WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
In truth, this article was originally supposed to be two articles – Spheksophobia and Apiphobia – separating the fears of bees and wasps. However I thought it would be better to bring them together as the fear of being stung. Yes, I know I could have extended this to such creatures as jellyfish and stingrays in this case but I couldn’t find any horror films relating to them and believe me I tried. If any come out in the future – maybe there will be a second part…
Killer Bees
I found the opening to the film a little bit weird. I get we’re being set up with why Sheriff Lyndon is afraid of bees but would that many stings genuinely kill his dad? What I do like about this, more so because I thought it was being to cheese-fest of a TV movie, is that there’s hidden agenda as far as we know, they are just genuinely dangerous bees! Now, in real life it looks like they’re no more dangerous than your typical honey-bee (unless your allergic of course) but when you’re known as the Africanized killer bee – they’re not a bad choice for a horror film. Not that that’s much to be scared of in this film, which means there is very little that actually goes on in this film other than maybe a death here and there but there is a lot of ridiculing of the local sheriff. This film, once again, puts the leaders of a small town in a bad light as Dittwaller refuses to cancel the honey festival in light of a swarm of killer bees.
The Wasp Woman
This isn’t exactly the type of wasp horror film that you would expect in an article like this. This is much more of a slow burn, body horror caused by the use of wasps. I don’t want to say that the terror that evolves in this film is born from one woman’s vanity because that would be unfair on Janice Stalen’s character as she only chooses to use the queen wasp royal jelly because she has been led to believe that her beauty will save her company. As always things go swimmingly at first until the cat, Zinthrop had previously tested his serum on, becomes aggressive. I started to believe that I had been led up the garden path by the poster for this film but with 20 minutes left, Janice genuinely turns into a wasp! But this only happens a couple of times towards the end and she only kills a few people. Like I said, not exactly the film you expect in an article like this.
Sha ren feng ru qin
It is rare to find an international film in one of these articles. The idea is strangely like that of Killer Bees as it takes place in a small, localised area however with this film it also has a slight hint of Swarmed just this time I think the scientists were making a weapon without realising they were doing so – the fact that the rescue team are so focused on finding N17. The only real problem I have with this film is that there seems to be no possible way the bees have done this much damage to the scientists in the beginning – it must be the introduction of some other creature. For a film (when translated into English) called Killer Bee Invasion you would assume they would be the main focus of the film but even though they kill more people than the Night Dogs do – we see them very little. For me, the introduction of the tribe and the mention of some unknown bloodthirsty creature just muddy the waters. I’ll say this much though, this isn’t that bad a film but I feel this had been anything other than Asian cinema, it may have come across a little cheesy.
Swarmed
I won’t say that this film was any good it just wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Especially since I figured out it was going to be one of those cheesier horror films from the moment we see the CGI wasps early in the film, however I also can’t pretend that the close-up shots of the real wasps didn’t make me feel itchy! The question I ask with these types of films is why? why do scientists feel the need to mess with nature! I think I misunderstood this film originally as I assumed they were trying to make the yellowjackets more aggressive towards each other and that their aggression towards humans is an accidental side-effect. Well, wouldn’t you turn on those who are putting you through traumatic experiments? However, it seems that they were just trying to find a pesticide to eradicate them and accidentally made them more aggressive and dangerous to humans. What confused me a little is why the wasps attack the father and daughter the way they do – the pesticide hadn’t been introduced to them at that point. In a weird kind of way, this film plays out a little bit like Jaws and Piranha where the big-wigs of the town don’t want the big celebration in town shut down even though it puts their people in danger.
The Swarm
This has to be the most violent swarm of bees that have featured in this article considering they take down a helicopter within the first 10 minutes. It seems that this film deals with the same bees as Killer Bees, the Africanized killer bees, but this time it seems they travel to America off their own accord and that is what I can imagine made this film more chilling – no experiments, no mutations, just regular bees from another continent killing innocent civilians. The worst bit for me wasn’t one of the attacks – it was poor Paul’s hallucination of the bee while in hospital that really unnerved me. Probably because they used a real bee to create it instead of some puppet. All the bees shown in this film were real – so much so that Olivia De Havilland was actually stung while filming. I like the fact that this film has a mayor that actually cares about his people! Mayor Tuttle makes sure to have the air raid warning system working in Marysville so that his people can take shelter when the bees attack, unlike Mayor Dittwaller in Killer Bees and Mayor Gibson in Swarmed. This is also the only film that we see kill children, and that is always a brave thing to do in my opinion!
Monster From Green Hell
I’ll be honest, it seems like a really weird thing to do, sending wasps into space. It almost felt like it was done, just to write this film – considering they also send up a chimp and a guinea pig. I thought they had got something wrong as when you first see the giant wasp, it looked like a fly in my opinion but that’s possibly because you don’t see anything passed its face and wings, both of which seem pretty generic for a giant flying insect. I was expecting something a little like Tarantula when they showed the wasp, using camera work to make a real wasp to look large than life but then I guess it might not be as easy to do that with something that flies about, you can’t really control its movements. I can see how this may have been scary when this was originally released in 1957 but with the way the wasp looks just doesn’t send that shiver up my spine. Especially as, for a film that isn’t much more than an hour long, you barely see the wasp and very little suspense is created.
