Terreur dans le ciel

TERROR OUT OF THE SKY is the sequel to THE SAVAGE BEES.

It begins with Jeannie Devereaux having a nightmare about the first film's absurd, football field finale. Somehow, Jeannie has magically transformed from Gretchen Corbett into Tovah Feldshuh!

Meanwhile, at the National Bee Center, killer bees have mixed in with regular honeybees with tragic results.

Enter Dr. David Martin (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Martin arrives at the NBC just in time for an unwary hive technician to do the bee-sting bugaloo! The problem is quickly contained. Unfortunately, a shipment of killer bees has already been shipped from the lab! Thankfully, Jeannie's boyfriend, Nick Willis (played by bearded mountain, Dan Haggerty) is a pilot, and can fly David and Jeannie to the problem area.

Too late!

The bees have been entrusted to a hillbilly, who runs them around in his pickup truck! Much time is spent on useless palaver between the main characters, leading up to the little league baseball game finale. Let the swarming doom commence!

Now, as preposterous as the ending was for the first film, this makes that one seem perfectly reasonable! After recruiting some boy scouts, Jeannie makes her last stand aboard a school bus, while an annoying marching band plays their last song! Ever! As glorious as this may sound, it results in one of the most tedious driving sequences ever filmed, followed by activity inside the bus that boggles the mind!

When Martin introduces his solution to the onslaught, credulity is stretched into string cheeeze! All while Grizzly Adams looks on.

WARNING: This movie contains imbecility so rarefied it could cause deep, cranial scarring!...

TV movie about a bee attack in the USA.

1978 was a big year for bee attacks, we got this film and Irwin Allen's cinema released - The Swarm - all in one year! The Swarm wins hands down! If you are big on 70s TV science fiction you might find a couple of things of interest in Terror Out Of The Sky...

Firstly the director of this TV movie is actually very talented as, in 1975, he directed the two hands down best episodes of TV's Space 1999 - Breakaway and The Black Sun. However, his talents are less on display here.

Secondly, the most talkative kid on the bus is played by Ike Eisenmann who had just appeared in the short lived cult series - The Fantastic Journey (1977). I am guessing he defined his time on Terror Out Of The Sky as another fantastic journey?

TOOTS can hardly be called a classic but it might make an okay movie experience if you still want more bee attacks after watching the much bigger budget - The Swarm (1978).

In this sequel, there is another killer bees attack. It's a different location, and a different activity. There are 3 different deliveries of queen Bees. The deliveries have to be stopped. One was successful, but the others had suffered from delays. A college teacher and former student had worked together to prevent the chaos that had happened in New Orleans, years ago.

And the entomologist from the first film was plagued by the fear in New Orleans, had to face it when she was on the bus with boy scouts. And the lead scout was with her all the way. And the teacher had to get the bees away from the scouts and her.

Jeannie was played by two different actresses. The first one was blonde. In the sequel, it was a brunette. They are both good.

5 stars.

When a handler at the National Bee Centre (French) is overcome by a swarm of deadly South American killer bees, the institute's director (Zimbalist) and principal entomologist (Feldshuh) must locate the whereabouts of recent exports before they infiltrate hives throughout the country. Inferior sequel to "The Savage Bees" has a bee-grade cast by comparison, and a lukewarm climax in which a group of boy scouts are trapped in a school bus with Feldshuh's character, already haunted by the memories of her last encounter (as Gretchen Corbett in the first film) with the black & gold assassins that now engulf the bus as air quickly runs out. This scenario actually presents some amusing possibilities for a twisted mind – is that sexual tension between young Eisenmann and Feldshuh, or just misguided execution?

Grizzly Adams (aka Dan Haggerty) is the sensitive, jilted pilot boyfriend trying to compete with Zimbalist's affections for his former squeeze, putting aside his differences in unheralded chivalry as the trio fly from one town to the next in search of the next catastrophe. If the Feldshuh-Zimbalist-Haggerty sandwich was any more cordial, it would surely be fairy bread, and that's the substance of which this film is made. The "Terror" is indeed out of the sky, and it appears, nowhere to be seen in this film. Aside from the make-up applied to French as the first victim, there's very little inspiration in special effects or action sequences. Experienced director Katzin seems content to allow the events to unfold without cohesive plotting, meandering pointlessly to a bittersweet ending in which our celebrated threesome, sadly, become a pair.

It's a shame that a taut, suspenseful film like "The Savage Bees" serves as the patent to such a bland, lethargic re-production. There's little to recommend here, suffice to say that proceedings are unlikely to offend in any way such is the wholesome, sedentary treatment afforded to this sub-standard sequel.

In this sequel to The Savage Bee's we find that a new breed of killer bee's has been bread at a research lab for the study of bee's. Unfortunately 3 of the queen bee's have been sent out to bee keeper's before it was known they were of the deadly verity it is up to Jeannie Devereux and David Martin (Tovah Feldshuh, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) to get them back before they are added to the hives and swarm. With the help of Jeannie's pilot boyfriend Nick (Dan Haggerty) two of the queens are found and destroyed but they didn't reach the third in time. The swarm attack a 4th of July celebration trapping Jeannie and a pack of boy scouts in a bus. Its up to Nick and Dave to save the day.