Les abeilles

O.K. heres the basic plot: we have been poisoning the air for so many years that nature has fought back by sending us KILLER BEES. Now if that doesn't grab you how about this: This film features a swarm of bees addressing the United Nations, as Angel Thompkin's screams "You have to listen! You have to listen (sic) what the bees are trying to tell you!" I really had fun watching this, but I am truly amazed at how bad it is. There are surprising continuity errors. (In one scene hit men shoot a man as he is sitting in a chair. In the next shot, it's a different older chair.) Many of the shot's of the bee swarms look like they are just clouds of smoke. However, Nightmare On Elm Street's John Saxon is in it, and Claudio Brooks gets hit in the head with a rock. All in all I highly recommend it.

A swarm of bees create disaster.

Made to cash in on the soon to come Irwin Allen block buster - The Swarm (1978) - so much so that Swarm studio Warner Brothers paid the Bees studio big bucks to delay the screening so the two films would not clash.

The most memorable thing about The Swarm was the energetic Jerry Goldsmith score that pumped away every time the bees were seen. Such music is obviously missing in this other flick and it gives you some insight into just how important music is to film.

The Bees (1978) is filled with boring talk and boring acting.

John Saxon proved he does have talent with his guest appearances in The Six Million Dollar Man (1973), The Fantastic Journey (1977) and The Time Tunnel (1966) but, sadly, The Bees is another example of boring John.

This movie is poor.

THE BEES opens with a huge hive of honeybees, busily buzzing away. The grim narrator tells us of our doom from these insidiously industrious insects, as they swarm and sting! Sting unwary victims in Mexico!

Sting! Sting! Sting!

It seems that these "devil bees" have been bred at a genetic research facility, headed up by Dr. Miller (Claudio Brook), who sports a thick, Marjoe Gortner-like helmet of hair that no bee could possibly penetrate.

Disaster strikes, resulting in a screaming, flailing frenzy!

Enter John Norman (John Saxon), who joins forces with Miller's widow in order to smuggle the bees into the US (!). In Mrs. Miller's cosmetic case (!!).

What could possibly go wrong?

Catastrophic nonsense erupts, as the bees become a cloud of death, stinging hapless extras in an orgy of venom-drenched slaughter!

This is yet another ridiculous entry in the "killer bees" sub-sub-genre, packed with gut-busting scenes of grown human beings swinging their arms around, and rolling on the ground like bee-covered logs! Highly entertaining, while reducing our brains to royal jelly.

BEST SCENE: The "bee parade", complete with an entire crowd under assault, hopping, jumping, and swatting to fend off the sinister swarm!

This movie is chock full of such sequences, combined with acting and dialogue that are terrible enough to make our eyes pop, and our eardrums evaporate!

Co-stars the inimitable John Carradine, who plays the same old so-and-so that he plays in all of his later movies. This time, adding a strange, impossible-to-discern, "foreign" accent. His death scene is a riot!

Watch this right now! It's a laugh-a-second classic...

This film is a film about wildlife striking back like in Kingdom of the Spiders, Day of the Animals or another bee film, The Swarm. This one, however, seems to play it out in the same fashion as those films and at other times seems to want to go in weird directions like in the ant invasion film Phase IV. Then there is the music that seems to think the film is a straight up comedy. Kids and adults being stung to death in a park, you get music that makes it sound like someone has just been hit in the face with a pie. Bees taking down military planes and helicopters, music sounds like the A-team has just eluded capture in hilarious fashion. The film also has a lot of dead space, where there are no bee attacks, but instead we get hitmen!

The film starts out with a father and son stealing honey, because when I want to eat that is what I go for. The kid dies so everyone attacks the place releasing the killer bees! A husband dies but his wife survives and she brings bees back to John Saxon and John Carradine. Meanwhile, somehow the bees have increased in number that they form a dark cloud and begin killing. Plans are devised as we see the bees attack, then no bees and finally super smart bees!

John Saxon and Carradine are good in this and make it more enjoyable than it should be considering the plot. The effects are pretty good, but at times it looks like the actor are being pelted with popcorn. Once again, the music is terrible as it seems as if it were lifted from a comedy caper film and it really undercuts the bee attacks.

So the film was entertaining enough to watch, but it is not good by any means. At times they try to make the film seem light-hearted, but the film starts with a boy being stung to death and ending up face down in a river. Stupid plots involving hitmen and a bit too much downtime after the initial batch of bees is defeated make this one feel totally uneven. Then you get a strange Phase IV type ending that worked for that film but is out of place here.

The idea of a low-budget quickie made to take advantage of publicity surrounding THE SWARM - of all movies! - will undoubtably sound irresistable to many trash fans. However, most of the movie is boring talk, without the campy sight of big-name stars making fools out of themselves or large-scale but silly special effects. And while it's shorter than the full-length cut of THE SWARM (which runs about 2 1/2 hours!), it feels *longer* due to a sluggish pace. Still, the movie has some mirthful moments, the best being the whole segment in the park with the old man and the little boys.