Joe brought the Blu-ray of Star Wars: The Force Awakened and we watched that. It was alright. My only complaint is a common one. Why wouldn't they have made a story that was less like the story we'd already seen. The other thing I got out of the on-going story is that the Darth Vader clan are some of the worst people in the Galaxy. The universe would be a lot better off if they hadn't breed. Oddly enough the two movies we watched both have smugglers as main characters.
The Bees is a 1978 horror film about killer bees. It's written and directed by Alfredo Zacarias. He mostly works in Mexico and this is the first of a couple of films he made in the US. Demonoid: Messenger Of Death was made next and then he was back in Mexico. I haven't seen it. The Bees stars John Saxon, Angel Tompkins and John Carradine. The two John's are scientists who study bees and they are working on the killer bee problem in South America. Angel and her scientist husband have a bee farm in South America where they're studying the killer bees and have some KB hives in a locked netted enclosure. A father and son sneak into the farm hives to steal honey. Unfortunately they break into the killer bee hives and the bees attack. The son dies and father stirs up the villagers. They get violent and attack the farm. Angel's husband is killed but she's saved because he hid her in the walk in freezer.
In New York the two John's appeal to the UN for money and help to study the bees. They can't get the different countries to agree and Carradine busts a jar of the killer bees to chase the men out of the room. He's a character and it turns out that he's Angel's Uncle. She's smuggles killer bees in her luggage so that the two John's can carry on more research. Of course she's mugged in the elevator of John Saxon's apartment. The muggers open the KB case and die from the stings. Angel retrieves the case, luckily the queen and drones are safe, but some of the bees have escaped. She works with the John's to set up a research center. The random escaped bees colonize and breed like rabbits. One of the things the movie fails to do is establish is how much time has past. You get some clues from what you see on screen but they are as vague as the science in the film. Some greedy businessmen have also tried smuggling bees into the country. The bees escape in the plane and it lands in Mexico City. Now even more bees on the loose. Things get worse and worse as the bees increase their numbers and start attacking people everywhere. There's more villainous activity.
Poor John Carradine is killed by a greedy politician who was secretly skimming money from the KB research programs in South America. John and Angel start a romance while they continue to work on Carradine's communication with the bees. They eventually succeed and the US is saved but not before the bees get their revenge on Carradine's killer and the evil politician that sent the hit man. It all ties up pretty well and that's saying something for a movie as poorly written and directed as this one was. Occasionally some of the dialog made me laugh. It scores a 3 on the IMDb and that's about what it should be. It was still fun to watch and we all got a laugh out of it. The odd choices for music had me giggling at times. The ending made both me and Joe have thoughts about M Night Shyamalan's The Happening. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't like this sort of thing. A couple of the other fellows thought it was better than The Swarm, no where near as boring. The Wikipedia says that Warner Brothers paid New Line Cinema to delay the release of The Bees so it wouldn't be out the same time as The Swarm.
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