The Savage Bees (1976)

We open on a cargo ship sporting the Brazilian flag as it putters up the Mississippi River Delta toward the port of New Orleans. All seems nominal until we move inside, where we see the ship is abandoned and adrift as a quick tour of the engine room, living quarters, and the bridge prove deserted, disheveled, and silent except for an angry buzzing of an (unseen) insect-type nature -- he typed ominously.

Meanwhile, even though it appears to be the middle of the day, the entire crew of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter somehow failed to notice this runaway freighter was on a direct collision course with them until it was too late!

Luckily, when they do inevitably collide (-- on the cheap, represented by some of the worst editing and over-emoting in a 'bridge of the Starship Enterprise under attack' sense), neither boat sinks. But a quick headcount shows two American sailors went over the side during the chaos and are currently MIA. 

When the owners of the freighter are contacted, they want to know how many survivors and the extent of any injuries. But the reply from the Coast Guard captain (Gray) is simple: So would we, as his men confirm the other ship is empty.

The captain then gets a report on the freighter’s last transmission, which, and I quote, sounded frightened and garbled, as if the sender was choking on something as he warned everyone to stay away from the ship, end quote. With that, all shore leave is canceled, ruining many plans for Mardi Gras, as the local Coast Guard is scrambled and begins an ever-widening search for all those missing men. 

Meantime, further inland, a patrol car is toddling down a dusty backroad until the driver spots a carcass in the grass and abruptly stops. Out steps parish sheriff Donald McKew (Johnson), who is overcome with grief when he recognizes this was his beloved dog, Zeke.

Presuming someone with a grudge poisoned his pet, McKew lets his wife know he will be taking the corpse into New Orleans, where he will have the coroner do a necropsy on the animal to determine what kind of poison was used; and how he will then dedicate the rest of his life shaking down every store in his parish until he finds out who sold that poison to the low down dirty bastard what killed his dog; and then make them pay, most righteously.

Elsewhere, up the road a piece, a mother (Sutton) sends her young daughter, Julie (Chase), off to church for her singing lessons. Told to mind her pretty new red dress along the way, the girl happily blows a plastic trumpet to serenade her journey on foot, waving to Sheriff McKew as he determinedly drives by.

But when she nears the church, Julie’s tinny notes are overwhelmed by a deadly, pulsing drone as something large detaches from the steeple and swoops down toward her. The girl screams and turns tail. Alas, she is not fast enough.

Back on the river, the first missing body from the maritime disaster has been recovered. But to everyone’s surprise, the waterlogged corpse is also riddled with strange welts and pockmarks all over his body. 

Thus, it's up to the coroner to explain what happened. And to those ends, the body is shipped off to New Orleans, where Mardi Gras appears to be in full swing as McKew arrives at said coroner’s office with his dog.

Here, McKew demands the canine remains be examined to determine a cause of death -- something, the secretary insists, they do not do on animals. 

Luckily for McKew, the regular pathologist is off for the city-wide party but his temporary fill-in, Dr. Jeff Durand (Parks), is willing to take a look. And what he finds is most troubling.

Like the dead sailor, the canine is covered in the same welts from which Durand retrieves a broken off barb or stinger. And stranger still, when he begins an internal examination, he discovers the poor dog’s stomach is completely stuffed full of dead bees…

Like the backstory of any good disaster movie, the root cause of the real-life Killer Bee epidemic was greed.

Apparently, there are a total of 29-different subspecies of bees based mostly on where they are found, with most differences linked to the geography they inhabit and how they adapted to survive there. But all species of bees are cross fertile, and the African honey bee was found to be far superior than their counterparts when it came to pollinating and honey production -- a single hive of African bees can produce 220 pounds of honey annually while the European standard only generates between 20 to 60 pounds.

But pluses always come with minuses -- like the African bee’s more aggressive behavior when guarding the hive, making them more easily provoked; and once provoked, they are more likely to attack a perceived threat en masse; and they will then pursue this threat over much longer distances than your standard bee.

But contrary to popular belief, the venom of an African bee isn’t that much more potent than, say, a European honey bee. The problem lies in the number of stings received as once stirred up, African bees remain riled for hours. You piss one off, you’ve essentially pissed them all off. Even if you’re not allergic, multiple stings can cause skin inflammation, dizziness, headaches, weakness, edema, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. And in more extreme cases, an increased heart-rate, respiratory distress, renal failure, and death.

The Orleans Guide (February 16, 1978).

Still, despite the danger, there was money to be made. And so, noble intentions or not, a biologist named Warwick Kerr imported 35 African queen bees to an experimental apiary near São Paulo, Brazil, with the intent of crossbreeding them with the European version, which had not adapted well to South America’s tropical climate.

The hope was to create a new strain with the best traits from both species: the superior production of the Africans and the more docile nature of the Europeans. But things went staggeringly awry in October, 1957, when a visiting beekeeper, thinking he was helping, unwittingly removed all the proper mesh filters allowing a grand total of 27 of those African queens to escape quarantine, allowing the more aggressive insects to take over the Amazon basin, wreaking havoc on the domestic bee populations along the way, essentially breeding them out of existence.

And as this invasive, ecological disaster continued to escalate and spread all over South America, the first human death attributed to these Africanized bees was reported in 1966. More deaths would follow, nearly 1000 people and untold numbers of livestock fell victim to these unruly swarms over the decades as they slowly but assuredly started migrating further north and into Central America.

But folks in the United States weren’t all that concerned about this new strain of bees until it became abundantly clear in the more ecologically-minded 1970s that these swarms would definitely breach our borders sometime in the next decade.

 Lincoln Journal Star (May 27, 1975).

In 1971, the U.S. Department of Agriculture put a ban on the import of any bees from south of the border to prevent any of the Africanized bees from hitching a ride in. That same year, the National Academy of Science organized a team of entomologists and sent them to Brazil on a fact-finding mission, who then reported those facts back to the USDA.

This team would be led by Charles Michener, head entomologist for the University of Kansas, who warned “if the Africanized bees reach this country it will seriously affect the use of bees in pollination. Because the African honeybees are so aggressive, it would be impossible to have them near fields where people are working or near animals (The Tucson Citizen, September 1, 1971).”

The Tennessean (April 4, 1971).

The Indianapolis Star (April 30, 1971).

The Tampa Tribune (May 5, 1971).

The results of the study were grim. And it wasn’t a question of if they would breach the U.S. borders, but when.

The media reaction to all of this started small, but soon newspapers were littered with little blurbs about people being killed by these deadly bees. From there, panic spread faster than the bees as coverage was less about the possible ecological impact and more about the mass casualties that could be linked to these tiny terrors, exaggerating their aggressive territoriality into actively seeking out human victims, with unsubstantiated studies that claimed their venom was twice as strong, which soon bred a brand new designation: the Killer Bees.

This twist in the narrative caused a bit of panic and paranoia -- to put it mildly, which in turn fueled several speculative books and feature film adaptations on what would happen when these Killer Bees finally reached our shores and the havoc and mass-destruction they would cause.

It was one of these very same sensational articles that inspired Arthur Herzog to write The Swarm in 1974, which was later optioned and adapted into a feature film by the Disaster King himself, Irwin Allen. And though The Swarm (1978) was truly awful and a box-office dud that effectively killed the star-studded-has-been disaster boom of the 1970s, this was too bad, as Herzog’s novel, written in a Michael Crichton, ticking-clock vein, was actually pretty good.

But the, forgive me, buzz during The Swarm’s production was enough for Roger Corman to get there first with The Bees (1978) to cash in -- well, until Warner Bros. paid him off to hold up the film’s release until after The Swarm debuted.

However, films about rampaging and murderous bees were nothing new, really. The Deadly Bees (1967) saw a recuperating pop singer stuck on an island retreat where a killer used a new strain of aggressive bees as his murder weapon of choice. And Curtis Harrington’s Killer Bees (1974) saw Gloria Swanson telepathically controlling a hive of bees to do her deadly bidding.

But while both of those films involved “killer” bees, we didn’t get to a true “Killer Bee” movie until Bruce Geller’s The Savage Bees (1976) aired on Monday, November 22, 1976, on NBC. I was there, and I remember watching it with my siblings on the old family Zenith. And boy howdy, back then, it sure made my cryptid-sense tingle.

Now, I think one of the reasons the inevitable invasion of the Africanized bees was played down for so long was the powers-that-be did not want to start any kind of mass panic that would backlash against the vitally important domestic bee population in a “kill ‘em all just to be safe” sense. This, of course, kinda backfired.

But surprisingly enough, given the tenor of the times, The Savage Bees stays on a surprisingly even keel as Durand, unsure of what would cause bees to behave this way, puts in a call to an old acquaintance, namely Jeannie Devereaux (Corbett), an entomology professor at Tulane, hoping she can provide an explanation. 

She listens to his evidence and confirms his diagnosis of “toxic paralysis” as a cause of death. She then asks to examine one of the dead bees, but that will have to wait because the recovered sailor’s remains have arrived for autopsy.

Upon examination, Durand finds more bees in his stomach, too, and enough venom in his system to kill an elephant. Thus, Durand has two samples of bees for Jeannie to examine. And while she has her suspicions on what they might be, she wants her own second opinion first. And get this they do from Dr. Rufus Carter (Hecht) of the National Bee Stock Center, who confirms the specimens were from an Africanized strain.

Then, after hearing what Durand knows about the circumstances of the sailor’s death, Carter theorizes the colony must have hitched a ride on the Brazilian freighter, got disturbed, killed the whole crew, and are now on the loose near a highly-populated area. And while Durand wants to sound the alarm bell before more people are killed, both Carter and Jeannie say it’s not that simple.

Why? Well, they show him a video that features Dr. Jorge Mueller, the world’s leading expert on the Africanized strain, who first gives a brief history lesson and then tries to dispel a few Killer Bee myths, saying the main thing is not to panic or the consequences for the domestic bee could be catastrophic.

Now, there are two important factors to remember from this lecture: one, Killer Bees don’t like the color red or black (-- Julie’s new dress was bright red), and they respond aggressively toward high pitched sounds (-- like, say, a boat’s collision warning horn).

Thus, a plan is set in motion where Sheriff McKew heads back to his parish to try and locate where the Killer Bees have nested but not take any action against them yet. And while Durand and Jeannie at least make the civil authorities aware of the problem, Carter contacts Dr. Mueller about their dire situation, who agrees to come and help with a possible solution -- make that the only real solution given the mounting circumstances.

However, their plan begins to unravel when the city police play deaf and dumb and send them higher up the food chain. But most of City Hall is empty due to the Mardi Gras celebration. And while Deputy Mayor Pelligrino (Best) seems helpful at first, they even have contingency plans in place for such a thing, he warns the wheels of bureaucracy run awfully slow and it will probably be at least three to four days before the city takes any action.

And the fact that Mardi Gras doesn’t end for another three days essentially means the City of New Orleans has officially refused to close the beaches. (Mr. Deputy Mayor, what you are dealing with here is a stinging machine that only sleeps, pollinates, and makes little bees. That’s it. Are you gonna ignore this problem until it flies up and repeatedly stings you in the ass?!)

Here, Jeannie has to work fast before an incensed Durand takes their deadly discovery directly to the press and convinces him to give Mueller’s plan the time it needs.

But it’s already too late for some as a missing farmer’s corpse is fished out of the river, covered in the same welts. And then McKew and his deputies find what’s left of poor Julie while looking for the nest.

This search is soon joined by Durand, Jeannie, Carter and Dr. Mueller (Bucholz), who explains why carpet-bombing the bees with pesticide won’t work and will only exacerbate the situation if even one drone escapes. He then reveals his plan to replace the hive’s Africanized queen with a domestic queen, which will leave this batch of Killer Bees at a genetic dead end. (My cursory research shows this plan won’t work, but, eh, lets roll with it.)

When they finally find the swarm, located inside a roadside food stand, Mueller tells McKew and the others to set up roadblocks to keep everyone else away while he and Jeannie move in closer to facilitate his plan.

Here, Mueller has Jeannie stop about twenty yards from the shack. She will remain inside the car while he, decked out in a bee-proof suit of his own design, enters the shack, where he finds the owner dead. He then slowly approaches the colony and starts digging into this living mass of death for the needed queen.

Meanwhile, Deputy Doofus and Officer Dipshit allow two costumed revelers destined for Mardi Gras to blow right past their checkpoint. And to make matters even worse, fearing McKew will ream their asses, they don’t report this breach. Thus, these intruders continue on, a man and a woman, dressed as pirates, who stop at the shack when the woman decides she’s hungry.

Alas, Jeannie is too far away to warn them as they honk their horn, demanding service. This, of course, causes the bees to swarm and attack them. This tragic turn of events then crescendos when Mueller tries to herd them to safety, and then concludes as the man, blindly swinging his pirate sword around, slices open that protective suit, allowing the bees to get inside.

Thus, as all three die rather horribly, Jeannie helplessly watches the whole thing. And as she tries to look away, her forehead bumps into the steering wheel, triggering the car horn of her cherry red VW Bug. Thus, the angry bees soon swarm again and envelop her car completely!

Contacting Durand over the radio, Jeannie gives a panicked update on her dire situation. As they brainstorm for solutions on how to save her and stop the bees, Carter offers that bees become inert at 45-degrees. McKew suggests an ice house, but Carter feels that’s too risky and the noise would scatter them. 

No, what they need is a quiet, controlled environment to guarantee they don’t lose one single solitary bee. And there’s only one building close enough to fit the bill: the Superdome in New Orleans. Because, sure.

Thus and so, Jeannie is instructed to drive her car in that general direction, very slowly, as they form an ersatz convoy to escort her and the nesting colony through the heart of the French Quarter. And as the others clear the streets ahead of her in a scene eerily reminiscent of Night of the Lepus (1972), Jeannie, who can barely see out the windshield, manages to almost make it before the swarm fouls the engine and the car stalls out in the shadow of the Superdome.

Here, Durand commandeers one of the squad cars and gently pushes her through the entrance. Already inside, McKew and the stadium attendant have sealed the building and turned the air-conditioner on full blast.

From there, time slows to a crawl as the electronic scoreboard continues to flash the current temperature -- and the attendant isn’t even sure he can reach the designated 45-degrees. Inside the car, Jeannie tries to hold it together as Durand keeps assuring her over the radio. And after a few tense minutes, the temperature finally drops far enough that the bees, after one last surge of activity, become inert and fall to the ground, ending their threat -- at least for now. 

As a child of the 1970s and a complete cryptid nut, I was keenly aware of the impending Killer Bee Apocalypse and, therefore, read every book and saw every feature in their oeuvre and can honestly say every last one of them is awful. Which is why when I say The Savage Bees is probably the best of the bunch, that ain’t really saying a whole lot.

There was a lot of clout behind the camera, too. Serving as executive producers were music impresario Don Kirshner, of Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert (1973-1980) infamy, and our old friend and fellow cryptid kook, Alan Landsburg, whose Alan Landsburg Productions had their fingerprints all over the place when it came to cryptids and strange phenomenon with things like The Outer Space Connection (1975), Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle (1978), and Manbeast! Myth or Monster (1978).

And the film’s director, Bruce Geller, was a TV legend when it came to writing and producing for the small screen, having created hit series like Mannix (1967-1975) and Mission: Impossible (1966-1973). But The Savage Bees was a rare outing in the director’s chair for Geller, and his inexperience shows badly as the film comes off as barely perfunctory half the time. The action is pretty turgid, and as a thriller it moves with no urgency at all.

The film was shot in and around New Orleans, including several scenes filmed in St. John the Baptist Parish, which provided McKew’s headquarters, where the parish’s real sheriff had a cameo as a prisoner. Filming took place in late September of 1976, and the footage was then turned around, edited together, and scored before airing just over a month later. This might help explain away the film’s slapped and dashed nature and overall shortcomings.

When Dick Kleiner of the NEA (News Enterprise Association) asked Geller if a film about Killer Bees made it a ‘B-Picture’, Geller replied, “That’s your free bee joke (The Fort Lauderdale News, November 26, 1976).”

Apparently, according to Geller, the Bee puns got so obnoxious during the filming of The Savage Bees that he had to make up an ersatz swear jar, meaning you got the first one for free and everything after that cost you a dollar. Geller also admitted to being stung at least four times while filming. However, “The only possible danger would be if someone was allergic to bee venom. That is a rarity, but we kept a supply of adrenaline handy just in case. But there were no problems,” said Geller.

The script came courtesy of Guerdon Trueblood, a Landsburg regular, who penned some excellent Made for TV movies like Sole Survivor (1970), the totally gonzo The Love War (1970), and SST: Death Flight (1977), along with two solid feature films, Welcome Home, Soldier Boys (1971) and The Last Hard Men (1976). He would also direct a total mind-f@ck of a movie called The Candy Snatchers (1973), where a kidnap and ransom go horribly, horribly awry.

In his review for The Los Angeles Times (November 22, 1976), Kevin Thomas heaped all kinds of praise on Trueblood’s efforts, saying, “He creates flesh and blood people without contrivance [and] generates the utmost tension while establishing and maintaining the utmost credibility.” And how “Trueblood avoids heavy-going exposition yet makes a clear explanation of the deadly African bee phenomenon, its causes, and the formidable challenge involved in trying to control it.”

Thomas would also compare the film’s race against the clock structure favorably to Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain (1971), where a group of scientists struggle to counteract an alien viral outbreak with “it’s painstaking attention to revealing details.” But perhaps a more apt comparison would be with Steven Spielberg’s JAWS (1975), as Trueblood’s script follows that film nearly beat for beat.

In his column for The Cincinnati Enquirer (December 28, 1976), in the wake of the release of King Kong (1976), Steve Harvey mourned the death of classic movie monsters in the wake of the release of real life horrors like JAWS and The Savage Bees. 

The Grand Island Independent (September, 1975).

“Audiences are more sophisticated these days,” Geller told Harvey. “With JAWS, you could imagine yourself being attacked by the shark. The same with bees -- the so-called Killer Bees do exist. But did you ever see The Mummy? He walked about half a mile an hour, with his bandages hanging down. You knew the reality was that you could easily run away from him. I’m not sure you could make The Mummy these days.”

I’m thinking Geller was actually referencing The Mummy’s Hand (1932), not to the original The Mummy (1933). The Mummy’s Hand featured the lumbering, Tana-leaves-fueled Kharis and would spawn a franchise -- The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) and The Mummy’s Curse (1944). And it probably should be noted that while The Mummy would eventually be resurrected quite successfully by Stephen Sommers in 1999, the Killer Bee movie has yet to be revived -- though they did inspire a reoccurring sketch and one musical number on Saturday Night Live.

Meanwhile, Thomas called Geller’s film “visually stunning” thanks to Richard Glouner, the film’s cinematographer. But I can’t really pass judgment on Glouner’s efforts because the print I watched was a shitty VHS-rip culled off of YouTube. And this will once again cause me to bang the war drums for a digital upgrade on all of these old telefilms. But what I can comment on is how the editing by the tag team of Bud Friedgen and George Hively was seizure inducing in spots.

I’m also thinking most of the telefilm’s budget was spent on the cast, and they’re all pretty much wasted. Still, professionals all, they do their best to make something out of nothing. “Michael Parks and Gretchen Corbett have an edgy relationship that becomes a source of wry amusement,” observed Thomas in his review. “Ben Johnson is a strong, assertive, plainspoken man, humorous and intelligent,” and further commented on “how rare it is to encounter a decent and intelligent rural sheriff in a movie.”

On this we agree wholeheartedly. I’ve had a long standing crush on Gretchen Corbett since her Beth Davenport days on The Rockford Files (1974-1980), and her performance here did nothing to diminish this. And Parks has a likable, every-man quality about him that serves him well as he does the best he can with the given the material. We believe that he believes in the impending danger.

Johnson, as always, is great, and two scenes really stand out. First, when he excuses himself from his dog’s autopsy -- the anguish is real. And second, when Durand and Carter find a dead chicken and ritual chalk patterns on the ground while looking for the bee colony.

McKew says not to touch anything because it’s a sacred veve, voodoo, and to leave it be, as is, because they’ll need all the help they can get at this point. Again, they’re all too good to be wasting their time with this nonsense.

The film’s one saving grace is that the actual bee attack scenes come off well and are startlingly effective in spots -- especially during the inspired climax. Said Geller, “The African Killer Bees are short-tempered little insects. They get angry over color (red and black particularly), over noise, over vibrations. And they will carry a grudge for 24-hours and pursue the object of anger for miles.” Sounds exciting, sure, but the film’s ultimate failure is there just weren’t enough bee attacks to keep audiences interested.

According to The Modesto Bee (November 22, 1976), Landsburg and Geller would borrow over 10-million bees from local beekeepers for the production. And to serve as their technical advisors and bee wranglers, they hired Norman Gary and Kenneth Lorenze. Gary was an entomologist at the University of California, Davis, and, strangely enough, he was a member of that team sent to Brazil back in 1971 to evaluate the potential threat of the Africanized bees. And when asked, he found the script and its invasion scenario very plausible.

“The script demanded that we do some pretty weird things with the bees in order to make them act like Brazilian bees,” said Gary, who was faced with the monumental task of getting these massive mounds of insects to perform for the camera. “We were able to manipulate the bees because regular honeybees are not very defensive when they are swarming. We had to make them look like they were attacking by scooping them and throwing them around the victims.”

The Dayton Daily News (November 20, 1976).

That’s right, folks. They simulated a Killer Bee attack by throwing Docile Bees at their victims. The mind boggles. As to how they got them to stick to the Volkswagen for the film’s climax, they used “living queen bees and chemical attractants to stay on the car.”

But the most difficult part of filming, according to Gary, was convincing both cast and crew that there was nothing to fear and they would not be seriously harmed by these bees. Everyone was stung at least once, he reported, but no one was seriously harmed. (Alas, there’s no report on the number of bee casualties.)

L'Observateur (November 18, 1976).

Regardless of quality, The Savage Bees apparently struck a chord with audiences, cracking the top ten in the Nielsen ratings that week, tying with M*A*S*H for sixth place behind the likes of Charlie’s Angels, Happy Days, and The Six-Million Dollar Man, but ahead of Starsky and Hutch and All in the Family.

Thus, Landsburg and Trueblood would team up again almost immediately; and together, sticking with the theme of multi-legged, killer creepy crawlies, brought to the small screen It Happened at Lakewood Manor (alias Ants!, alias Panic at Lakewood Manner,1977), featuring killer ants, the self-explanatory Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (1977), and Terror Out of the Sky (1978), which was a half-assed sequel to The Savage Bees, where even fewer people are attacked. But that would be about it.

“If we leave insects alone, they won’t bother us,” Landsburg told Marilyn Beck (The Star Phoenix, December 24, 1977). Beck also reported that after completing Terror Out of the Sky, Landsburg was going to veer away from killer insect pictures, saying, “I think we’ve just about said it all, as far as insects are concerned.” And probably more than most ever cared to know, concluded Beck.

Geller, meanwhile, leveraged this success into a theatrical release of The Savage Bees. He had hoped it would see a limited run domestically, but it would open wider in foreign markets. As Geller told Kleiner, "The film would earn more money being exhibited in foreign theaters than being broadcast on American television."

Said Geller, “It’s a profitable deal. With TV, the amount you make is firm. You know what you’ll get beforehand. But in European theaters, if it’s a hit, the film could really bring in a lot of money.” The film would see a theatrical release in, among others, England -- where it was paired up with The Incredible Melting Man (1977) at most venues, and Australia, Denmark (Dræber-bierne), Japan (Kirā bī), West Germany (Mörderbienen greifen an), France (Quand Les Abeilles Attaqueront) and Italy (Bees: lo sciame che uccide).

Thus, The Savage Bees has quite the pedigree. Too bad it still kinda stinks, earnest though it may be.

I seem to recall there was one final big Killer Bee panic when they hopped over the Panama Canal around 1982, which some had hoped would provide some kind of not-quite-natural barrier. There was even talk of erecting some kind of netting around the canal as a further deterrent. Another idea was to create some kind of ‘bee free zone’ to act as some kind of firebreak. Neither plan was implemented.

Thus, nothing seemed to stop them as they reached Mexico by 1985, and they had established their first colonies in the United States by 1990, spreading into Texas and Arizona. And by 1997, the Africanized strains made up to nearly 90-percent of the total bee population in some southern States. And while the colder climate further north does act as a deterrent, colonies had been discovered as far north as Colorado as of 2012.

Luckily for these insects, the hysteria over the Killer Bee phenomenon had all but evaporated by then as this cross-breeding worked both ways and the Africanized bees mellowed out a bit as the gene-pool spread and diluted as they migrated north.

And who knows, as the climate goes to hell and regular bees die off with frightening regularity, wouldn’t it be ironic if this tougher strain, which we thought would be the bane of our existence and the death of us all, turned out to be our only hope to keep the food chain in one piece?

Noodle that for a bit, why don’t ya. 

Originally posted on October 24, 2019, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

The Savage Bees (1976) Alan Landsburg Productions :: Don Kirshner Productions :: National Broadcasting Company (NBC)/ EP: Merrill Grant, Don Kirshner, Alan Landsburg / P: Bruce Geller / D: Bruce Geller / W: Guerdon Trueblood / C: Richard C. Glouner / E: Bud Friedgen, George Hively / M: Walter Murphy / S: Ben Johnson, Michael Parks, Gretchen Corbett, Paul Hecht, Horst Buchholz, James Best