Something's Abuzz in "The Deadly Bees"

While lip-synching one of her hits on a television show, pop singer Vicki Robbins collapses from exhaustion. Her physician prescribes some rest and relaxation at a friend's quiet farm on Seagull Island. This is not necessarily a good thing. In an earlier scene, Whitehall government officials discuss a series of letters from "some fruitcake" on Seagull Island who has threatened to release his new species of killer bees.

Once on the perpetually gloomy island, Vicki (Suzanna Leigh) discovers that there are two rival bee farmers: her host, Ralph Hargrove, a rather unpleasant sort, and Mr. Manfred, his kindly neighbor who welcomes Vicki warmly. Despite the friction between the neighbors, Vicki finds herself enjoying the island life until Mrs. Hargrove's dog--and later Mrs. Hargrove--are killed by swarms of bees. Hargrove and Manfred accuse each other of not controlling their bee hives. However, the coroner rules that the lethal attack on Mrs. Hargrove was "death by misadventure."

A publicity still with Suzanna Leigh.

Yet, if that were the case, then how could one explain why Vicki appears to be the pestilent pests' next victim?

While it's never surprising, The Deadly Bees (1966) is the best of the "killer bee" movies that appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s. That lot includes Irwin Allen's big-budgeted The Swarm (1978), The Bees (1978) starring John Saxon, and the made-for-TV movies Killer Bees (1974), The Savage Bees (1976), and Terror Out of the Sky (1978).

It's hard to see the bees here as they buzz by.

Much of the film's effectiveness can be attributed to director Freddie Francis and co-screenwriter Robert Bloch (Psycho). Francis, who was better known as an acclaimed cinematographer (e.g., The Innocents), turns Seagull Island into a gray, uninviting vacation spot. The bee attacks, while never looking real, are just convincing enough. My only complaint with his direction is a tendency to have his camera linger too long on important objects. ("Why are we looking at Vicki's red coat...oh, there must be something on it!").

The screenplay lacks Bloch's usual flair, making me suspect that he served only as script doctor. While the dialogue is flat, there are some nice touches: Hargrove is an unappealing hero, there's no hint of romance between Vicki and him, and one character--who would have died in most movies--survives a bee attack.

Like director Francis, star Suzanna Leigh and several other cast members (Michael Ripper, Michael Gwynn) were Hammer Film veterans. Yet, while The Deadly Bees may look like a Hammer product, it was made by studio rival Amicus. The pretty Ms. Leigh was a busy actress in the 1960s, appearing opposite Elvis Presley in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) and as one of the stewardesses in the Tony Curtis-Jerry Lewis comedy Boeing, Boeing (1965). In real life, she was romantically linked to Richard Harris, Steve McQueen, and Michael Caine (who also battled bees in The Swarm).

Ron Wood as a member of The Birds.

By the way, the opening scene in The Deadly Bees features a musical performance by The Birds (that's not a typo, it's not The Byrds). This British group never scored a hit in the U.S., but gained some popularity in its native country. When The Birds disbanded, guitarist Ronnie Wood went on to join Faces, The Jeff Beck Group, and The Rolling Stones.

Best B-Movies…oops, I mean, Bee Movies

I originally wrote this post in 2009 to generate some buzz. After considering several possibilities, I seized on a honey of an idea and decided to do one on bees in the cinema (no, not bees in movie theatres, but rather bees depicted on film). Since the number of quality bee films is limited, I dipped into television, too. Here are my top five:

1. Mysterious Island (1961). Bees hit the big time, or rather they were big in this lively adaptation of the Jules Verne novel. Castaways on the title island battle giant bees, courtesy of special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. Bottom line: Harryhausen + giant bees = cool scene.

2. The Outer Limits episode “Zzzzz” (1964). An entomologist studying bees needs a new lab assistant. A queen bee who can transform herself into human form needs a new mate. The entomologist is married. We now have a conflict. This entertaining episode benefits mightily from Joanna Frank, who scores as the exotic bee queen determined to get her way.

3. The Deadly Bees (1966). OK, it’s not a great movie, but it didn't deserve to be spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was directed by famed cinematographer Freddie Francis, so it looks good. Plus, it earns its spot on this list just for including a plotline about liquidizing the “smell of fear” and for featuring great a tag line: “Hives of Horror!”

4. Ulee’s Gold (1997). Too recent to qualify as a classic film, but we’ll toss it in here as an example of a serious bee movie. Actually, the bees are strictly supporting players in this low-key tale of a beekeeper and his family in northern Florida. Still, it earned Peter Fonda his best reviews in years.

5. The Swarm (1978). Irwin Allen made other big-budget films after this one, but Swarm marked the beginning of the end for the Disaster Movie King. Still, if you’re going to have an all-star cast fight hordes of bees, you could do worse than Michael Caine, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, and Fred MacMurray. Plus, it was nominated for an Oscar! For Best Costume Design (?).

Honorable Mentions: The Savage Bees, The Bees (1978), Terror Out of the Sky, and Invasion of the Bee Girls (a Roger Ebert favorite). I don’t remember bees in The Hellstrom Chronicle, but surely they were some. I omitted recent films like Bee Movie and The Secret Life of Bees.

What other bee films are there? I’m hoping someone can up with a humdinger! Or at least one that buzzworthy!

Nuanced Terror - Jack Clayton's "The Innocents"

Light and shadow flicker across the screen. Sobbing is heard as a pair of praying hands, clasping and unclasping, come into view. The sobs continue.

A woman’s suffering face appears above the tortured hands. Birds twitter…her distraught voice whispers…

All I want to do is save the children not destroy them. More than anything I love children. More than anything they need affection, love, someone who will belong to them and to whom they will belong.

And then, as a man’s voice asks Do you have an imagination?, the screen focuses, suddenly revealing a well-appointed office, an elegant gentleman and the woman we have already seen…who now sits in a chair and speaks animatedly with the man who continues to ask questions and explain the situation he offers.

Director Jack Clayton

These first moments of Jack Clayton’s masterful 1961 film, The Innocents, set the stage for a chilling and absorbing tale of bewitchment.

Deborah Kerr stars as Miss Giddens, an anxious, fragile-seeming young woman who begins her first assignment as a governess for two orphaned children on a remote estate.

Michael Redgrave briefly portrays the gentleman, Miss Giddens’ employer, whose questions and revelations prime and subtly spook her, before she sets foot in the stately home where events will unfold.

The action intensifies when Miss Giddens arrives at Bly, a magnificent manor that far exceeds her expectations in its grandeur and beauty. She is “very excited, indeed” to be there and her two “angelic” and precocious charges easily charm her. An earthy housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), serves to ground the excitable governess…whose journey proceeds from enchantment to confusion, to torment and disintegration.

Henry James

American novelist Henry James wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1898 while living in England in a large rambling mansion. James has recorded that the story was suggested to him by an anecdote he heard from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This scrap of a tale concerned young children haunted by the malevolent ghosts of a pair of servants who tried, again and again, to lure them to their deaths.

The James novella depicts a young governess on her first assignment, the care of two children living in a grand mansion on a vast estate. The plot deepens when the young woman, daughter of a vicar, begins to suspect the presence of the evil spirits of two deceased servants.

It was several years after James’ book was published before critics began to wrangle in earnest over the interpretation of the story. By the 1920s several had proposed that The Turn of the Screw was less a ghost story and more the tale of inexperienced and high-strung governess who succumbed to hallucinations and madness. A 1934 essay by prominent critic Edmund Wilson dramatically advanced this view.

Henry James himself was equivocal about his intentions, and statements he made on the subject have been cited to support both apparitionist and non-apparitionist views.

Fascination with The Turn of the Screw hasn't waned over the years and it has been adapted from the page to other mediums including opera, the stage, TV and film. In February 1950, Peter Cookson’s production of William Archibald’s stage adaption of the James novella debuted on Broadway as The Innocents; Beatrice Straight starred as the governess.

Eleven years later, the play was adapted to film by British director, Jack Clayton (Room at the Top). Though William Archibald was involved, it was Truman Capote who was primarily responsible for the polished screenplay.

Truman Capote

Capote endeavored to maintain the story’s ambiguity as he felt Henry James had originally conceived it – are the ghosts real or are they the fantasies of a governess gone mad?

Taking the modern view, it’s not difficult to interpret The Innocents as an intricately staged reflection of an unstable woman’s descent into madness: the film closely follows the increasingly erratic behavior and visible deterioration of the omnipresent governess; no one but the governess actually “sees” the ghosts she claims are present; by the film’s end, even the sensible and supportive housekeeper is at odds with the hysterical young woman…and there are many visual clues that the governess may be projecting her own imaginings onto her surroundings. It is no stretch these days to believe that a deranged governess would be capable of terrifying a frightened child to death.

But, viewed from another perspective, the tale can also be read as the story of an inexperienced but well-meaning young woman confronted with the supernatural in the form of malicious spirits. Her fervid determination to save the children from possession could explain her unorthodox behavior. And that is what most people believed when The Turn of the Screw was first published.

Enigmatic and haunting, The Innocents leaves the audience to its own conclusions.

A luminous turn by Deborah Kerr (in her own favorite film performance), Freddie Francis’ cinematography, the script of Archibald and Capote and Georges Auric’s original music all mesh under Jack Clayton’s accomplished direction to create the acknowledged masterpiece among the many adaptations of The Turn of the Screw.

Christopher Lee at His Bloody Best in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

The fourth entry in Hammer’s Dracula series is one of the studio’s best films, even without the presence of Peter Cushing’s dynamic Van Helsing. It opens with a terrific prologue featuring a church bell that doesn’t ring and a dead girl with two puncture marks on her neck. To say more would spoil the effect. However, the story proper begins when a visiting Monsignor discovers that a village in his district remains in the “shadow of evil”—even though Count Dracula has been destroyed. Determined to set things right again, the Monsignor convinces the frightened village priest to accompany him to Dracula’s castle to perform an exorcism.

After an arduous trek through the mountains, the Monsignor completes his mission. Unfortunately, the priest, who has lagged behind his elder, inadvertently revives Dracula. Unable to resist the powerful vampire, the priest becomes Dracula’s disciple. Needless to say, Dracula is not pleased to find a huge cross barring the door to his estate (“Who’s done this thing?” he demands). Forcing the priest to assist him, the vampire count plots his bloody revenge against the Monsignor.

The eyes of Dracula!

The theme of religion com-bating the evil of vampirism is not an uncommon one, but rarely has it received such a full treatment. The three men who combine to destroy Dracula run the gamut from believer to atheist. The Monsignor is a man with great faith in God. The priest is a believer who has lost his way. Paul, the young man engaged to the Monsignor’s niece, fancies himself an intellectual who questions the existence of God. His rejection of religion plays a pivotal role in a scene where he faces Dracula, but is unable to destroy him.

Veronica Carlson as Maria.

Rupert Davies gives a strong performance as the stalwart Monsignor Muller, a fatherly figure with a will of iron. However, the film is very much an ensemble piece, with equal quality screen time going to Christopher Lee’s vicious vampire, Ewan Hooper’s struggling priest, and Veronica Carlson’s innocent, but sensual, Maria (the Monsignor’s niece and Dracula’s target for vengeance). If there’s a weakness in the cast, it’s Barry Andrews’ Paul, whose rock-star looks and attitude come across as a little too modern.

Maria and Paul on the rooftop.

Although vibrant color was always a Hammer trademark, director Freddie Francis took it to another level in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave. The shot of Dracula’s castle at sunset, surrounded by a surreal shade of orange, gives the image an otherworldly quality. He achieves a similar effect by using reddish-orange filters whenever Dracula appears. His most striking photography, however, is reserved for the sequences in which characters run along the rooftops to travel through the city. These highly atmospheric scenes are reminiscent of shorter sequences in Hitchcock’s Vertigo and To Catch a Thief.

Though perhaps not on par with the earlier Horror of Dracula and Brides of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen From the Grave remains a surprising and highly satisfying entry in the series. It was also Hammer’s last great Dracula film. There would still be interesting experiments (e.g., The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires), but nothing to rise to this standard.