Api selvagge

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.

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.

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!

"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.

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.