Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

Movie Info

Fortunately we all can wear oversized sunglasses to disguise our bee eyes…it is like Clark Kent!

When people begin dying under mysterious circumstances in Peckham, California.  Neil Agar (William Smith) is sent there to investigate for the State Department.  Neil and Captain Peters (Cliff Osmond) of the police find that the people are dying from heart failure occurring during sexual intercourse and that they are all tied to a government research center called Brandt Research.  When Neil and a woman from the project named Julie Zorn (Victoria Vetri) discover that a project from Brandt Research could be behind the deaths, they must stop the spread before it is too late.

Directed by Denis Sanders, Invasion of the Bee Girls is a low budget science-fiction horror movie.  The movie received negative reviews but gained a cult following over the years.

Invasion of the Bee Girls was often on late at night and due to the nudity was generally hacked apart for over-the-air broadcast.  Watching Invasion of the Bee Girls unedited, it comes off as a softcore porn horror movie.

I will screw you to death with my Bee-Vision

The plot is essentially Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  The women are slowly being taken over by “Bee Women” led by Dr. Susan Harris who is played by Anitra Ford.  In typical low-budget grindhouse fashion, the Bee Girls “sex” their victims to death.  The pleasure they provide is too much for the men’s hearts and they die.  While it has a bit of female empowerment to the story, it largely feels like a reason for the women to get undressed…there is even a scene where there is an attempted gang rape on Vetri’s character to get revenge for the people having to be abstinent.  It is more exploitive than a story of women’s revenge like with something like I Spit on Your Grave.

The movie is less than stellar in its cast.  William Smith has little personality and his costar Victoria Vetri doesn’t add any chemistry to Smith or the movie.  Anitra Ford plays the femme fatale character and has potential, but the sultry nature of her character isn’t used well.  Most of the actors killed by the Bee Girls seem to be “over-achieving” with their female murderers.

Um…is this going to give me those cool black eyes?

The movie often is poorly transferred and doesn’t look very good, but more recent high-definition versions exist where the quality of the film actually looks much better.  The shooting style and sets aren’t very impressive (especially the Bee Girl converter machine), and in many ways, the movie looks like it should have been made in 1955 in that sense…even the “Bee-View” just looks like it was taken from The Fly.  It feels like the movie needed to go all-in on the hokey nature of the story visually to have any visual impact.

Invasion of the Bee Girls is schlock but it seems to know it is schlock.  It is a little longer than it should be even at less than an hour and a half, but it can be fun to be watched with a group or with “altering” adult substances.  The erotic nature of the movie just isn’t very erotic and the horror doesn’t pull you in.  Let these Bee Girls buzz on by.