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The Savage Bees
In this horror-drama the festive fun of the annual Mardi Gras celebration is brought to a halt when a swarm of African killer bees escape from a foreign freighter.
Release : | 1976 |
Rating : | 5.1 |
Studio : | Alan Landsburg Productions, Don Kirshner Productions, |
Crew : | Assistant Property Master, Property Master, |
Cast : | Ben Johnson Michael Parks Paul Hecht Gretchen Corbett Horst Buchholz |
Genre : | Horror Thriller TV Movie |
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
Simply A Masterpiece
How sad is this?
The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.
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!
This was my third killer-bee-flick in a row, back when the urge overtook me to watch some of those. So this made-for-TV flick from the 70's ended my Killer Bee Trilogy. At the time of its release, it would've probably deserved a 6/10 rating. But it didn't age well, plus it borrows just a bit too much from the "Jaws"-plot (again!). Still, it's a rather serious film and at no point it becomes really ridiculous. You could say it contains a lot of clichés that every killer bee movie seems to have: The bees always invade a small town first. There's a male/female duo of scientists that discover the phenomenon. The authorities won't believe them. There's always a big festivity planned or going on in the town. The two scientists will eventually kiss each other. And if you're lucky, you'll get to see the bee-threat stopped/destroyed in an original way (which was more or less the case in "The Savage Bees"). So I'll be mild in my final rating. But I have to say: the most fun killer-bee movie I saw, out of these three, was "Swarmed" (2005). The lame "Killer Bees!" (2002) pretty much sucked.
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.
From the writer who brought you "Jaws 3-D" comes this very boring "thriller" about killer bees. Writer Guerdon Trueblood seems to have a one-track mind, as all his "thrillers" involve either bugs or airplanes. There must be something Freudian to that. Nevertheless, there are no airplanes here but plenty of bees. Oooga-booga! Scary stuff! Half of this movie involves people talking about bees, the other half is people driving around looking for the bees. Watch as they discuss for 15 minutes how to get bees off a Volkswagen. Then marvel as they drive the whole carload of bees downtown to see a Saints game! The only purpose of this movie is to sit around with some friends and make fun of it MST3K-style.Oh yeah, and look for James Best aka Rosco P. Coltrane... um... he doesn't do his funny voice though.