Essaim mortel

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 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!)

I will start with this is more of a 3.5-3.8 not a full 4. The effects are pretty bad more like 70s-80s b movie NOT 50s or 60s. The acting is also awful the kids actually almost save this flop. If you somehow like CT howell you may even enjoy this as he is the sheriff. The story is probably the best, about the quality you could expect from an average 6th grader. Even so I watched this and can say of the 1000s of horror/monster flicks this was not among the worst by any means. It is fairly clean for family watching, some sensuality and pg violence. Watch it on netflix or something it will be cheap and you could do a lot worse. Josh

Killer Bees isn't a great film at all, but it plods slowly along and tries its best. There are one or two mildly effective moments but most of it is just talking and with poor dialogue.

3/10: I don't want to give it too low a rating as it's not a disaster and raises itself above some other low budget films but it is still not very good at all

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.