The Campiness begins with this ridiculous poster!
Just when you thought The Swarm was the Bee movie of the year in 1978, along comes this Bee movie. I have a theory that there’s no such thing as a good bee movie, except maybe the animation B Movie, but this one comes about as ridiculously close as any of them only because it’s just so gosh darned ridiculous…and it embraces its own ridiculousness by cranking up the insanity a notch higher every minute the movie continues. That’s why I think it’s a good time to talk about the concept of Camp.
He's closing his eyes against the Devil Bees, not from watching this movie! The definition of Camp is something that provides sophisticated amusement through an artificial or sometimes vulgar manner. Much of the time there’s an element of sentimentality and there’s definitely the use of exaggeration. The question for me is whether all the overblown elements that go in to create the narrative are intentional or not. Rarely can we as receivers of the narrative known what the author intended. Some critics would claim the author’s intentions aren’t even relevant, that we should only look at the text for meaning. The Bees takes on some huge social problems for its subject. There’s political corruption, a cautionary tale about the dangers of corporate greed, and least of all the dangers of unrestrained scientific tampering and genetic experimentation. But in the end this becomes an environmental warning of a Bee Apocalypse who plan to take the world back from man’s destructive treatment of the planet. Kind of the same thing M. Knight Shyamalan did with The Happening only he used trees. Needless to say this all adds up to an over the top narrative that rates high on the camp scale.
The fun and campiness are rooted in the ridiculous plot. Killer Bees from South America are illegally imported into the USA because some corporation referred to only as “Big Business” need the Royal Jelly the Killer Bees' Queen makes for their cosmetic products. Of course the bees get out of control and the experts are called in who have a plan to spray a pheromone that confuses the male bees to begin mating with each other. Which leads us to the second most ridiculous, campy element of this film, the dialogue.
Not from the movie, but a creepy statue of a guy in park with young kids! The most laugh out loud funny line in the film is after the scientists reveal their pheromone plan and one guy says, “Are you saying the chemical of yours will turn the male bees into homosexuals?” There’s definitely some Un-PC dialogue as well, but hey…it was the 70s! For example, there’s a scene in a park where an older man tries to solicit the help of two young boys to help him catch some bees because he has rheumatism in his leg and the bees stinging him makes it feel better (ridiculous, but whatever, right?). Here’s the dialogue:
Man: Hey, boys. I got a little job for you if you want to earn some money.
Dark Haired Boy to Light Haired Boy: Hey, watch out. He looks like an old fag to me.
Light Haired Boy to Dark Haired Boy: So what? He’s got money hasn’t he?
I don’t know which is MORE disturbing, the Dark Haired Boy’s use of the word fag or the Light Haired Boy’s willingness to do things for strange old men offering money in a park!
Man: Hey, boys. I got a little job for you if you want to earn some money.
Dark Haired Boy to Light Haired Boy: Hey, watch out. He looks like an old fag to me.
Light Haired Boy to Dark Haired Boy: So what? He’s got money hasn’t he?
I don’t know which is MORE disturbing, the Dark Haired Boy’s use of the word fag or the Light Haired Boy’s willingness to do things for strange old men offering money in a park!
What I love is the fact bees are swarming and killing everyone and yet the main scientists drive around in a convertible, but alas, they are not attacked. What a wasted opportunity. After all is said and done, the campiest element of this film has to be the soundtrack. It wins the award for the most inappropriate soundtrack I’ve ever heard in film history. It’s ok to give the bees their own musical motif. But there are scenes when they are killing hundreds of people and it’s like they’re all in a discotheque! This was three years after John Williams taught us how to use music to signal the monster’s presence in Jaws, and sure enough in The Bees there’s a cello theme that signals the bees.
This gal got one bee sting on her finger and went into the most dramatic anaphylactic shock death scenes in cinema history! Just awesome! From the beginning where they are called the Devil Bees to the end where we end up with a radiated mutant strain of bees that can talk to us…that’s right…the scientists discover how to talk to the bees…it’s just one ridiculous, campy thing after another until we’re all in a big room with lots of world leaders to hear the bees ultimatum about sharing the planet when one ambassador says, “You want us to conduct peace negotiations with bugs?” To which the main character played by the best B movie actor around, John Saxon, “You have to listen to what the bees have to say!” All of this and the worst German accent in cinema history, thank you John Carridine, make this a truly campy delight. My advice is to gather a large group of friends (a swarm, if you will) have lots of shot glasses and your favorite adult beverage, and take a shot every time someone says the title of the movie THE BEES! By the end of the film, the booze may convince you that you just watched an academy award worthy flick! It doesn’t have the catalogue of famous people embarrassing their craft that The Swarm does, but it defiantly holds its own.
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