Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

Did you people see the same film I saw?

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

I was looking forward to watching this movie. I enjoy B movies from the '70, especially ones with an outlandish premise as this film had. Plus, William Smith was in the cast. But I have to admit that in the end I kind of felt let down. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad movie. Smith gives a lively performance, and the movie is directed with the right tone, which is to play it straight for the most part. And there is some welcome nudity and sex. But the screenplay should have been given another rewrite or two before filming started. It's not made clear why the women are doing what they are doing, plus the movie moves quite slowly, coming to a halt on more than one occasion. There are also some bits that will likely having you scratch your head with confusion, like when Smith starts to pursue a hit-and-run driver, then it's completely forgotten about. But there's also fault with the direction. The biggest problem with the direction is that despite the escalating body count, there isn't a feeling of a real threat building to a dangerous level - there should have been some real tension and suspense. As I said, this is still not a BAD movie, but it's definitely disappointing.

While not a good movie, it's an interesting movie. In a California of swinging couples and willing young women, it seems that men started to feel sorry for getting what they'd wished for, and this movie is a result, an anxiety dream that any Freudian psychologist would love to get her hands on. Hot women willing to bed doughy white guys seems good for the guys, right? But then it ends up these women actually want things for themselves in bed, and uh-oh, a guy suddenly has to perform on demand and actually be good at what he does between the sheets, and maybe he doesn't feel like it every minute, and maybe she does, and the sexually awakened women are now seeming like less than a wonderful thing. They're succubi! Who kill you from overuse! And maybe in this swingers' culture they start chatting with each other about which guys are good or bad in bed...just like a colony of buzzing bees. So the fantasy coming true had facets to it the guys never anticipated, and they apparently didn't much like those discoveries. And as a result you have this movie, which turns those male anxieties of the sexual revolution into a muddy s-f story, the women becoming actual bees (who still look like women), the men dropping off from heart attacks during sex (was it something about the sting? Was there a sting? I was never quite sure of this plot point).It's soft porn, really, almost soft-core snuff film porn(though only men die). Lots o' tits, with no erotic moments at all during the heterosexual sex scenes. (or at least I didn't find them so.) A few things are interesting about it. One, there are no body doubles, so you're seeing actual normal women's breasts in their true variety. It'll probably look odd to guys who've seen more naked body-doubles in movies than they've seen naked women in real life. (Women who have been in locker rooms will not be a bit surprised.) The second interesting thing is the very matter-of-fact, not sneering, not joking, not disgusted treatment of gay men. The government investigator seems savvy about gay life and asks matter-of-fact questions of the gay man with respect and seriousness and no anxiety about his own sexuality. Amazing. We don't do this well today, in most cases. And third, the only erotic scene at all is not really about sex--it's the making of the queen scene, an all-woman nude honey extravaganza that seemed to take up a quarter of the film. I wonder what the Freudians would say about that.There's a thesis worth of material here, if you're given to analyzing film within the context of a time and culture. As a movie, it's pretty silly, but as a cultural artifact, it's fascinating.

An agent for the State Department named "Neil Agar" (William Smith) is sent to Peckham, California to determine if there is any connection between the death of a man and a local top secret government research facility called "Brandt Industries". Not long after his arrival, other men begin dying at an alarming rate. The cause of death is sexual exhaustion in almost all of the cases. Now, as one might expect from a B-movie this one has some typical flaws. First, the lighting in several scenes was clearly inadequate. Likewise, the special effects were somewhat basic as well. In addition to that, there was quite a bit of nudity. Some of it enhanced a particular scene but at other times it didn't seem necessary or even that remarkable. However, what I did find rather remarkable was that, minus the nudity, this is the type of film one might expect to see back in the 1950's. It has that type of a plot. Be that as it may, for a "Bee-movie" this wasn't that bad.

Y'know, it's too bad William Smith didn't have a better agent.Imagine if Clint Eastwood was stuck in B movie hell all his life. Smith had the talent and the presence to be an A list actor.That said, this movie sucked. It seemed to have been filmed by a college student who made the story up as they went along. Men would get laid by women and then you hear buzzing sounds and then they're dead. No simulated sex was shown...just men lying on their back and girls who sometimes had bee-looking eyes. Lots of brief boobie nudity - oh, well. Even the title graphics looked cheap. The plot made no sense - somehow bees and humans were cross- bred.....Extremely cheap movie....if it cost more than $100 to film, I'd be surprised. Anyone with a video camera could do a better job.