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The Deadly Bees
[Legend Films]
1967; color
Directed by Freddie Francis
Starring: Suzanna Leigh, Frank Finlay & Guy Doleman
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Apparently movies about natural disasters were all the rage back in the '70s and, since various filmmakers had already covered earthquakes, airports and towering infernos, it seems inevitable other filmmakers would look elsewhere for their villain or villains - like to Alfred Hitchcock. (Not that he made movies about deadly bees but The Birds is kind of the pre-cursor to all of these crazed animal films, except it was actually good.) At the risk of stating the obvious, The Deadly Bees is about a group of deadly bees. If I may veer off topic for a moment, it's almost unthinkable this movie could actually be about a deadly robot or a deadly zombie prostitute or pretty much a deadly anything, other than bees, but that would have been a nice change from all the overly literal titles of these flicks don't you think? One thing the movie does have in it's favor is a ridiculously ridiculous plotline; oddly enough, credited in part to esteemed novelist and short story writer Robert Bloch. (Author of Psycho, interestingly; among other things.) Honestly I find it hard to believe Bloch penned a short story about a stressed out pop star who seeks relaxation on a remote island where not one but two obsessive / slightly compulsive bee keepers call home but I am no authority. (By the way, pop stars in the '70s were not the overly sexed up tweens you'd see on MTV today. They were old enough to be the moms of tweens. And not the MILF-y 45 year old pop star moms you see on the E! channel either. I mean they looked like Janet Leigh when she was old enough to have a teenaged Jamie Lee Curtis running around the house.) One thing is for sure, as sure as pop stars would rather lip synch than sing live, one of these two homegrown hives contains bees of the deadly variety, while the other simply contains bees that would only be deadly to people allergic to bee stings; like myself. I can't tell you which hive is which of course, that would spoil the whole thing. But I can tell you, just based on the title, it's pretty obvious where this film is headed from the first scene so you either have to agree to let yourself go with it or find something more serious to watch. (We here at the Buffet almost always choose the cheap thrill over the academic study so no problem there.) Generally speaking, movies about giant animals tend creep me out but this one was so laughable; overall, easy to enjoy but hard to take seriously.
—Bunny
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