A strain of killer bees smuggled into America by an evil and unscrupulous corporation threaten to destroy mankind. It's up to a small team of scientists to figure out a way to destroy them before it's too late.

Writer/director Alfredo Zacharias treats the inane premise with sidesplitting misguided seriousness: The copious use of laughably obvious stock footage (look fast for a clip of former President Gerald Ford on a float at the Rose Bowl Parade!),ineptly staged attack scenes, shoddy (far from) special effects, an incredibly inane solution to the problem that involves turning male bees into homosexuals (yes, you read that correctly),and a surreal climax set at a UN meeting complete with a heavy-handed plea for tolerance between humans and bees (!) all add to this hilariously horrendous honey's considerable campy charm. John Saxon tries hard as the stalwart John Norman, Angel Tompkins looks mighty foxy and just barely manages to retain her dignity as the perky Sandra Miller, and John Carradine hams it up shameless as flaky old fudster Dr. Sigmund Hummel (Carradine's uproariously overdone and unconvincing German accent in particular serves as a key source of unintentional belly laughs). The funky-throbbing score by Richard Gillis hits the get-down groovy spot. An absolute cruddy hoot!

Don't be alarmed, there's nothing wrong with your television set. The blurry black dots on the screen are the makers' ingenious method to illustrate that the world is infested with killer bees!

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I was expecting to see a rather silly and typically cheesy late 70s B-movie in the 'nature runs amok' sub-genre, but I wasn't the least bit prepared for "The Bees" turning out to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious and awfully inept horror films of all times! This film, courtesy of the nobly unknown writer/director Alfredo Zacarías, deserves far more honor than I can write down in a simple review. "The Bees" deserves essays, novels and even complete MST3K specials to be dedicated to it, because that's how bad - but wondrously entertaining - this movie is!

Where to start with a masterpiece of lousiness like this? I believe the following sentence, which I stole from the trivia-section, pretty well summarizes what sort of utter nonsense you can expect: "Alfredo Zacarías got the idea for the story after his son gave him a jar of honey as a gift". Oh wow, that truly is the sort of inspiration where Academy Award winning titles are made of. I think I'll offer my dad a toy soldier and encourage him to script an epos on World War II! Writing a plot synopsis for "The Bees" is pointless, because it'll sound convoluted and intelligent even though it's dead simple and dumb. Here goes: African killer bees, that are being researched in South America, get illegally imported into North America by greedy cosmetics companies. Evidently, a few ones escape and in a very brief period of time, the entire US is beset by aggressive buzzers. The brilliant scientist Dr. Sigmund Hummel (John Carradine) and his niece (Angel Tompkins) team up with hunky Dr. John Norman (John Saxon) and develop an artificial pheromone to neutralize the male specimens, but the super-intelligent bees strike back even harder than before.

Sounds promising, doesn't it? And it is, until you discover that the first solution consists of turning the male bees into homosexuals, and the entire third act deals with Saxon and Tompkins actually communicating with the bees and spreading their warning to humanity to stop messing around with Mother Nature! If you are into really bad cinema, "The Bees" features one inane highlight after the other. A talented and experienced actor like John Saxon must have realized that the speeches he gives to the alleged board of the United Nations are utter drivel? Tompkins carries around killer bees in her beauty-case, the bee-attacks are completely random and the supposedly "shocked" and "petrified" looks on the faces of people are genuinely priceless. Notably the attacks at a beach and during the Gerald Ford parade are laugh-out-loud hysterical! But the - hands down - most bonkers quality of the film is the role of John Carradine as the German Dr. Sigmund Hummel; - or "Ziggy" as he's referred to by Tompkins and Saxon. There absolutely isn't any reason for this character to be German, but Carradine fully grabs the opportunity to go tremendously over the top with his accent, facial expressions and gestures. Sometimes, Dr. Ziggy simply falls asleep whilst others are talking, and then he wakes up and begins chattering about "Zhe beez! Zhe beez!".

You can't possibly give "The Bees" a higher rating than 3 out of 10, but ratings are meaningless for this type of films. It's guaranteed entertainment to watch alone, but preferably even with a group of friends. There are also plenty of other 70s bee-movies available to form a double-feature with, but make sure to avoid the big-budgeted "The Swarm" since that one is a pretentious and dull flick.

"The Bees" is a gloriously awful animal attack thriller marked by some truly incompetent filmmaking, a ridiculous script, and some hilariously insipid acting. The story involves the corporate smuggling of killer bees into America, which causes a massive swarm such as the country has never seen. The scientists desperately trying to solve the problem (John Saxon as the egghead hero, the ravishing Angel Tompkins as his love interest, John Carradine as her German accented father) realize that they're going to have their hands full.

Led by director Alfredo Zacharias ("Demonoid"),the filmmakers here miss any horror in the premise by bungling almost every action scene. Most of the time, the only possible reaction to the goings-on is laughter. Granted, some of the humor *is* intentional - there is an occasional priceless line such as "That's adding incest to injury." When it comes to the insect cast, we have a practical cast of thousands, and regarding the human actors, Saxon gamely tries to look serious, and Carradine is as genial as he's ever been. Mexican icon Claudio Brook appears early on as Tompkins' husband. There's even an appearance by the "President"! Highlights include a good ol' boy hiring kids to procure bees for him so he can treat his rheumatism with bee stings. There's a fair bit of violence and a couple of impressive vehicle crashes. Everything is capped off with a delightfully idiotic music score (composed by Richard Gillis) that completely works against any suspense that Zacharias and company might otherwise have created. The ending is priceless and right in tune with so many other ecologically themed thrillers of the 70s.

Warner Bros., the makers of "The Swarm", went so far as to pay off New World, the American distributors of this flick, to delay their release so the two movies wouldn't be in direct competition.

Five out of 10.