There was a time, reader, when the major networks used to produce movies. The golden age of the TV movie was in the 1970s, of course, and for a content starved horror fan, in addition to the horror hosts, I would scan the 'Movie of the Week' on the major networks to see if they were airing a genre piece that might interest me. And there were some gems in the lot too... The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973) introduced my childhood hero, Carl Kolchak... a little vampire film in 1982 called I, Desire (aka Desire, the Vampire) staring David Naughton of An American Werewolf in London sticks in my head. Steven Spielberg's debut, Duel was a made for television film in 1971. Gargoyles first creepily graced the small screen in 1972 while Trilogy of Terror appeared in 1975. These are not lightweight throwaway films but some of the most memorable horror of the era.
That being said, for every one of those, there was a dog of a film, whether it was Devil Dog: Hound of Hell (1978) or The Cat Creature (1973). However, one thing could be relied on, the TV Movie of the week tended to have its hand on the pulse of the American Pop Culture zeitgeist. You could usually be assured that if some topic was trending in the population it would find its way into a TV movie. So, it was not unusual to see environmental horror or disaster films showing up. These might be about ozone depletion or pollution, such as Where Have All the People Gone? (1974) or... the subject of today blog entry, The Savage Bees (1976).
There will, of course, be spoilers....
Like quicksand, growing up in the 70s made 'killer bees' seem like it was going to be a much bigger issue in the future than it turned out being. I remember earnest and fearful discussions among my gradeschool class members about the speed of the 'killer bee' invasion and how long it would be before they reached us in distant Ohio, and the swath of devastation they could cut across America with their passage. I also remember that even then I couldn't really take the threat seriously and I remember the shocked and surprised look on a classmates face when he asked what I would do when the bees arrived, and I simply shrugged and said "Go inside and close the windows". He was appalled that I undermined such a serious threat so easily!
The Savage Bees is set at Mardis Gras in New Orleans, and has a pretty standard setup for killer bee films. It also plagerizes borrows from the plot of Jaws (1975). A ship from Brazil carries the swarm of bees to the waters around the Port of New Orleans, where they disembark just in time for Mardi Gras. One of the first victims happens to be the beloved dog of Sheriff Don McKew (Ben Johnson) who vows vengeance.
No, really.
He is convinced some ne'er-do-well has poisoned his dog, and so takes the dog to be autopsied... so that he can determine the poison, so that he can then track down the source of the poison, and hunt down the villain who killed his dog in order to apply some police brutality to him. Wow.
It is perhaps worth noting that this is by far the MOST police work that is done in this film. Human victims do not get this sort of deep investigation. Only the Sheriff's dog.
Ok, I'll buy it.
However, bees are discovered in the dog's stomach, and we are off and running. No, they didn't find stingers in the poor dogs hide, which would have been a far less gross discovery. The coroner, Dr Jeff DuRand (Michael Parks) links these bees to a pair of dead sailors, and suddenly everyone in law enforcement and the medical community are on board with the danger of killer bees....
However, as it is Mardi Gras, the Mayor and the City Council are NOT happy about this, and make various threats to the Sheriff's job as he tries to lessen the danger by clamping down on Mardi Gras celebrations. It threatens business and tourism, after all.... now... where have we seen that before? At any rate, Sheriff Brody McKew does not tolerate any political interference in his quest for vengeance for his poor dog, and so that particular subplot goes nowhere.
I am making the film sound much worse than it really is. There actually are some effectively tension ratcheting moments in it. There is a scene where a little girl wanders close to the swarm, and its genuinely sort of unnerving as you see the girl from the bees perspective. The stories of former bee attacks help set an atmosphere of growing dread and fear.
However, the bad moments... they REALLY stand out.
We have a scene where the Sheriff's department has found out where the swarm is, and block off the roads to give bee-expert Dr Jorge Mueller (Horst Buchholz) time to dispose of the swarm... though his plan is more than a little vague... These terribly professional deputies blockade a road and leave a wide open field right next to them, where, of course, an open convertible with a pair of drunken revelers dressed as pirates speed through without even glancing at the roadblock. The deputies just sort of stare at one another and wonder what they should do now that the perimeter has been breeched by wily alcoholics. These two naturally pull up directly to the place where the bees are, and are instantly attacked. The driver of the car inexplicably decided to accessorize his pirate costume with a REAL SWORD with which he attempts to DUEL the swarm of killer bees.... about as effectively as you'd expect. He DOES manage to slash open the protective suit of Dr Mueller, causing both of their deaths.
The ending of the film also had me scratching my head, as they somehow coax the swarm to land on a red VW Beetle... because.... its RED, and that makes the bees mad... and then drive said Beetle
* V E R Y S L O W L Y * to the Superdome. Meanwhile the police drive ahead and broadcast some of the funniest warnings I've ever heard on film in order to clear the street:
"Y'all are in danger! You have 60 seconds to clear the street! We're bringing through a swarm of killer bees! We have an emergency! You're in danger! You have 60 seconds to clear the street! I repeat: killer bees! Any loud noise is gonna rile 'em! Absolute quiet is necessary! Turn off all radios, all machinery, and get off the street!"
Unrealistically, the inebriated Mardi Gras revelers actually listen to these warnings and go indoors, rather than remaining to drunkenly point and laugh at the Volkswagon with a beard of bees. I also note that these bees are remarkably considerate, and leave a small window on the windshield open in front of the driver so she can see where she is going. Killer bees they may be, but they are SAFETY CONSCIOUS killer bees!
Once in the Superdome, our heroes turn on the air conditioning. This takes MOMENTS to cool the entire Superdome down to 45F. That is some AMAZING HVAC action there. My AC won't even reach to the upstairs of my house. And like magic, the second it hits that special temperature, the bees all fall off the car. Roll credits.
Don't laugh! That was a MAJOR CRISIS averted through the intersection of reasonably priced cars, modern sporting arenas and the power of HVAC.
Honestly, it IS better than it sounds, but there really is a lot to laugh at here.
Interestingly, there was one point I noted that was NOT really funny, but quite an interesting moment for non-Christian representation in mid-70s horror. Two of the deputies are cruising through the parish back roads looking for signs of the swarm, and spot something white lying in a field. They go to investigate and find a dead chicken. Next to it is a peculiar figure in chalk. They radio the sheriff about this discovery and he advises them that the figure is a Veve and not to touch or disturb ANY of it, because its sacred. This is the remains of a voodoo protection ritual, and he tells them they need all the help they can get. Its a throwaway scene. It doesn't really add anything to the film overall... but its a POSITIVE image of a NON-CHRISTIAN belief system in a HORROR movie. And it goes out of its way to demonstrate how to respect it. That's amazing. With that scene alone, I came to respect this film a little.
A little.
I am a little leery of how they might have treated the bees. Which is not to say that they necessarily MIS-treated the bees. The fact is, they had a professional bee-handler on set with them, and he helped them safely use them. There were almost no bee-related injuries among the cast and crew, apparently. But I don't have any data on how many bees might have been killed in the course of the film. Some scenes very obviously use real bees... others, such as the final scene in the superdome, when the bees are sliding in clumps off the car? I don't know if those are real or not.
Actor-wise, the notables here are Ben Johnson, Horst Bucholz, and James Best, giving this a sort of Western flavor, and Michael Parks who has had a late career revival in the films of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez in films like Death Proof and Kill Bill.
Johnson was in such high profile Westerns as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), and The Wild Bunch (1969), as well as genre classic Mighty Joe Young (1959) and not so classic Cherry 2000 (1987). Horst Bucholz is of course best known to American audiences as being the odd man out in the star-packed The Magnificent Seven (1960), though he is better known in his native Germany and Europe. James Best hardly needs an introduction, as he is well known as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coletrane from the long running Dukes of Hazzard TV series, and of course beloved genre stinker The Killer Shrews (1959), as well as guest appearances on practically every Western TV series from the 1950s through the 1970s.
