It still seems ridiculous that after all these years of cinema and all its advancements, that we are still waiting for a good killer bee/wasp/hornet movie. As it turns out, The Savage Bees, in spite of its TV budget production, is the best on offer.Plot in a nutshell sees a strain of African Killer Bees sneak over to the deep south of America via freighter. Once child and pet meet with nasty ends courtesy of the buzzing menace, the authorities come to realise what is going on and must do something before The Mardis Gras celebrations becomes a lambs to the slaughter type scenario.Cast are strong enough for the material, with "name" actors such as Ben Johnson and Horst Buchholz lending their support to the production. The science isn't half bad, the threads involving colour rage and water are interesting, and even though the Bee Genocide finale goes out with a whimper, the idea behind it is at least well thought out.Disposable and forgettable, but enjoyable enough while it's on. It was popular enough to spawn (or should that be swarm?) a sequel, Terror Out of the Sky (1978). 4/10

This was my third killer-bee-flick in a row, back when the urge overtook me to watch some of those. So this made-for-TV flick from the 70's ended my Killer Bee Trilogy. At the time of its release, it would've probably deserved a 6/10 rating. But it didn't age well, plus it borrows just a bit too much from the "Jaws"-plot (again!). Still, it's a rather serious film and at no point it becomes really ridiculous. You could say it contains a lot of clichés that every killer bee movie seems to have: The bees always invade a small town first. There's a male/female duo of scientists that discover the phenomenon. The authorities won't believe them. There's always a big festivity planned or going on in the town. The two scientists will eventually kiss each other. And if you're lucky, you'll get to see the bee-threat stopped/destroyed in an original way (which was more or less the case in "The Savage Bees"). So I'll be mild in my final rating. But I have to say: the most fun killer-bee movie I saw, out of these three, was "Swarmed" (2005). The lame "Killer Bees!" (2002) pretty much sucked.

I say Ben Johnson and my fellow Canadians say, "Ben Johnson?!" - he was a goddam MOVIE STAR guys, a COWBOY, and by 1976 he was scraping by playing a sheriff in stupid made for TV disaster movies such as this, cashing in on the DEADLY SWARMS OF KILLER BEES that everyone apparently thought were coming to get us at the time. So there's these bees, and they kill some people by flying in their mouth and going after them underwater. Eventually these idiots find the swarm and die and this woman is trapped in her car by the entire swarm. The cops are like, what do we do? Uh, bees die when it's cold. So where could we make it cold? I know - the stadium in New Orleans! So they drive this car and its attendant swarm of killer bees on and on through the streets of New Orleans, with a bullhorn saying "GET OFF THE STREETS OR YOU WILL BE STUNG TO DEATH." And the future home of tens of thousands of flood victims with its broken toilets so becomes the narcotic doom of this particular buncha bees. I don't know which is the greater indignity on this great city...well I do, but this one sucks too. Most appropriately viewed on an extremely faded-to-orange 16mm print, although Betamax is a good alternative!

This is a tense thriller that shows, in no uncertain terms how real and deadly the Killer Bee threat really is. This film shows, with scientific plausibility, the City of New Orleans coming under the increasing threat of a large killer swarm approaching town on the eve of Mardi Gras. Unlike Irwin Allen's The Swarm, whose main objective was to show one celebrity guest star after another being stung to death, this film is more like a cross between a tense sci fi thriller and a Hitchcock film. Obviously a TV film cannot posses the cinematic genius of a Hitchcock film, yet this little gem comes close. The team of scientists, (aided by the local sherriff) that are trying to thwart the disaster deal with a slow subtle(at first), steadily climbing stream of attacks. The threat grows as the attacks continue, and for awhile it looks like the bees will win out. The death scenes are the most realistic ever shown in a killer bee film, one senses what it might actually be like to meet this horrible fate. Also a first, this film gives the actual history of how the bees came to invade South & Central America, and deals with the scientific realities of how to stop this menace. Now that there have been killer bee deaths in the United States, this film rings even more true than when it first was telecast in 1976.