress...but she isn't given a lot to do other than cry in some scenes. Overall, pretty much what you'd expect (except for the Super Dome).

This is a tense thriller that shows, in no uncertain terms how real and deadly the Killer Bee threat really is. This film shows, with scientific plausibility, the City of New Orleans coming under the increasing threat of a large killer swarm approaching town on the eve of Mardi Gras. Unlike Irwin Allen's The Swarm, whose main objective was to show one celebrity guest star after another being stung to death, this film is more like a cross between a tense sci fi thriller and a Hitchcock film. Obviously a TV film cannot posses the cinematic genius of a Hitchcock film, yet this little gem comes close. The team of scientists, (aided by the local sherriff) that are trying to thwart the disaster deal with a slow subtle(at first), steadily climbing stream of attacks. The threat grows as the attacks continue, and for awhile it looks like the bees will win out. The death scenes are the most realistic ever shown in a killer bee film, one senses what it might actually be like to meet this horrible fate. Also a first, this film gives the actual history of how the bees came to invade South & Central America, and deals with the scientific realities of how to stop this menace. Now that there have been killer bee deaths in the United States, this film rings even more true than when it first was telecast in 1976.

This is a fun film, very much your typical creatures turning bad kind of movies that the 70's did so well. Surprisingly the misogyny is toned down somewhat (for a 70's movie that is.) The special effects are pretty good and the acting is solid enough.

This is one of several movies that involved killer bees, killer spiders and killer ants. While many of them are pretty low grade, this one does put in the effort.

It is not a perfect movie by any means, but it is one that is fun to watch just for the 70's hair styles and clothes. If you enjoy these kinds of horror/thriller movies this is one actually worth watching.

From the writer who brought you "Jaws 3-D" comes this very boring "thriller" about killer bees. Writer Guerdon Trueblood seems to have a one-track mind, as all his "thrillers" involve either bugs or airplanes. There must be something Freudian to that. Nevertheless, there are no airplanes here but plenty of bees. Oooga-booga! Scary stuff! Half of this movie involves people talking about bees, the other half is people driving around looking for the bees. Watch as they discuss for 15 minutes how to get bees off a Volkswagen. Then marvel as they drive the whole carload of bees downtown to see a Saints game! The only purpose of this movie is to sit around with some friends and make fun of it MST3K-style.

Oh yeah, and look for James Best aka Rosco P. Coltrane... um... he doesn't do his funny voice though.

Of course I had never heard about this 1976 TV movie titled "The Savage Bees" prior to sitting down here in 2024 to watch it. I happened to stumble upon the movie by random luck, and with it being a movie I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give the movie a fair chance.

Writer Guerdon Trueblood actually put together a fair enough script and storyline, however the movie sort of loses its momentum halfway down the line and settles into a monotonous hum. And the movie never really recovered from that, so the narrative is not really crammed with overly interesting events throughout the course of the movie. And that made sitting through "The Savage Bees" a little bit boring.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with Michael Parks. The acting performances in "The Savage Bees" were actually good, despite the script being a bit bland.

While I did manage to sit through the entire movie, I was only mildly entertained. "The Savage Bees", however, will not be returning to my screen a second time.

My rating of director Bruce Geller's 1976 movie "The Savage Bees" lands on a four out of ten stars. The movie was simply a bit too uneventful.

Okay so the VHS transfer was kind of lousy but where else was I going to get one? Michael Parks and Gretchen Corbett do an excellent job and this is a lot better than the average sci-fi movie produced today. Okay, the special effects aren't good, It's 640 by 480, and probably the science isn't any good but who cares. It's well done. It's well acted, and I wish there wasn't such an emphasis today on gory violence and effects, which aren't the same as plot, characterization, and good acting! So if you're from the 20th century like me and have gotten here by the old fashioned method of time travel that is living through the in between time and surviving Y2K, and 2019-2020, this film just might be for you!

I remember seeing this movie on T.V. as it was starting back in the 70's and being just too lazy to get up and change the channel thinking "not another killer bee movie". I'm glad we didn't have remote controls back then, as this proved to be very good little made-for-TV flick.

First off, the movie does a very good job with the "science" aspect, explaining how the very aggressive African Killer Bees are making their way to the U.S. and are almost unstoppable. Also, the cast does a very good job in building suspense and empathy in the characters they portrayed, with the strongest by Gretchen Corbett as the lead female character, with the weakest character being the sheriff.

In spite of being made in 1976, this movie is surprisingly not all that dated in look and atmosphere. The pacing is good and the effects are fine for this type of movie, although, with all of the computer tricks available now, they could have enhanced some of the final scenes. But, again, the performances are good enough to make up for any short comings in the effects department.

I recently dug this movie up in a box of video tapes I had recorded in the 80's and decided to put it to the real test. I invited my 13 year old son in to watch some of it with me, and after 15 minutes or so he was hooked and wanted to watch the whole movie.

It seems that they never show these good old made-for-TV movies on T.V. any more, so a DVD release would be nice. This one gets 8 out of 10. You will forever associate the Voltz-Wagon Bug with this movie.

The Sheriff's dog got killed. He geht's hin to the Coroner, who finds the News. A certain kind of bees: deadly african bees.

Then the Sheriff gets informed, that there are a few people missing: a young Girl, later a man. He sende out searchers. They get to know the bees ...

Loved this movie! Watched it on TV back in '76, six days before my 12th b'day and it absolutely terrified me...the only movie that ever made me shake(my sister had to call my mother home from visiting her mother to calm me down)- my reaction could have been caused by me getting a bit to close to a hive a year earlier and being chased more than a quarter of a mile and stung an estimated 75 times...I still have nightmares about it- and it was exactly like in the movies...screaming and swatting wildly while their buzz filled the air. Anyway, I watched the movie again about 15 years later, and, of course, it didn't have the same effect, but this time, I actually got to enjoy the movie. It's a charming '70's movie with a lot of personality. It's well acted, well written...and the action scenes are well done and not to slick(like so many of todays' flicks). It also gives some factual history on how the Africanized bees came to be. I loved the background being New Orleans, with my favorite scene being the couple dressed as pirates who, I think, had had a bit to much to drink, drove their Cougar convertible to a bee infested hotdog stand. They just don't make them like this anymore(and I don't think it would work now..not enough gore and computerized effects). GOOD STUFF..and one of the best of the killer insect movies of the '70s.