THE BEES

d. Alfredo Zacarias (1978)

'You have to listen to what the bees have to say!'

Mankind has a contradictory attitude towards bees, being both completely dependent on them for the continuation of human life on this planet, and simultaneously determined on eradicating them completely in pursuit of short term profit. As a child, I was once chased by a swarm of bees and stung dozens of times, but I don't hold a grudge: they were just doing their job and, after some brief discomfort, I was perfectly fine, although somewhat reluctant to cross them again.

The Bees is a brilliant, chaotic film. Totally cobbled together, it's difficult to know what is more awkward, the mismatched stock footage of plane and helicopter crashes and social panic (at one point, despite the film being set in the modern day and in Mexico and USA, we see obviously British people from the 1960s running past the Ilford Curzon) or  the dodgy optical effects, including what looks like green soot smeared on the negative to represent huge clouds of deadly bees. Every scene is scored with unsuitable music: people die in agony accompanied by ragtime piano, or atonal jazz. There's an appearance from ex-president Gerald Ford (in news footage) and then president Jimmy Carter (played by an impersonator). The elderly John Carradine does a silly German accent, and is taken out by hitmen. 

The Bees in question are imbued with an almost mystical quality, directed from a glowing, throbbing mega-hive in a cave. The upshot is that the bees aren't just killing people because they can, but because they are the vanguard of the defence of mother nature. Sick of having her natural resources used and abused by man, she has sent '20 trillion' bees to teach them a lesson, culminating in a swarm of bees holding the United Nations to ransom. 

Stars John Saxon and Angel Tompkins do the only thing they can and enjoy themselves, providing the film with a basic core of grace, good nature and fun. It's a film that is hilariously funny, not in a sneering way, but just because it is silly and ridiculous and doesn't take itself at all seriously. The funniest thing of all is that Paramount paid the producers a million dollars not to release the film before their own big budget take on the theme, The Swarm. They needn't have bothered, The Swarm was a massive flop, notable only for Michael Caine's immortal words (read aloud, using 'the voice'): 'I never dreamed it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friends'.