‘They’ll love the very life out of your body!’
Invasion of the Bee Girls is a 1973 sci-fi horror film directed by Denis Sanders from a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer (later director of Star Trek II and VIandTime After Time).
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The Sequoia Pictures production stars William Smith (Grave of the Vampire, Moon in Scorpio), Anitra Ford (Messiah of Evil), Victoria Vetri(Rosemary’s Baby, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth), Cliff Osmond, Wright King, Ben Hammer, Anna Aries (The Ωmega Man), Beverly Powers (The Comedy of Terrors, Brides of Blood, Jaws), Cliff Emmich (Halloween II). Rene Bond (Please Don’t Eat My Mother!; Necromania) plays one of the Bee Girls.
Veteran Gary Graver (Deep Space; et al) handled the cinematography and Charles Bernstein (Daddy’s Deadly Darling, The Entity, A Nightmare on Elm Street), provided the groovy ’70s score, except for the end credits which is accompanied by Johan Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra’ (famously used in 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Plot:
Doctor Susan Harris, a mad scientist (Anitra Ford), has created an army of female beauties who seduce men to death. One by one the male victims are killed before the local police catch on to the plans of the infected females.
Neil Agar (William Smith), asecurity agentwith theState Department, is dispatched to Peckham,Californiato investigate the death of John Grubowsky, abacteriologistworking at government-sponsored Brandt Research.
Swiftlymaking the acquaintance of the laboratory’s head librarian, Julie Zorn, he begins interviewing the firm’s leading scientists, many of whom have reputations as sexual players. His investigation is soon complicated by a growing number of deaths, all men who died ofcongestive heart failurecaused by sexual exhaustion.
Faced with a rapidly escalating body count, the localsheriff, Captain Peters, holds a town meeting at which the laboratory’s leading relationship researcher, Henry Murger, urges the town populace to practicecoitus abstinence– an idea greeted with derision by the locals.
Neil and Julie arrange a meeting with Murger afterwards to discuss his theories as to the cause of his death, only to see him chased down and run over by a car with an unseen driver. Later, Neil discovers a secret room concealing naughty paraphernalia and Murger’s secret lover, Joe, who informs Neil that he saw Murger driving off with an unknown woman prior to his death.
Despite a curfew and the establishment of a military quarantine, the scientists continue their carnal games. One of them, Herb Kline, is approached by Susan Harris, a beautiful entomologist working on bees. Though described by the men as an “iceberg,” she flirts with Kline and invites him over for dinner.
That night, as they get frisky, Kline suffers a fatalthrombosisand Harris reveals black compound eyes suggesting that she is more than she appears…
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“The film tempts and admonishes us at once. We get gratuitous boobs and butts, yet just when we think hot action is coming our way, it cuts to a face of a corpse. It is also a stylish, cogently directed film with a lively script and a funky wa-wa-wa-wa la-la-la-la theme song which recalls Ennio Morricone’s score for Bird with the Crystal Plumage. B-movie giant William Smith […] is perfect as the square-jawed agent on the bee girls’ trail. Anitra Ford[…] is ravishing and fearsome as the queen bee.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers
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Trailer [720p]:
Watch free online in widescreen and ok quality via the Internet Archive
Film facts:
In the US, the film was misleadingly re-released as Graveyard Tramps
