The Deadly Bees

Atmospheric Early Amicus Production Combining Horror And Mystery
I'm sure many people don't realise that almost 10 years before such killer insect films as "Ants" and "The Swarm", crawled onto our big screens menacing all star casts and alternately horrifing and sometimes unintentionally amusing us, there had already been a film released back in 1967 that created those same sort of chills, admittedly on a more modest scale. This little effort, "The Deadly Bees" was produced by the famed Amicus production company in England who along with their British rivals the legendary Hammer Studios ruled the horror field through the 1960's and early 1970's. With the possible exception of Hitchcock's "The Birds" Amicus were probably the first production company to bring such a story to the screen before the genre really took off in popularity in the 1970s when "wildlife on the rampage" was the flavour of the moment in cinema offerings. Rarely seen and almost impossible to track down until this new DVD release "The Deadly Bees" is often critised and even...

Not your typical insects-gone-wild thriller
THE DEADLY BEES is a quiet find, a small, low-budget British offering that I first saw in a drive-in with another film in the States. I am now in China, as readers of my other reviews know. I ordered this film at the same time I ordered and watched two other insect films: THE NAKED JUNGLE and PHASE IV. Both of those are about ants -- one film over ten years older than THE DEADLY BEES; the other tens years newer.

I heard the story "Leiningen and the Ants" on Mystery Radio, which I can access here in China. I listened to the under-rated WIlliam Conrad play the part of Leiningen in the radio drama, and it made me interested in see the film that I remembered seeing in my father's small-town movie theatre as a boy. In the film, Charlton Heston plays Leiningen, and WIlliam Conrad plays the lesser part of a South American official. Heston does an admirable job in the role of a tough, self-made man who boasts (maybe too often) about carving his own empire out of the jungle. Some of...

ENTERTAINING HORROR MYSTERY FROM THE 60'S! GLAD TO SEE THIS ON DVD!
Here's an obscure film that has finally made it's way to DVD. One of the better Killer Bee movies and it's wrapped in a nice little mystery to boot! The Bee effects run hot and cold, but still deliver that creepy crawly feeling. I remember this film from Saturday's afternoon horror fest when I was a wee lad! The film holds up and is as entertaining as I remembered it to be. The DVD transfer look very good, but the titles etc seemed a little fuzzy, nothing too distracting though. It would have been nice to have some extras, even a trailer! Too bad, but it makes a fun Halloween flick!

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