I was first turned on to this film by Siskel & Ebert a zillion years ago on a program they ran featuring their choices for the best "bad" movies. They were sure right about this one. The plot is so ridiculous it doesn't bear mentioning -- the magic is all in the execution, e.g., Anitra Ford stripping and writhing to the strains of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherezade", a secret laboratory in which women are transformed into seductive automatons by a procedure involving their being bathed in honey and then exposed to bees -- lot's of that kind of thing here. And what's this? The film has the US government sending out an agent to investigate the death of a guy who suffered a heart attack during strenuous sex. Is that where our intelligence agencies put their energies? No wonder they were so clueless about 9/11 and Iraq. Now for some inane reason, this film got reissued on DVD under the tile "Graveyard Tramps". It's true, there is at least one scene in a cemetery, and as to the female characters being tramps . . . no argument. Nevertheless, what kind of moron would throw away a great title like "Bee Girls" for something so prosaic? Oh, and the DVD cover for some reason identifies the female lead as the late Claudia Jennings, who is not even in the film (the lead is her fellow Playmate Victoria Vetri). Go figure. Here's another thing I love about this film -- although it is completely about sex, albeit sex in the context of some loony incomprehensible plot involving a world takeover, and although there is plenty of nudity and seduction, this film from the early 70's is rated PG. Teens could see it without a chaperone. Yep, back when I was a boy, we didn't suffer from the same neurotic fears we now have about adolescents being permanently damaged by the sight of a female breast. Seems we were relatively hardy in those days, although on the other hand, we didn't have to deal with news reports of beheadings and the like. But I digress. There will always be a special place in my heart for Invasion of the Bee Girls, the sine qua non of its genre. And a heck of a lot of fun.
Review of Invasion of the Bee Girls
