Director: Bruce Geller
Year: 1976
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Nature-Run-Amok
Plot:
After a series of strange attacks, an entomologist is called in to investigate the bodies left behind and realizes that the attacks are caused by ravenous killer bees mutated by accidental inbreeding of different variants together, and must team up with a sheriff to save a local Mardi Gras celebration.
Review:
For the most part, this was a slightly disappointing made-for-TV adaptation. Among the more likable factors on display here is the series of exploits that highlight the dangers posed by the creatures and how to deal with them. The initial exploits involving the dive into the various threats posed by the mere presence of the creatures and their general danger to the public offset the later revelations about their crossbreeding with more vicious strains that provide the key impetus for getting the information out about their presence to the population helps immensely to give this a nice sense of what the new bees pose and the threat to the area should they decide to act on their aggression. Given the kind of ambushes and confrontations throughout here to add some solid tension to the mix, there’s a generally worthwhile and enjoyable series of encounters here leading up to the frantic finale that allows this to operate a bit more spectacle into the mix by showing the bees attacking the open-air Mardi Gras celebration and requiring a lot of last-ditch heroics to pull off saving the town from the creatures. Overall, these manage to keep this one going along nicely enough.
This one does have a few big issues that hold it back. Most of the drawbacks stem from the utterly lackluster, draining pace, which makes it so bland and lifeless that most attempts to build fear of the spreading hordes fall flat. The stately, matter-of-fact nature of the discovery relating to the bees’ arrival and movement through the country doesn’t inspire the kind of urgency and inherent kind of motivation to stop them, as we spend a lot of the running time here instead looking into how the different strands potentially mated to produce the new variant, tests to support their findings, and going around trying to find out who in authority will believe them about their findings. This is kept going with the inclusion of several dead bodies to help them track the bees’ progress and add some stakes to the matter, but it’s still all so flat and lifeless that there’s not much to be done here to help combat this abject dreariness. On top of that, there are also concessions to its television origins, with the attacks being highly censored or kept off-screen altogether, as it just shows the victim being covered with bees rather than anything else, keeping this one down on the whole.
Overview: **.5/5
A watchable if rather troubled genre effort, enough is going on here to make this a watchable enough genre effort, but it has more than enough flaws to keep it down in the middle tier, where it remains. Those with an interest in this style or who aren’t bothered by the flaws will have the most to like here, as most others out there should heed caution.
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