The Savage Bees (1976)

Just what I expected

The acting in this movie is really good.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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!

A deadly cross breed of African bee descends upon New Orleans during Mardi Gras.I watched this one recently and was amazed to discover it was a film I had seen many, many years previously on television; I think it must've been the late 70's it made it to the UK. A couple of scenes evidently stayed in my memory. The first was a point of view shot from the perspective of the bees as they rise high in the air over some trees as they pursue a little fleeing girl. The other scene was the finale where a Volkswagen Beetle drives slowly through town covered in the bees. So, this flick evidently made some impression on my very young mind.Even before realising I had seen The Savage Bees before I was already onside with it. The reason is that I have a real soft spot for 70's American TV movies. I find them cosy and charming and this one was certainly no different. It seems like many even proclaim that this remains the best killer bee film out there, which is pretty impressive given that there have been some cinematic attempts; films that clearly would have had more money and less censorship restrictions imposed on them. I guess it shows that it all comes down to how well the story is presented on screen and it is well told here. Like many others, this one shows the definite influence of the big blockbuster of the time, Jaws (1975). Many animals attack films followed the Jaws template pretty closely and Savage Bees is no exception, seeing as it has characters discover the bee threat but being disbelieved by the authorities whose main concern is the money-making festival that is Mardi Gras. But it uses its influences well and the resultant film is good, with a finale that is quite memorable, after all I remembered it from over thirty five years ago!

The Savage Bees is set in Louisiana & starts as a banana boat from Brazil sails into freighter about twenty miles off the coast of New Orleans, the banana boat is completely deserted & her crew are nowhere to be found. Arriving home Sheriff Donald McKew (Ben Johnson) is shocked to see his pet Dog dead, McKew takes the Dog to the nearest hospital & manages to convince assistant medical examiner Dr. Jeff DuRand (Michael parks) to perform an autopsy which he does & discovers that the Dog was killed by Bee stings. A body is found floating in the water & he too was killed by Bee stings, entomologist Jaennie Devereaux (Gretchen Corbett) confirms that the Bees in question are killer African Bees that presumably reached the US by being on the Brazillian banana boat. With Mardi Gras in full swing the city of New Orleans faces a potential disaster & it's up to a few city officials to come up with a plan to stop the Bees & prevent a massacre...This made for US telly killer Bee flick originally aired at the end of November in 1976 & has been released on home video a few times since, produced & directed by Bruce Geller who is credited as the 'Creator' of the original Mission: Impossible TV series & was later killed in a plane crash in 1978 this killer animal/insect film was probably made after the huge success of Jaws (1975) the previous year & just about everyone in Hollywood jumped on the killer animal bandwagon usually with less than impressive results. Here The Savage Bees is watchable enough I suppose but it's so talky at times that I found myself getting bored with it, the Bee attack scenes are tame & uninspired although the ending is alright if only for it's outright silliness. I mean a single cop car can clear the whole of New Orleans by itself broadcasting from just one loudspeaker? Also if the Bees hate loud noises & the cop actually tells people to turn machinery off & be quiet because the Bees will attack them why is he shouting out warnings at the top of his voice from a loudspeaker no more than a few feet from the swarm of Bees? The majority of The Savage Bees is taken up by scenes of various city officials talking about the killer Bee threat & what to do about it, that's fine in an exposition sort of way but it does get dull after a while. At almost 90 odd minutes long The Savage Bees could have used five or tens minutes edited out to speed things up a bit, overall a pretty forgettable entry in the killer Bee sub-genre.There are a few attack scenes but nothing special, expert Bee handlers made sure things were done safely on set as real Bees with real stingers were used. To be honest I don't think Bees make the best killer creature for films like this, great big Sharks or Snakes or even Spiders are much better as Bees just sort of buzz around & not much else. Even though the film takes place during the Mardi Gras this angle is totally wasted, the obligatory uncaring politician as seen in jaws who is only interested in money is also present but again goes nowhere.Filmed in Louisiana & the Superdome in New Orleans where the improbable climax takes place. I can't believe you drop the temperature in a huge football stadium such as the Superdome by over 15 degrees in a matter of minutes, can you? The acting is standard fare, no-one stands out but it'll do. A young Michael Parks stars & he has had a bit of a comeback lately with Quentin Tarantino casting him in several of his films.The Savage Bees is standard made for telly killer creature feature stuff, it's just about watchable if your absolutely desperate for a killer Bee flick but that's the best I can say for it. Followed by the made for telly sequel Terror Out of the Sky (1978).

This is a tense thriller that shows, in no uncertain terms how real and deadly the Killer Bee threat really is. This film shows, with scientific plausibility, the City of New Orleans coming under the increasing threat of a large killer swarm approaching town on the eve of Mardi Gras. Unlike Irwin Allen's The Swarm, whose main objective was to show one celebrity guest star after another being stung to death, this film is more like a cross between a tense sci fi thriller and a Hitchcock film. Obviously a TV film cannot posses the cinematic genius of a Hitchcock film, yet this little gem comes close. The team of scientists, (aided by the local sherriff) that are trying to thwart the disaster deal with a slow subtle(at first), steadily climbing stream of attacks. The threat grows as the attacks continue, and for awhile it looks like the bees will win out. The death scenes are the most realistic ever shown in a killer bee film, one senses what it might actually be like to meet this horrible fate. Also a first, this film gives the actual history of how the bees came to invade South & Central America, and deals with the scientific realities of how to stop this menace. Now that there have been killer bee deaths in the United States, this film rings even more true than when it first was telecast in 1976.