User reviews

"Psycho" author Bloch co-writes and the renowned director / cinematographer Francis directs this entry into killer bee cinema that predates the 1978 flicks "The Swarm" and "The Bees" by almost a dozen years. It may work for viewers if they approach it as a camp film but the truth is, it's too silly to be all that successful. The bee attack scenes really aren't bad (the actors certainly sell the hell out of the material), but they'd be better if the (not so) special effects weren't so hilariously unconvincing. The story, based on a novel by Gerald Heard, deals with a pop singer named Vicki Robbins (Suzanna Leigh), who suffers a mental breakdown and is sent to the idyllic, rustic community of Seagull Island for much needed R & R. Unfortunately, things there are going to get ugly as rival bee keepers engage in cutthroat competition. Bees are being sent to do some serious damage to various unlucky human victims. All in all, this viewer would consider this a lesser effort for Amicus Studios. The company always fared best with their omnibus features; their single story features were never quite as strong. Still, this is all fairly watchable regardless; sincere performances really help a lot. The pretty Leigh is engaging as a resourceful lead, but the show really belongs to Frank Finlay and Guy Doleman as the warring farmers, H.W. Manfred and Ralph Hargrove respectively. A fine supporting cast includes Catherine Finn as Hargroves' neglected wife, Hammer and Amicus regular Michael Ripper in a solid turn as part time barman and part time lawman David Hawkins, James Cossins as an investigating coroner, and the appealing Katy Wild as the helpful Doris Hawkins. There's also the chance to see a musical performance by rock group The Birds (not to be confused with American group The Byrds), featuring a young Ron Wood. The movie further benefits from a good score composed by Wilfred Josephs and a reasonably rousing and fiery finish. While it isn't particularly good, it isn't all that bad, delivering some fun moments and coming in at a short enough 84 minute running time. Five out of 10.

Amicus production studios never looked more like a poor man's Hammer than with this silly and totally fright-free creature-feature revolving on behaviorally manipulated bees. You surely can't expect much from a movie about killer bees ("The Swarm" made that more than clear) but at least I was hoping for something a little better than this, considering the great names that were involved in the production. "The Deadly Bees" was scripted by Robert Bloch (he wrote "Psycho", for God's sake!) and directed by Freddie Francis (who also did "The Creeping Flesh" and "The Skull"). Eminent names, for sure, but this is a film better left undiscovered. The story is ordinary and full of holes and illogicalness. We're introduced to a pop-singer on the verge of a total breakdown and her doctor orders her to take a vacation on a calm, remote farmer-island. She agrees to spend two weeks on Ralph Hargrove's farm, but it soon becomes clear that he only has eyes for his beehives. Vicky makes friends with another bee farmer and they both suspect that Ralph intends to train his bees as killer devices. Isn't it remarkable how this tiny island homes two bee farmers whereas another guy is the local doctor, detective and pub-owner all at once? The script is full of similar stupidities like this, altered with some of the cheesiest dialogs. The special effects and make up are poor, but that's forgivable since it's not easy to make bees look horrific in front of a camera lens. The "surprise" twist at the end is one you can see coming from miles away and the seriousness of the actors only make it hilarious. Still, there are some neat exterior filming locations and a unique guest appearance from rock band "The Birds".

Deadly Bees, The (1967)

** (out of 4)

Robert Bloch wrote the screenplay to this film, which has a pop singer (Suzanna Leigh) going to get rest at a country home only to arrive as an outbreak of bee attacks start to happen. It appears that these aren't just any bees but instead specially trained by a psychotic beekeeper. Bloch is of course best known for his novel, which turned into Hitchcock's Psycho but he certainly missed the boat here. There's a big mystery wrapped around the film as to who is the beekeeper but it's very obviously from the opening ten minutes. I'm not sure if the screenplay was just bad or if Francis didn't like Block and decided to give away the secret early on. Either way, there's really not too much going for this film as the performances are all rather bland and that includes the lead Leigh. Not for a second did I buy her as a pop singer and the opening music is just torture on the ears. The screenplay introduces several characters and subplots but none of them every come out to anything. This Amicus production does benefit from some rather gruesome death scenes but the special effects don't hold up too well today.

Well...it's not as bad as the other bee film, 'The Swarm,' but that's not saying much. It's just that bees are not as intrinsically scary as say, snakes or rats are. As if the film's producers went through all the small domestic animals, snakes, rats, rabid dogs, spiders and were left with bees.

Amicus productions were always the poor man's Hammer films and although they did one or two half decent horrors, the rest were mainly low budget pap, this been one of the latter.

The only saving graces are that Suzanna Leigh is easy on the eyes and how that as the hero, Guy Doleman was a very unsympathetic character, which made an unusual change. He really seems half-arsed about saving Leigh from any danger she is in, perhaps he'd heard her singing as the pop star she plays in this!

Viewed from today's standards, the special effects are very poor and were probably substandard when it was originally made. And if you can't figure out who the real villain is after 30 minutes or less, then you really shouldn't be allowed out on your own! There's only two suspects to choose from anyway....

It's not as bad as some films I've seen in the horror genre, certainly not the worst but it's just bland and mediocre, which is the last thing you want a horror film to be.

This movie is about a pop star who is tired and needs rest badly, so her doctor sends her to the most hideous farm you have ever seen. Not only is this farm bad looking, but they raise bees (they sure convey a sense of peace and serenity). We are expected to believe that during the busy season this place is a kind of cool place to stay. Beyond the farms appearance and the apparent lack of things to do there are the deadly bees. Though in the end these bees only kill one person and a dog (you could say two people, but the last one was really more the result from panic). Who is behind these deadly bees? Chances are you will figure it out long before the pop star does (she is a bit dense). During the time you will see the bees kill a dog and a woman (which is a bit gross looking), you will see the bees attack a bunch of people and not kill them, and you will see two scenes where they review what happened in the movie. The end is a bit funny though as you see a man walking up during the credits and you wonder "was he late for the film?"

Given the fact that Hammer rival Amicus were behind this, not to mention the contribution of scriptwriter Robert Bloch and director Francis, I made sure to acquire it immediately when the opportunity arose. Unfortunately, the edition I ended up with not only featured the wrong aspect ratio (which noticeably lopped off the top of both the credits and, on occasion, the actors themselves!) but the image appeared stretched to boot (though I was able to fix this from my TV remote). I needn't have worried excessively, however , because the film was hardly worth the trouble: I've watched the more famous and star-studded (but similarly maligned) 'killer bees' movie THE SWARM (1978) twice but, while this is somewhat less enjoyable (given the definite camp factor of the later outing) if certainly more tolerable at nearly half its length – THE DEADLY BEES ran for 84 minutes against THE SWARM's excessive 155, at least in its "Extended Version" – it's just as dull and generally misguided! Incidenatlly, yet another film on the subject was the made-for-TV THE SAVAGE BEES (1974) but I've yet to subject myself to that!

Anyway, this does feature a reasonable cast – led by a pretty if miscast Suzanna Leigh, Guy Doleman and Frank Finlay, while also including the likes of Michael Ripper (actually one of the Hammer stalwart's bigger roles, if still playing nothing more complex than a bartender-cum-constable!), James Cossins and Michael Gwynne (in one brief scene); having mentioned Hammer earlier and again just now, it's worth noting that Leigh, Cossins and Gwynne also did work for that famed horror studio at some time or other. For the record, the fashionable but rather queasy pop music background (highlighting Leigh herself) of the opening scenes includes the underwhelming performance by a band called The Birds(!) which numbered among its members future rhythm guitarist with The Rolling Stones Ronnie Wood!

The idea of Leigh's character being sent to recover from a nervous breakdown on a remote island was pretty stupid to begin with – and it's rendered even more comical (which I don't think was the intention) by the fact that the farm in which she lodges is run by a middle-aged couple who can't stand each other! One would have expected the essentially weak script (beekeeper Doleman, for instance, is depicted as generally boorish so as to obviously arouse audience suspicion – however, the casting of Frank Finlay as his sheepish neighbor, complete with sympathetic Cary Grant-type delivery, won't fool anyone!) would eventually be compensated for by the appearance of the rampaging bees themselves; however, even these emerge to be so poorly animated as to dissipate any hoped-for tension during the relevant scenes – causing an air of dejection to hang over the entire film (apparently, Francis was so unhappy throughout the shooting that he considered retiring from direction altogether: happily for us horror film buffs, he didn't)

Killer bees don't always make for the best 'monsters' in the horror genre, but this British thriller is an exception.

Pop singer vacations on an island with a local bee keeper, while a mysterious swarm of bees has caused the death of a woman.

The Deadly Bees isn't as dull a film as some make it out to be. It has some nice high-powered shock sequences even though the bee FX aren't always convincing. The makeup FX aren't bad, namely the great work on an ill-fated Catherine Finn. The story is a decent mystery, based upon H.W. Herd's novel A Taste for Honey. The direction of Freddie Francis is pretty good, the sets are well constructed and the art direction is excellent. There's also a great dramatic music score to boot.

The cast is quite good. Suzanna Leigh is a decent heroine, but it's really leading actors Guy Doleman and Frank Finlay that turn in the best performances as some feuding, menacing bee keepers.

All around not bad. Certainly the best killer bee movie around and an underrated work.

*** out of ****

"Vicki Robbins" (Suzanna Leigh) is a British pop singer who has a nervous collapse due to her hectic schedule and is sent by her doctor to a remote place called "Seagull Island" for some rest and relaxation. When she gets to the local hotel she meets the owner by the name of "Ralph Hargrove" (Guy Doleman) who seems rather aloof and prefers to spend his time tending his bee hives. So when a dog, that Ralph didn't like, is killed by bees Ralph's wife immediately thinks he had something to do with it--and so does Vicki. Then when Ralph's wife is also killed by swarms of bees Vicki becomes even more convinced. But proving it is another matter entirely. Now rather than reveal any more of this film I will just say that it was an adequate "Grade-Bee movie" for the most part which seemed to concentrate more on mystery than horror or suspense. Naturally, as one might expect from a movie produced in the mid-60s, the special effects were rather elementary compared to today's standards. But the acting was okay and all things considered it managed to fill the time satisfactorily enough. That said, I rate it as about average.

It's generally considered that production company Amicus were capable of making some top-notch anthologies, but when they concentrated on single-story horror yarns the results were often - not always, but more often than not - disappointing. THE DEADLY BEES may be notable as the first of the (thankfully irregular) "killer bee" movies but on all accounts it's a crushing bore. A dry script (from the usually reliable Robert Bloch, at that), insanely boring direction from Freddie Francis (this coming from a fan of his usually despised film LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF) and a total lack of action and thrills on all accounts drag this one down from the start and only people with really high tolerance levels or an affection for British cinema from the period will find this watchable.

The cast of characters is an unappealing one and none of the actors or actresses come away looking good in their roles. The identity of the bee-murderer is insanely obvious right from their very introduction and only a very young child would have trouble spotting which of the two bee-keepers is the secret killer. Come on Bloch, Marriott, et al: surely you can do better than this child's play!? The bee-attack sequences are lacking in technical skill, poorly-superimposed over the action and so detracting from any realism the film strives to create. The music is over the top and works against the film and the only good thing you can say is that the shots are composed well and the cinematography is solid.

Suzanna Leigh is quite a respected actress from the period but you wouldn't guess it from this turn, which is undoubtedly her worst performance ever. Looking constipated when she strives to look scared and reduced to running around in her underwear at other times, she's totally lacking in believability and is more often than not laughable - a far cry from the fragile beauty she played in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. Guy Doleman is a wooden jerk and Frank Finlay hams it up so much you'd think he previously worked as a butcher. While it's nice to see some familiar horror faces lower down in the cast - Michael Ripper, typecast again as BOTH a barman and a policeman and former Frankenstein's Monster Michael Gwynn as a doctor, they're uniformly wasted. No wonder this lacklustre film is so often forgotten when in discussion of British horror.

The Deadly Bees would be much more aptly titled were it called The Deadly Bore. Made by the company Amicus (a half-hearted sixties rival to Hammer) and directed by the usually reliable Freddie Francis, this is a truly terrible film.

Suzanna Leigh looks pretty but acts badly as a pop star suffering from exhaustion. Her agent sends her to Seagull Island to recover, and she finds herself lodging at a strange, isolated little farm run by Guy Doleman and his unhappy wife. Doleman breeds bees, as does nearby resident Frank Finlay, and things start to go wrong when a mutant breed of killer bee begins to attack and kill people and animals on the island. Finlay persuades Leigh that the bees responsible have been bred by Doleman, and solicits her help in gathering evidence to have him arrested.

The special effects are pitiful. The bee attacks look so unconvincing that they provoke humour rather than terror. All right, so it's a limited budget 60s film, so the effects are hardly likely to be the best, but surely they could've done better than this! Furthermore, the characters make no sense whatsoever. For instance, some of the events going on simply don't seem to perturb Doleman in the slightest; Leigh reacts strangely much of the time; and Finlay's character seems to be a different person from one scene to the next. Even the "shock" twist at the end is telegraphed miles in advance. I won't reveal the solution here, but as you're watching this film the likelihood is that you'll figure out what's going on long before the heroine does!

This one is pretty much a misfire from the get-go. It's like a Hammer film, only without the energy, suspense, or entertainment value.

I'm not one of those people who automatically assume that being covered by MST3000 means that a movie is complete crap (although it is a pretty reliable indicator that the movie will be fairly cheesy or problematic). And in fact, "Deadly Bees" had some potential to be a minor classic. Two major league writing talents were involved in the screenplay (including Robert "Psycho" Bloch!!). The heroine was fairly "hot" (in a Swinging London 60's way). The idea of swarms of bees stinging people to death has a nice visceral impact, And even "B" movie/minor league British actors tend to be more interesting than their American counterparts. Meanwhile the plot involved a mystery of sorts, a domestic situation simmering with tension, anger and resentments, a satiric look at the pop music industry and even a twist or two at the end. And to be fair, I don't think the director had anything more in mind than cranking out a nice, mean-spirited little thriller.

Sadly, the results just don't come together. Some decent performances get smothered in a morass of badly paced, tediously staged scenes. The plot isn't allowed to gain any momentum. The bee attack SFX are poorly done and utterly unconvincing. The drab locations and dull cinematography leech away any sense of interest. But mostly, I think that the director's sensibilities and choices simply didn't play out the way he had hoped in the finished product.

For instance, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the two opening musical numbers were MEANT to be mediocre and insipid as a way to comment on how dopey and empty the 'swinging' pop music scene really was. And it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Bloch and the director meant for the heroine to come off as shallow and inexpressive as a department store mannequin (she is a pop idol, after all), and gullible and stupid to boot. And I can see where the surprise "villain" was meant to look like Adolph Hitler's brother and to be dumpy and uncharismatic; this might have been meant disturb the viewer by masking the true craziness of the character under such a dull, banal exterior. You have to admit that the film captured the sourness and misery of a marriage gone bad quite well. And the pratfall/reversal at the end, where the villain ends up a victim of his own murder gimmick may have been an intentional bit of slapstick, a bit of ironic comment the inanity of it all, even serial killers.

But it just didn't make for a good movie. Watching a bitter middle aged couple quarrel doesn't make for a pleasant viewing experience unless that is what you came to the movie to see ( "Who's Afraid Of Virgina Woolf" or "Closer", etc), and watching really stupid musical performances featuring utterly disposable plastic pop songs doesn't make for good movie watching either. Even if the drab brown scenery is meant as a comment on British rural living, it makes for tedious viewing as well. Etc. Etc.

Still, for all its faults, the small gap between expectation and execution makes "Deadly Bees" faults somewhat forgivable. For the low key performances alone, I'd watch a misfire like "Deadly Bees" a dozen times before I'd watch horrible, over produced messes like "The Cave" or "House Of The Dead" again. That's a backhanded compliment, of course, but it still is a compliment.

Oddly, because the "Deadly Bees" wasn't all that bad, the MST coverage of it wasn't nearly as entertaining compared to when they cover amazingly bad films like "Manos" and "Robot Monster". For this one, Mike and the Bots had to roll out the "droll" in gross caseloads. Still, it was fun to watch.

THE DEADLY BEES

A Freddie Francis shocker

Vicki Robbins (one-note Suzanna Leigh) is a pop singer who has worked herself into exhaustion by dancing in front of hot studio lights while wearing thick fur coats. For relaxation, she is sent on a vacation to the lovely Seagull Island, to stay at the farm of Ralph (wooden Guy Doleman) and Mary Hargrove (chain-smoking Catherine Finn). Little does Vicki know that Mr. Hargrove's bees may not be up to any good!

The 60's sure were an interesting year for movies. Actors had oily hair. Actresses had beehives on top of their heads. People walked around publicly wearing yellow cardigans. Say what you want about the 60's fashion, but you can't take your eyes off it.

THE DEADLY BEES is a movie which is exactly as corny as the title suggests. Representing everything that is wrong with Great Britain, we follow the misadventures of characters so dull and uninspired that we root for them to be killed off as soon as possible. The movie also has a crummy, dirty feel to it, and the hideous locations and sets don't help.

BEES' flaws ranges from the most basic goofs (blatant continuity errors such as the sky switching from clear to clouded between shots), to bad casting (Frank Finlay is by far the dullest villain in movie history), to bad special effects (plastic bees that are obviously not alive; bees badly superimposed over characters), to a script with the most obvious "twist" you could possibly imagine. I don't know what went through Freddie Francis mind when he made this abomination, but it certainly wasn't "at least this will be fun to watch!"

Overall, THE DEADLY BEES is a tedious, slow, contrived mess filled to the brim with boring characters, offensively ugly locations, bad editing, lame SFX, and a dog that looks like it hasn't bathed for months. All in all a repulsive cocktail that all masochists will enjoy. From me, this movie only warrants a weak 2 out of 10.

Freddie Francis was one of the less reliable directors working in horror during the 60s and 70s (often for Hammer and Amicus): at his best, he gave us enjoyable Tales From The Crypt and the serviceable Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, but at his worst he was responsible for The Creeping Flesh, Torture Garden, Trog, The Vampire Happening, and this boring pile of drivel, The Deadly Bees.

Suzanna Leigh stars as pretty pop singer Vicki Robbins, who, suffering from exhaustion, goes to stay at a farm on Seagull Island to recuperate. While there, she begins to suspect that the farmer (Guy Doleman) is breeding a strain of deadly bees that will attack anyone who has come in contact with a special serum. With the help of friendly bee-keeper Manfred (Frank Finlay) she tries to find proof of his wrong-doings…

Featuring leaden direction from Francis, a predictable script that holds few surprises, and some truly dreadful special effects, The Deadly Bees is utterly abysmal from start to finish, offering absolutely nothing in the way of suspense or scares, no matter how urgent or loud the music gets. In the end, Francis resorts to some cheap titillation to try and keep the viewer from nodding off by having Leigh wander around in her bra for a while, which I'm all in favour of, but it doesn't stop the film from being a disaster.

A London pop star suffering exhaustion is sent to convalesce in the country-side where she encounters a toxic mix of deranged ambition and a hybridized strain of killer bees that threatens not only her fragile sanity, but also her life. Leigh is a relative lightweight amongst her accomplished co-stars, with Doleman as the no-nonsense farmer and Finlay as his eccentric neighbour jostling for position as the dominant bee keeper. It's a rather unusual premise on which to base a complex whodunit, but provides a surprisingly strong basis for the mystery to unfold. Doleman's strained relationship with his apparently invalided wife, and the curiosities of relationships in an isolated rural community serve as an intervening backdrop to the troubled Leigh and her increasing concern at the strange events she witnesses.

Veteran Hammer-horror director Francis has crafted an eerie little mystery, lacking none of the essential ingredients of a conventional mystery, with the notable exception of an impartial investigator. Most of the detective work is done by the protagonists, drip feeding the naive Leigh with twisted facts to conjure alibis and implicate the culprit. Francis does a fine job of concealing the mystery, carefully playing the doubt card, and tempering clues with red herrings and faux staging.

Opening to the groovy fusion of art-house pop culture, Leigh's character is framed as a victim of excesses in a progressive London scene (there's an implied drug addiction, but it's vague) and from there, the film juxtaposes to the opposite extreme - an ultra conservative, socially incestuous rural setting, a deep isolation both geographically and socially for the central character. It's an engaging tussle between old-fashioned values and an emerging modern liberalism.

Slated by critics, the film almost cheats itself with its bold title, because it's not ostensibly a movie of this genre. The bees are present as a vehicle only, and certainly they have comparably little to offer by way of shock value. But the intrigue that the many layers build, is compelling. Try it from a different angle and you may like what you find.

There are three main problems with "The Deadly Bees": 1) the script is dull, trying for a mystery approach to the identity of the "real" villain but it's obvious early, 2) the special effects are highly variable; the parts with real bees are effective, but when they attack "en masse" they look unconvincingly superimposed, almost animated, 3) Suzanna Leigh is miscast as a damsel-in-distress; SHE should have been the master (mistress?) of the killer bees instead! ** out of 4.

Dreary horror film. Exhausted pop singer Vicki Robbins (Susanna Leigh) needs a vacation. She goes to a farm on an island where a local keeps bees. For no reason the bees start attacking and killing people and animals. There's more but that's about all you need to know.

I caught this on a Saturday afternoon TV back in the 1970s. I thought it might be mildly amusing. It wasn't. It was just deadly dull. All the characters are obnoxious, the special effects are hilariously bad, the outdoor scenes are very obviously shot indoors, it's ridiculously obvious who's doing it and the murders are done so badly I thought it was a joke. Add to that a leaden pace and nothing even remotely scary (unless a bunch of bees buzzing around terrifies you). The actors are OK considering how stupid the story is but there's nothing here worth watching. Amicus (a poor man's version of Hammer) did this. They did some great horror movies like "Asylum", "The House That Dripped Blood" and "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" BUT this is not one of them. A rightfully forgotten horror film. I give it a 2.