"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!

After a brief introduction, this movie begins with a scientist named "Dr. Franklin Miller" (Claudio Brook) and his wife, "Sandy Miller" (Angel Tompkins) working on a project in Brazil to transform African killer bees into a hybrid variety which are less aggressive. However, when a local boy is killed attempting to steal honey from one of the hives, the residents riot and subsequently kill Dr. Miller in the process. As a result, all of his work is temporarily halted. Not long afterward, realizing the destruction that swarms of these killer bees pose for the United States, another scientist named "Dr. Norman" (John Saxon) meets with Sandy Miller in New York and attempts to take up where his colleague had left off. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that it began with an interesting premise. Unfortunately, what really hurt this movie overall was the incredibly idiotic ending which has to be seen to be believed. Likewise, some of the disaster scenes were downright laughable as well. That being said, had it not been for the presence of Angel Tompkins, I would have rated this movie even lower than I have—it's just that bad.

If you would like to laugh at a truly silly, truly original, truly awful film, then this is the movie for you. I won't lie to you- it's terrible! If you're looking for an evening of suspense and drama go rent JAWS. If you're looking to see a Mexican farmer stung to death by several hundred special-effect bees while shouting for his honey, THE BEES is for you. It stars the King of the B's himself, John Saxon, as some sort of scientist bee expert. Or something. He and a nearly-attractive blonde try to warn the world about the over-breeding of the killer bee, and the inevitable disasters to come. But those greedy fat cats have only one thing on their minds: Honey. I swear to you I laughed so hard while watching this movie that I choked. If you like B movies, you will love THE BEES!