The made
for T.V. madness continues. Today’s fun comes to us from the ABC movie of the
week. It stars Kate Jackson and Edward Albert as an engaged couple heading home
to meet his family. These are the same two stars that made up one of the doomed
couples on Death Cruise that I covered during the marathon. Good times.
Edward and
Victoria are off to meet his family. He seems reluctant to introduce her, but
she insists since they are engaged, and she is pregnant. Both of which he
insists they keep secret. As they arrive in town they come across a car wreck
that we the audience know from a pre-credit scene was caused when the man
angered some bees that then swarmed him. They finally make it to Edward’s
family estate and both he and she receive a chilly reception.
The family
is a big deal and run the local vineyard as well as the neighboring town. Right
away we also notice that they have a strange relationship with the bees. The
matriarch, played by the legendary Gloria Swanson, seems to have some control
over them. It also becomes clear that the family knows they caused the accident
and wants to keep it quiet. When more accidents happen, Victoria is horrified
to the extent that the family goes to keep the hive safe. These special
aggressive African honey bees are the secret to the unique taste of their wine
and very important to the family. When the grandmother dies the bees go after
Victoria, but do they mean her harm or are they after something else?
This is
another case where I sat down expecting to get one kind of movie but ended up
with something altogether different. To me Killer Bees indicated I’d see them
rampaging across the screen collecting a nice body count, basically a creature
feature with many little creatures. What we get instead is a well written and
acted psychological story with a couple of twists and turns. The family and the
bees have a symbiotic relationship that benefits both of them. And while the
movie doesn’t blatantly assign intelligence to them you get the feeling that the
hive has an idea of what is going on.
Be warned spoilers are coming… In anger Victoria tells Madame (the
grandmother) about her engagement to Edward and that she is pregnant with his
child. The older woman gets very angry and threatens Victoria while accidentally
bumping into the bees. You think that she dies from heart failure, but Victoria
claims the bees killed her. The family laughs since the bees would never attack
the matriarch. But then we get to the end of the movie. It appears that the
bees are attacking Victoria and chase her into the attic where we find a giant
hive. But when the family returns they find her unharmed and a changed woman.
Instead of leaving she now wants to stay and raise her family at the winery. We
also realize that the bees crawl on her like they did Madame, as if they have
chosen a new queen. Is this because she is younger? Or perhaps because she was
carrying the next generation of the family? Regardless it is a creepy way to
end Killer Bees.
I like
this one a lot. Many of the genre outings in the ‘70s had that creepy ending
where our protagonist doesn’t escape but is actually co-opted into the evil
that they faced. Somehow that is worse than if they had just lost. The final
scene of Kate Jackson’s character sitting with the family sporting a creepy
smile was perfect. I recommend checking out Killer Bees. The link at the top of
this review will take you to the movie. Check it out!
© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer
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