Theme Song: Flutes, oboes, and a wacky tympani drum.
Interesting Dated References: Even more Killer Bees™
Best Line: In reference to a man whose mouth is full of bees — “His mouth is full of bees.”
Social Context: It’s really hard to understand how scorching hot Killer Bees™ must have been in the 70s/80s. Absurd plot aside, The Savage Bees was enough of a success it warranted this sequel, the pitch for which must have been, “Basically the same thing as the first, but we’ll switch a few things up and add Dan Haggerty!”
Summary: So Jeannie, the girl scientist from The Savage Bees, wakes up from a fever dream, only she’s a different actress (Tovah Feldshuh, The Walking Dead), and now has a totally righteous condo.
Back at Bee Research Institute, Philip Baker Hall meets with Eli, a bee research scientist, and threatens to pull grant funding because the man who runs the institute, David (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), is nowhere to be found. The reason he’s skipped work is because he’s busy getting flirty with Jeannie back at her condo. To make things even more unnecessarily confusing, the actor who plays Eli the scientist is the same actor who played a police lieutenant in the previous film.
David finally shows up at work just in time to witness Eli being stung to death by some suspiciously-behaving bees. Suddenly everyone loses their shit and realizes a Killer Bee™ queen invaded one of the hives, the very hive from which they have been actively harvesting larva to ship all over the fucking country.
Okay, so then David has to call in Jeannie because “it’s happening again.” The plot really loses touch with reality at this point because Jeannie was allegedly about to leave on a “six-week vacation” with her pilot boyfriend, Nick (played by Grizzly Adams), and she changes her fucking mind.
No woman (or man) would be able to turn away from six straight weeks of riding Grizzly Adam’s beard in the desolate wilderness. It’s a glaring script error and entirely distracting. As luck would have it, Grizzly’s pilot skills come in handy and they all fly to California to intercept a bee shipment.
Unfortunately the bees have already colonized in California, and during an absurd 4th of July parade, Jeannie ends up in a school bus filled with shirtless Boy Scouts, which gets swarmed by the Killer Bee™ colony. Can you believe this shit is happening to her again!? Neither can anyone else, but the script writers can, and I guess that’s all that mattered.
So then Nick and David fight about who gets to be incinerated inside a special bee-attracting fabric suit that will be lowered by helicopter into an abandoned missile silo. Everyone decides it should be David since he is oldest and does not have the fabulous facial hair of Grizzly.
People tell David they love him, and thence he and the bees are incinerated inside the missile silo. People are sad for a few minutes.
Worth Mentioning:
– Dan Haggerty really is a good actor. His interactions with people are very natural.
Poster and Box Art: This movie has a terrible cover that looks like the kind of bad hair metal album someone would tell you was “blazing” and had “incredible time signature riffing.”
Availability: DVD or old VHS.
One comment
Comments are closed.