INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS

d. Denis Sanders (1973) 

For a long while, Invasion Of The Bee Girls requires some perseverance. A patchy story about a series of unexplained deaths in a small town with a large biological research centre, the key point of interest is that the victims are exclusively men, specifically middle aged scientists, most of whom have some form of ingenious and elaborate comb across. Their sudden demise is attributed to being (using the 70s vernacular) 'balled' to death. Are their murders linked to the top secret work they are doing? And isn't the town (brilliantly, called Peckham) notorious for being a swinger's paradise? And why do all the women in town wear such big sunglasses?* 

After an hour, however, there is an extraordinary sequence in which a group of very short white coated women perform a strange procedure on a naked, half conscious lady stood in front of a Buckminster Fuller-style geodesic dome made of electrical cable. They bombard her with radiation, smear her in latex, then lock her away in a compartment filled with bees, which cover her entirely. After this, they peel off the plastic and flash her with a heat ray. The soft light and warmth of the light unlocks something sensual within her - and does the same for the other women in the lab - and there is much wistful self-fondling. One lesbian kiss later and the subject's eyes turn completely black. She is now a bee girl. Her mission: to copulate an ugly old scientist to death. The reason: less clear cut, but it has to do with chauvinistic and irresponsible experiments causing female sterility or something. 

When the film was released on video in the UK it was re-titled 'Graveyard Tramps', which only makes me think of cider and public urination. I'm not quite sure why, but I seem to watch this film three or four times a year. It's become some sort of 'go to' film for a recurring mood: slightly pissed off, at a loose end, nowhere near ready for bed, in need of something slightly incomprehensible and full of weird. It's never let me down yet.   

I'd like to write a book about it one day. But just a short one. Send money and crayons.

* The credits read 'Bee Come Beautiful Sunglasses by Foster Grant'.

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'. 

DEMENTIA 13

d. Francis Ford Coppola (1963)

A rather murky tale of intrigue and murder set in Ireland, the plot revolves around that most baleful of storylines, the death of a child and the terrible, dysfunctional, psychotic effect it has on an already eccentric (and not Irish in the slightest) family.

The young Francis Coppola wrote and directed the film, the culmination of a short apprenticeship with producer and director Roger Corman that had seen him doing anything and everything from editing, dubbing and script writing to the washing up and driving. Corman worked his interns pretty hard, but he was also remarkably astute about talent and very generous with opportunities. When 'The Young Racers' concluded under budget and ahead of schedule, Corman decided to maximise the saving by giving Coppola forty grand, nine days and Samuel Beckett's favourite actor* to make his very own film - as long as it was a bit like Psycho**.

The script (written more or less overnight) is, perhaps not unexpectedly, a little uneven, and the direction is occasionally self-conscious but, overall, it's an impressive achievement, not least because of the atmosphere of sustained dread it creates and some nicely realised underwater shots. There's also a short monologue about a recurring nightmare and incipient madness that makes you stop everything that you're doing to listen to it, including breathing.

* I am referring, of course, to the amazing Patrick Magee, an actor with a sinister voice somewhere between a purr and a croak and an extraordinary intensity. I was going to describe him as immortal, but he died in 1982, and I thought somebody might write in.

** The opportunity turned out to be a parting gift: Corman hated the film, and Coppola went his own way after the test screening.

THE MAN FROM PLANET X

d. Edgar G. Ulmer (1951) 

An interesting attempt at making a film about an alien invasion on a tiny budget and with only a few painted sets and some scale models to help set the scene, The Man From Planet X is notable for two things: it's supposed location, and the X Man himself, who is an amazing and surprising creation.

The film is supposedly set on the 'Scotch' island of Bury, a place of fog and moors and fishermen with stick on sideburns and a variety of accents. Bury will be the closest point on Earth when the newly discovered Planet X's orbit brings it close to our world for the first time. As such, some scientists and a journalist have gathered there to more closely observe the arrival of X, little realising that the mysterious sphere is populated, and that the inhabitants are mainly interested in decamping from their place to ours.

Which brings us to the X Man, the 'fantastic gnome': a small, rather feeble humanoid in a cumbersome space suit that is reminiscent of a deep sea diving outfit. The alien's face resembles crude, ancient figurative art, with stretched and elongated features, something like Humpty Dumpty's face etched onto sandstone. It's both creepy and rather sad, especially as the X Man seems permanently terrified. It takes a little spark of genius to imagine a life form that is recognisably a 'person' but also completely alien: the really clever part is that the X man appears to be made out of geological rather than biological material.       

We learn that Planet X is icing over, and will soon be unable to support life. The funny faced envoy is not unreasonable in the first instance but, once he's been beaten up and the military have been called in he gets a lot more aggressive, using a mind control ray to get the help he needs from the locals to trigger a full scale invasion.

Mankind triumphs in the end, of course. The army blow the X Man and his rocket to bits and so Planet X swings out of orbit without making contact, disappearing out into the farthest reaches of space on a trajectory of frozen doom. Hurrah, we should all be very proud of ourselves.  

CURSE OF THE UNDEAD

d. Edward Dein (1959)

An uneven horror western, Curse Of The Undead isn't completely successful but it does come up with the brilliant idea of a vampire working as a hired gun, a black clad killer who isn't particularly quick on the draw because he doesn't have to be: you can shoot him all you like with ordinary bullets, it doesn't make a scrap of difference.

The vampire himself (played by Australian character actor Michael Pate) is almost sympathetic and, in his attacks on the necks of the local girls, regretful and tender. It seems that, some twenty years previously, he found out that his new wife had been sleeping with his brother, so he stabbed the brother to death before killing himself. Via a route that is not particularly well signposted, he then came back as a vampire and few soft necks have been safe since. To his credit, he hates what he has become, shouting 'do you think I wanted this?' as he kills. It's not all nibbling virgins and long lie ins, you know.   

Somehow the vampire ends up in a love triangle with a beautiful local land owner called Dolores and her pompous and overbearing preacher boyfriend (Eric Fleming*) and, as this is cowboy times, it can only end in a shoot out. Although you're rooting for the vampire, the preacher prevails, killing his undead rival with a holy bullet, a slug capped with a sliver of thorn from the site of the crucifixion. As the vampire's body fades away into nothingness, Dolores looks on in horror, knowing that this means she will now have to marry the boring, bossy Vicar and spend the rest of her life hearing about how he saved her life . Oh well, Dolores does mean 'sorrows', after all...

* I don't like Fleming's character in this film, but I always feel a bit sorry for the actor himself. In 1966, he was making a film in the Amazon when his boat overturned and he was eaten by piranhas. 

SATAN'S CHILDREN

d. Joe Wiezycki (1975)

Rape revenge films are always mean and tawdry: no matter how satisfying the revenge element is, there always has to be a disturbing attack to set up the story. Here, there's a slight twist on standard exploitation mores: the victim is a teenage boy, a runaway from an intolerable home life who meets an older guy who he hopes will be a friend and mentor but instead turns out to be  the scumbag leader of a gang of scumbag abusers. The scumbags all take a turn with the unfortunate youngster then dump his ripped and torn body in the middle of nowhere, where he is discovered, semi-conscious, by a group of satanists. How lucky can one boy be?

The satanists are all young, hippy-ish and in the thrall of a super louche smoothie called Simon, who gives orders in a slow, quiet voice whilst fiddling with his Zapata moustache. He talks of The Master as if he were the area manager. It's a ridiculously tough group – disciplinary infractions are punished by execution by hanging or, if they're being generous, by burying you up to your neck in sand and covering your hair in syrup to attract the ants.

Strangely for an unconventional cult of sexual freedom and social anarchy they are dead set against homosexuality to the extent that poor Bobby, even as a rape victim, is treated with suspicion and labelled a 'loser' who was 'weak' enough to 'let' himself be abused.

The only way Bobby can prove himself is in the bloodiest terms possible. He escapes, pushes two of the pursuing Satanists into quicksand (actually a hole filled with plaster of paris and washing up liquid), goes home, hits his mean Dad over the head with a bottle and bundles his wicked stepsister into the boot of his car before finding and shooting his attackers and cutting off their heads and putting them in a bag which he presents to Simon as proof of his sincerity, proving himself as a ‘winner’: a bright eyed boy with a bright arsed future. His stepsister (who is more unpleasant than plain evil) is handed over to the group as a kind of cult-warming present, to be tortured and, eventually, crucified.

It’s a remarkable film, really, despite clear technical limitations: the sound often overlaps or gets suddenly cut off; special effects and pyrotechnics are on show; several key scenes lose dramatic intensity by simply being too dark. The cast is made up entirely of students, which occasionally shows, but actually helps create a terrifying vision of a post-Manson USA where disaffected youths are being corrupted, abused, degraded and turned to the dark side all across the country without anyone knowing about it.

BABY FACE NELSON

d. Don Siegel (1957)

Americans love outlaws, and cinema, so it's not surprising that most notable American criminals have been commemorated on film. Yet these notorious people, whether they are Jesse James or John Dillinger, Butch and Sundance or Bonnie and Clyde, have something else in common besides celluloid immortality: they're all scum bags. Despite the glamour and mythology that springs up around them, outlaws are very rarely Robin Hood style philanthropists, or even oppressed people striking a blow against the system. Instead they are usually violent criminals, ruthless, amoral people who steal and kill and spread misery and fear: fascinating but not exactly admirable. 

Take Lester Gillis aka Baby Face Nelson, as played here by Mickey Rooney. This character has but one redeeming feature, the love of a beautiful woman (Carolyn Jones). By the end of the film, even she is becoming sickened by his blood lust and, it would seem, his death wish. Nelson is a monster, no-one is safe around him and no matter how much money he steals, how many people he kills, he never stops, he can't stop. The real Nelson died after being shot seventeen times. Even then he managed to make it home and die in his bed, a defiant final 'fuck you' to the world. Here, his wife administers the coup de grace in a graveyard after he is fatally wounded, which is a more obviously dramatic finale, but a less satisfying one.

Director for hire Don Siegel doesn't particularly distinguish himself here, but he keeps everything moving. Outlaws life stories always seem to have a kind of fatal momentum, anyway, a short, quick charge to death or imprisonment. Rooney is far too old to play Nelson (Nelson was dead at 25, Rooney is pushing 40) but has the right look and the right stature (throughout Nelson is referred to as 'shrimp' or, ironically, 'the big man' - he doesn't like it). His performance has two gears, a sort of closed off auto pilot that allows him to function on a day to day basis, and a murderous, explosive anger that drives him onwards. This uncontrollable ire is the focus of one of Siegel's few directorial flourishes, a big close up on Nelson's face as he swears revenge, his right eye twitching involuntarily with rage.