INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973)

Director: Denis Sanders

Writers: Nicholas Meyer, Sylvia Schneble

Producer: unknown

Cast: William Smith, Victoria Vetri, Anitra Ford, Cliff Osmond, Ben Hammer, Sid Kaiser, Wright King, Anna Aries, Beverly Powers, Andre Philippe, Katie A. Saylor, William Keller, Cliff Emmich, Jack Perkins, Danielle DuPont, Mary Sweeney, Amanda Jeffries, Sharon Madigan, Rene Bond, Cathy Hilton, Susie Player, Al Burdiggi, Tom Pittman, Mickey Caruso, Herb Robbins, Gregg White, F. Stewart Wilson, John Nelson, Dick Murphy, Lloyd McLinn, Don Hall, Steve Lefkowitz, and uncredited actors Colleen Brennan, Christopher Jeffries, Lynn Lemon 

The State Department’s Office of Security sends Special Agent Neil Agar (William Smith) to investigate a series of deaths happening to employees of the federally funded Brandt Research lab in Peckham, California. The victims are all men and seem to have expired from sexual exhaustion. As the fatalities continue to occur to other locals, the town is quarantined as Agar confers with scientists at the lab to determine the cause of the strange deaths. 

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The sexual revolution takes a nasty turn in Invasion of the Bee Girls. This sci-fi fright flick milks its titillation for every juicy ounce to make every hetero male viewer understand just how vulnerable their own drives leave them. We see that even scientists can have more balls than brains. Most men can’t help but think with the wrong head when confronted with the awesome allure of Bee Girls.

I love it when a film uses an outrageous exploitation hook to get our attention and then tries to justify it as a legitimate basis for a storyline; if it works you get some terrific and probably cult status entertainment. This is a film that shamelessly flaunts its exploitation aims with its title, its content, and its genre with an added bit of humor regarding the still ticklish subject of sex in the increasingly permissive era of the '70s. This permissiveness is shown to be spreading all throughout society. It is not just the young and hip anti-establishment that is messing around here. Often it is middle-aged blue-collar workers and government employees that are getting it on and getting offed. 

Invasion of the Bee Girls has the novelty of its threat being quite different from the science fiction film invasions that had come before, if you’ll pardon the expression. The '50s sci-fi fright flicks had conditioned the audience to expect giant mutant monsters and attacks from outer space. Here the '70s drive-in crowd was getting the budget-conscious movie menace of beautiful women providing the edgy thrills of nudity, sex, and death. That it is also venting anxiety about loosening sexual mores and/or relishing promiscuity makes this a film that is saavy about both what its audience wants and of the changing times. 

A scene that I find is not just a setup for some cheap laughs but actually quite honest and unaffected is the small town meeting. Sheriff Peters (Cliff Osmond), Dr. Murger (Wright King) of the Brandt Research lab, and government agent Neil Agar are briefing the citizens. As the sexual details about the local deaths are expressed, there are laughs among the attending locals. When the citizens are asked to abstain from sex during this crisis, one crude loudmouth (Jack Perkins) proclaims his defiance by proudly stating that he will continue to fornicate with or without his wife. This scene plays as an irreverent variation on the exposition and advice delivered by the authorities to citizens in sci-fi flicks of the past. 

The most intimidating '70s movie tough guy of them all, William Smith, stars as hero Neil Agar (probably referencing '50s sci-fi film icon John Agar). He seems like a no-nonsense type of government agent that can still be civil. A nice bit is his apologetic overture to the stressed Sheriff Peters to maintain mutual respect and cooperation for solving the strange mystery. Of course, even when William Smith plays a nice guy, he still needs to kick some ass. 

Anitra Ford is the cool and slinky brunette playing entomologist Dr. Susan Harris. She was most famous as a model on the game show The Price is Right. Ford also appeared as the villainous Amazon Ahnjayla in 1974’s Wonder Woman. That was a one-off television movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby a year before Lynda Carter became synonymous with the superheroine in a revamped and successful TV series. 

Perhaps the most amusing but unlikable character is Herb Kline (Ben Hammer). He is the horny Brandt Research scientist that is cracking jokes about his deceased colleague and lusting after aloof and beautiful fellow scientist Dr. Susan Harris. We lose all sympathy for Kline when he sneaks away for a round of hanky-panky with Dr. Harris despite having his magnificent wife Nora (Anna Aries) waiting at home. In another nod to the sexual permissiveness of the times, Kline actually flaunts his infidelity to the amusement of our hero Neil Agar. 

Cliff Osmond’s Sheriff Peters would be a likely contender for the National Law Enforcement Officer of the Year Award. He goes above and beyond the call of duty with superhuman willpower resisting the charms of superhumanly sexy Anna Aries as a newly transformed Bee Girl. 

Even hidden behind large sunglasses and a loose lounging robe, Anna Aries’ allure is pheromonally phenomenal. Seeing her statuesque form lovingly slathered in transformation enabling goop by other Bee Girls is the sci-fi stuff wet dreams are made of. Her filmography is frustratingly brief and her background seems as mysterious as the Bee Girls themselves. 

There are also plenty of other Bee Girl beauties in Dr. Harris’ hive to keep buzzing our libidos. Beverly Powers, Katie A. Saylor, Colleen Brennan, Mary Sweeney, Amanda Jeffries, Sharon Madigan, Renee Bond, and Cathy Hilton contribute to a sexy line-up that is the best special effect any exploitation movie could ask for. 

As Brandt Research librarian Julie Zorn, Victoria Vetri also has her beauty put on display. The 1968 Playboy Playmate of the Year had quite a few television and film roles in her résumé, but she is probably best known for flaunting her fine physique as a cave girl in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970). Vetri was also quite good (credited as Angela Dorian) in a small and down to earth role as Terry in the horror classic Rosemary’s Baby (1968). In that film her character is told that she looks like the actress Victoria Vetri. 

Although my frustration of never having been seduced by a Bee Girl is tempered by the comfort of not having been screwed to death, this film still leaves me with a few other nagging quibbles. The origination of the Bee Girl menace is rather vague. Dr. Susan Harris is the mistress of this bee girl hive, yet it is unclear just what her objectives were with the mad science employed here. Just how agent Agar ever fixates on some sort of mutation phenomenon as the possible culprit for the killings is not ever clearly explained. I guess that he just somehow intuits that a research facility full of geneticists and entomologists must somehow result in lethal human mating habits. Finally, the climax seems a bit too abrupt. One well-placed bullet sure causes a lot of convenient and catastrophic chaos. 

The horror genre is often touching upon themes of sex and death. Invasion of the Bee Girls is entirely devoted to those aspects. Its timely relevance in the swinging '70s also makes it seem a little satirical. Despite a few nits to pick, this film’s simplicity, originality, wit, and pulchritude are just enough honey to keep this B-film fan buzzing.

THE SILENCERS (1966)

Director: Phil Karlson

Writers: Oscar Saul adapting Donald Hamilton’s novels Death of a Citizen and The Silencers

Producer: Irving Allen

Cast: Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Daliah Lavi, James Gregory, Victor Buono, Robert Webber, Arthur O’Connell, Roger C. Carmel, Cyd Charisse, Nancy Kovack, Beverly Adams, Richard Devon, David Bond, Frank Gerstle, Robert Phillips, John Willis, Grant Woods, Patrick Waltz, Inga Neilsen (uncredited) 

Retired US secret agent Matt Helm (Dean Martin) is now living the life of a carefree bachelor as a successful girlie photographer. Helm reluctantly returns to ICE, his past espionage organization. ICE wants Helm to stop BIG O, an enemy organization intent on launching a missile to destroy an American underground nuclear test site. That explosion will contaminate a large swath of the country with radioactive fallout and could start World War III. 

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The Matt Helm film series never gets much respect and is absolutely loathed by many hardcore James Bond fans. The humor is almost non-stop and some of the action and technology make little sense. However, even as sloppy as they often are, the Matt Helm films offer an alternative in tone while still delivering the spy genre trappings we expect: chases, fights, gadgets, beautiful women, criminal masterminds, world-threatening plots, and sex.

Like the Bond films, the Matt Helm films were very loosely adapted from a successful series of novels. Debuting in 1960, Donald Hamilton’s stories concerned a retired American World War II assassin brought back into service for the government. The adventures are narrated with a wry sense of practicality by the brutal Helm who must abandon a happy domestic life when he resumes his former deadly profession. The Helm novels are hardly James Bond rip-offs and are highly recommended. They are often grimmer and less exotic than Ian Fleming’s Bond tales. Matt Helm has no idealism that gets in the way of his missions’ objectives. He knows that he is not a good guy but a killer. 

It is rather curious that Matt Helm film producer Irving Allen had a falling out with onetime partner “Cubby” Broccoli about the worthiness of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories as a basis for a film series. When Allen later optioned another fine series of spy fiction to adapt into his own series of films, he dispensed almost entirely with the Matt Helm source material and its tone to create something far less believable than the Ian Fleming stories he earlier dismissed. Allen would also go on to be the executive producer of the 1975 Matt Helm television movie starring Anthony Franciosa that led to a short-lived series. That production had even less to do with its prose source material and became a rather generic private detective show. 

The Silencers is the first of the four-film Matt Helm series starring Dean Martin. Obviously meant to cash-in on the '60s spy craze launched by the James Bond series, the Helm films were breezy and irreverent. They went well past the occasional tongue-in-cheek hints in the Bond films to become spy spoofs about American establishment male wish fulfillment. Our hero Helm can womanize, drink, smoke, and make a great living shooting pictures of sexy figure models. Then he still one-ups Hugh Hefner by also saving the world without ever losing his sense of humor. 

One suspects that the key to enjoying these things at the time was being a Dean Martin fan. If you loved his music and watched his television variety show each week, you probably couldn’t wait to see him joke and kill his way through an action film in the spyhappy '60s. 

This first Matt Helm movie is in many ways the best in the series. There are some well-played scenes combining humor, danger, and sexiness. The best sequence would probably be early in the story when Helm is reintroduced to his fellow ICE agent and former lover Tina (Daliah Lavi). She arrives at his home as he is under attack from an assortment of BIG O assassins. Lavi and Martin work well together conveying important info to each other and the audience as they trade quips while killing and escaping their enemies. While Dean Martin always makes what he does seem smooth and easy, he has not yet stepped over the line into total farce. This is probably due to a bit more care taken in the script than the later installments. 

That is not to say that there is not plenty of humor to be had here and sometimes at Matt Helm’s expense. The world’s most beautiful klutz Gail Hendricks creates most of Helm’s irritation. She is always in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes the reluctant companion to Helm as he tries to track down BIG O to stop Operation Fallout. Stella Stevens’ performance as Gail is funny, sympathetic, and sexy. 

Another aspect of humor in The Silencers is the violence. Of course, Sean Connery had already established witticisms tossed off after deadly encounters in the Bond films. Here we have various characters being graphically penetrated by bullets from a reverse-firing gun that play out as sight gags. 

Perhaps the most dated aspect in the film’s humor is the drinking and driving scene in Helm’s station wagon that is able to convert to sleeping quarters complete with a portable bar. Despite present day qualms about boozing behind the wheel, Stella Stevens makes it an amusing bit. 

The Silencers is little more than a fantasy that asks the question: What would happen if Dean Martin were a secret agent? Answer: A helluva lot more fun than scowling bullies dishing out their macho threats between hyperactive CGI effects. So just kick back, down a drink, and lighten up as the King of Cool saves the world.

CAPE FEAR (1962)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Writers: James R. Webb adapting John D. MacDonald’s novel The Executioners 

Producer: Sy Bartlett 

Cast: Gregory Peck. Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Lori Martin, Martin Balsam, Telly Savalas, Barrie Chase, Jack Kruschen, Joan Staley, Edward Platt, Paul Comi, John McKee, Ward Ramsey, Page Slattery, Will Wright. Norma Yost, Mack Williams, Tom Newman, Alan Reynolds, Alan Wells, Allan Ray, Paul Levitt, Herb Armstrong, Bunny Rhea, Cindy Carol (as Carol Sydes) 

Recently released convict Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) settles in the southern town where lawyer Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) lives with his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen) and his young daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). Eight years ago Sam Bowden’s witness testimony helped to convict Cady for the crime of assaulting a woman. Now Cady starts a war of nerves with veiled threats against Bowden and his family. Cady has studied the law while in prison and knows how to torment Bowden without crossing any legal lines. Sam Bowden is increasingly provoked to resort to illegal means to protect his family. 

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Gregory Peck stars as the stalwart family man and lawyer Sam Bowden. He has an ideal life that becomes threatened only because he did the decent thing by interrupting Max Cady’s assault of a woman and testifying as a witness in Cady’s trial. Bowden is always likable and his situation becomes quite sympathetic, yet he maintains our interest with his reactions to Cady’s provocations.

Robert Mitchum played one of the greatest movie villains of all time in Cape Fear. His Max Cady is smart, stealthy, brutal, and funny. He is one laid-back bastard that steals every scene he is in which is the least of his crimes. This performance should make anyone a Mitchum fan. 

My favorite scene is the rendezvous at a bar that Peck’s Sam Bowden has with Mitchum’s Max Cady. All Bowden wants is to make an arrangement to get Cady to stop his harassment, but Cady won’t relent. This is the only time we are given any insight into Cady’s character that he reveals in casual seeming conversation over drinks to the object of his hatred. It seems that the only way Cady can relate to anyone is when he is justifying his motives for the threat he poses. He enjoys explaining his grudge and refusing to be paid off by Sam Bowden. The fun Cady has prolonging this encounter with the increasingly disgusted Bowden is Mitchum at his best. We can’t help but enjoy this scene even as we continue to empathize with the dilemma that Peck’s Bowden has trying to deal with this sociopath. 

The real tension in the story is not just the danger that a violent and vengeful man like Max Cady poses to the Bowden family, but that Cady can keep haunting and taunting Sam Bowden with the implied threat of his presence. Legally, Bowden can’t do anything about this, yet he knows he can’t wait until it is too late. It becomes a conundrum for this lawyer to realize that the law can’t intervene until after Cady actually acts out his vague threats against Bowden and his family. This prompts Bowden to consider more drastic actions. 

Polly Bergen, as Sam Bowden’s wife Peggy, is not only a potential victim of Cady’s vengeance, she is also an additional voice of reason in the Bowden family regarding how to deal with the ex-convict’s looming menace. In a film full of threatening scenes, her confrontation with Mitchum’s Max Cady is probably the most harrowing. 

There are many other fine performances from young Lori Martin as Sam Bowden’s daughter Nancy, Martin Balsam as Bowden’s police chief pal Mark Dutton, and Telly Savalas as private detective Charlie Sievers. A real stand out is dancer Barrie Chase in an early dramatic role as the unfortunate “pick up” Diane Taylor. She uses some subtle body language to effectively indicate the pain and physical impairment of her injuries after a sadistic evening with Max Cady. That also gives us a graphic hint of the sort of treatment Cady has in mind for Sam Bowden’s wife and child. 

Cape Fear was very controversial for its ongoing theme of sexual violence. Max Cady makes his carnal interest in Sam Bowden’s wife and adolescent daughter quite clear. Rape is part of Cady’s revenge tactics that he has used before against his ex-wife. 

Director J. Lee Thompson had just directed star Gregory Peck in the hit war epic The Guns of Navarone (1961). Thompson keeps the tension high in Cape Fear with lots of shadows, stark lighting, prolonged stalking sequences, sudden bursts of violence, and scenes that cut away from ongoing violence to suggest greater brutalities in our imaginations. He would become a frequent Charles Bronson director and dealt once again with the theme of frustration created by the justice system’s legal constraints in the thriller 10 to Midnight (1983). 

Cape Fear is an intense game of cat and mouse between a clever, sadistic brute and a man of integrity trying to bend the rules to protect his family. This film has all the elements that a successful thriller needs with the added bonus of Robert Mitchum’s terrific performance as Max Cady that you ain’t never gonna forget. Never.