“Abstinence isn’t going to be anything new around here.”

Drake’s rating: A honey of a flick

Drake’s review: All right, let’s see a show of hands of all those who knew that it was inevitable that I’d be reviewing this one at some point. Hmm. That looks unanimous to me. That’s fair. After all, this is a B-movie tailor made for William Smith fans, and I’ve counted myself as one of those ever since I saw him menacing Dodge City in an old episode of the Gunsmoke television show. As Jude Bonner, Smith was a terror with no remorse, going so far as to shoot poor Miss Kitty in the back just to draw Marshall Dillon into a fight. Clearly, he was no ordinary bad guy.

Smith was best known for his villain roles. He played bikers, outlaws and gangsters like no one else, and exuded an air of menace just by entering a scene. There was no better way to showcase a hero than having him face off with, and ultimately defeat, a William Smith baddie, and Smith played opposite a list of stars that included James Garner, Fred Williamson and Nick Nolte. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

On a few rare occasions, however, Smith got to play against type and be the hero for a change. It didn’t happen often, but when it did he was every bit as good as he was* when he was trading punches with Rod Steiger or Clint Eastwood.

In Invasion of the Bee Girls, Smith is Neil Agar, a State Department special agent on assignment in a small California town to investigate the death of a scientist working on a top-secret government contract. The local police don’t think much of the scientist’s passing and chalk it up to heart failure, but Agar’s interest is sparked by the fact that there’s been more than one seemingly natural death. Of course the mystery deepens as the body count grows, and naked but deceased scientists soon begin popping up everywhere.

Granted, the audience is quickly clued in to the fact that the scientists are not dying of natural causes, and that some of the women in the town are somehow involved, but this is a schlocky B-movie, not a mystery. Add in the fact that the mysterious Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford, The Big Bird Cage) is always lurking in the background behind a large pair of sunglasses and it’s pretty easy to tell where Invasion of the Bee Girls is going.

Obviously, it’s going toward “Bee Girls.”

Ah, but what exactly is a Bee Girl, and what is their plan? Yeah, about that… I’m still not sure. Their main mission seems to be sexing up the perpetually horny scientists of this little burg and killing them, and then making their widows into Bee Girls (in a truly weird, goopy process), ad infinitum. A clear motive for infesting the town with Bee Girls is never given, nor is the origin of the Bee Girls themselves, although we do have Agar theorizing about possible forced mutations** and that seems to become the accepted explanation. It’s too bad Charles Xavier wasn’t around to give his two cents about that idea.

Invasion of the Bee Girls is a textbook example of a 1970s drive-in exploitation flick, walking the line between sleaze cinema and the “nature run amok” films of that era. A cult classic through and through, what it lacks in comprehensibility it more than makes up for in weird ideas, William Smith fisticuffs, sci-fi gadgetry and Bee Girls, and that’s enough to make it an entertaining romp in a decade that sometimes got too serious for its own good.

*OK, almost as good, because let’s face it: William Smith was born to play the heavy.

**Poppycock. I’ve never seen a Bee Girl at any of the monthly Mutant meetings.

Intermission!

• Invasion of the Bee Girls writer Nicholas Meyer went on to bigger and better (if less goopy) science-fiction projects as the writer/director of both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the writer of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. None of those movies featured Bee Girls, but if Valeris had sported black eyes and started buzzing would any of us have really been surprised?
• William Smith does well here as the square-jawed hero, but his performance is somewhat restrained compared to his classic villain roles. You almost expect him to make a heel turn at some point and take on the mantle of the King Bee. Yes, I now realize that sounds like a villain from the ‘60s Batman TV show. “Holy Honeycombs, Batman!”
• Cinematographer Gary Graver worked with a variety of directors, including Fred Olen Ray, Albert Pyun and Orson Welles. One of these things is not like the others.
• Invasion of the Bee Girls was released on home video in the early ‘80s as Graveyard Tramps, which is going to be the name of my next punk band.