Strong and Moving!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

"The Bees" is a gloriously awful animal attack thriller marked by some truly incompetent filmmaking, a ridiculous script, and some hilariously insipid acting. The story involves the corporate smuggling of killer bees into America, which causes a massive swarm such as the country has never seen. The scientists desperately trying to solve the problem (John Saxon as the egghead hero, the ravishing Angel Tompkins as his love interest, John Carradine as her German accented father) realize that they're going to have their hands full.Led by director Alfredo Zacharias ("Demonoid"), the filmmakers here miss any horror in the premise by bungling almost every action scene. Most of the time, the only possible reaction to the goings-on is laughter. Granted, some of the humor *is* intentional - there is an occasional priceless line such as "That's adding incest to injury." When it comes to the insect cast, we have a practical cast of thousands, and regarding the human actors, Saxon gamely tries to look serious, and Carradine is as genial as he's ever been. Mexican icon Claudio Brook appears early on as Tompkins' husband. There's even an appearance by the "President"! Highlights include a good ol' boy hiring kids to procure bees for him so he can treat his rheumatism with bee stings. There's a fair bit of violence and a couple of impressive vehicle crashes. Everything is capped off with a delightfully idiotic music score (composed by Richard Gillis) that completely works against any suspense that Zacharias and company might otherwise have created. The ending is priceless and right in tune with so many other ecologically themed thrillers of the 70s.Warner Bros., the makers of "The Swarm", went so far as to pay off New World, the American distributors of this flick, to delay their release so the two movies wouldn't be in direct competition.Five out of 10.

A strain of killer bees smuggled into America by an evil and unscrupulous corporation threaten to destroy mankind. It's up to a small team of scientists to figure out a way to destroy them before it's too late.Writer/director Alfredo Zacharias treats the inane premise with sidesplitting misguided seriousness: The copious use of laughably obvious stock footage (look fast for a clip of former President Gerald Ford on a float at the Rose Bowl Parade!), ineptly staged attack scenes, shoddy (far from) special effects, an incredibly inane solution to the problem that involves turning male bees into homosexuals (yes, you read that correctly), and a surreal climax set at a UN meeting complete with a heavy-handed plea for tolerance between humans and bees (!) all add to this hilariously horrendous honey's considerable campy charm. John Saxon tries hard as the stalwart John Norman, Angel Tompkins looks mighty foxy and just barely manages to retain her dignity as the perky Sandra Miller, and John Carradine hams it up shameless as flaky old fudster Dr. Sigmund Hummel (Carradine's uproariously overdone and unconvincing German accent in particular serves as a key source of unintentional belly laughs). The funky-throbbing score by Richard Gillis hits the get-down groovy spot. An absolute cruddy hoot!

Bees, The (1978) * 1/2 (out of 4) It was expected that THE SWARM would be a major hit so this Mexican film was rushed into production to try and cash-in on the others success but when the Irwin Allen film turned out to be a disaster there wasn't any "demand" for a rip so THE BEES has fallen into never land and very few have been brave to dig it up. The "story" involves some African bees that are crossbred with some from Brazil and they turn out to be craving humans and animals. Soon the bees are killing people throughout Brazil and Mexico and soon find their way to America and it's up to three dedicated folks (John Saxon, Angel Tompkins, John Carradine) to destroy the killers. I guess I should add that the major break in killing the bees is to create a special serum that will turn the males into homosexuals and they'll end up attacking one another. I'm not kidding. With that added bit you can tell this sucker is from the 70s and what a poorly produced mess it is. The nature attack genre has given us killer sharks, snakes, whales, bears, frogs and countless other creatures but the bee hasn't been too friendly as quite often its films are very bad. That trend continues with this production, which is just a major joke and you have to feel sorry for the cast members. Thankfully the film is bad enough to where you might find yourself laughing and being entertained by the campiness. As with THE SWARM, the special effects here are just awful with the majority of the bees being "dots" on the screen or some type of item being blown around by a fan. Every once in a while the image of bees are plastered over the footage we're watching but for the most part there's not a bee to be seen. There are several sequences where we see one attack after another and this is where most people are going to get the laughs because the performances are beyond horrid. The funniest has to be one where a woman removes her glasses, wipes them and then puts them back on just in time to see what's getting ready to attack her. Check out the woman in the bathroom who gets stung and then goes into her "death scene", which is bad enough to where many viewers might die from laughter. There's not a single death scene that actually makes on feel for the character or builds up any suspense and that's not a good thing for a film like this. Saxon is clearly bored with the material as he sleepwalks through it but he's always fun to watch. Carradine really hams it up as he's quite often shouting for no reason but this over-the-top performance at least gives us something entertaining to see. Thankfully both Saxon and Carradine have quite a few scenes together so genre fans will at least get to see them. THE BEES isn't the worst movie on the subject but it might just be the dumbest. The political speech at the end is unbelievable and let's not even get started on the other political stuff that works itself into the story.

downright laughable but is entertaining on a so bad it's good level it has a lame music score extremely lame dialog laughable effects and the bees look fake at times with lots of laughable moments like when the girl jumps into the water keeps going underwater and says help me help me the acting is bad John Saxon actually comes out of this looking decent too bad his material was awful!!!!!!! i love John Saxon though come back soon!!! Angel Tompkins is so so here and spurts out dumb dialog John Carradine is completely over the top and campy but he is fun to watch plus all the characters are idiots and the effects suck and laughable bee attacks and the death scenes all suck! and that crappy ending where Saxon gets to deliver a bad speech and the ending stinks and leaves many questions unanswered and there is this idiot who actually wants a bee to sting him and there is tons of logic lapses overall horribly made and written but fun if your in the mood for a dumb movie fun don't get me wrong that does not mean this still isn't a lame flick because it is but it is just entertaining * out of 5 but i cannot recommend this unless you are desperate for bad B movies like this