THE SAVAGE BEES: How To Pay For Your Expensive Stadium

THE SAVAGE BEES (Blu-ray)

1976 / 90 min

Leomark Studios

Available at MovieZyng.com

Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Buzzkill😼

New Orleans’ Superdome was completed in 1975. At the time, it was the biggest domed stadium ever built (for all I know, it still is). I assume it also cost a pretty penny, which had to be somewhat concerning since the NFL team that called it home was the worst in the entire league…and would remain so for most of the next decade.

Still, ya gotta pay the bills. Maybe that’s one reason the city immediately allowed the place to be prominently showcased in a couple of made-for-TV movies. One of ‘em was a soapy little drama, simply titled Superdome. Before that, it was the setting for the climax of 1976’s The Savage Bees, an amusing horror-disaster flick starring Michael Parks and Ben Johnson.

If you were around back then, you might recall ominous predictions that the dreaded African killer bees were making their way north from South America, and it was only a matter of time until they reigned terror in our own backyards. While that never really happened, it was great potential horror fodder, so we were inundated with the likes of The Bees, Killer Bees, Terror Out of the Sky (which is actually a sequel to The Savage Bees), and most notoriously, Irwin Allen’s daffy debacle, The Swarm.

Bugs on a Bug.

Here’s how old I am…I remember tuning in to watch The Savage Bees on NBC when I was a kid because, in the wake of Jaws, flicks featuring killer critters were hard to resist, even the made-for-TV variety. While I didn’t end up fearfully looking out my bedroom window for the inevitable swarm of Africans, I recall enjoying it in the moment. But afterwards, I never gave the movie another thought for 50 years. 

Revisiting the film on Blu-ray, the Superdome climax was all I actually remembered of the movie, and even that sequence seemed a lot bigger - and less silly - when I was a kid. The rest has coroner Jeff DuRand (Parks) and Sheriff McKew (Johnson) trying to locate the deadly swarm after it has killed several people during Mardi Gras. There are a couple of decent attack sequences here and there, but it mostly plays like a quickly made TV movie of the era (including a superfluous subplot involving DuRand and his estranged girlfriend). Though not quite as goofy as The Swarm, it’s also not as much wacky fun. While still watchable with expectations in-check, its primary appeal today would be to those nostalgic for a decade when movies-of-the-week were a staple of network schedules.

Keep in mind that the movie slapped onto this disc (with no discernible attempt at restoration) opens with German credits with the title, Mörderbienen Greifen An, which suggests this is the only available version. Other than that, it’s the same old Savage Bees I tuned into back in the day…and looking a lot worse for wear. The picture and sound quality is terrible. There are also no bonus features, chapters or even a main menu.