Synopsis:
In Texas, a deputy sheriff patrolling the countryside sees a car
parked outside an abandoned farmhouse and goes to investigate. The
house is boarded up, but a hole has been ripped in one side. The
deputy climbs up to take a look. As he expects, he finds a group of
itinerants inside. He calls to them, but they do not answer. The
next moment, something launches itself at the deputy from out of the
darkness…. In Blossom Meadow, California, the Ingram family, newly
transplanted from Boston, struggles to adjust to its new life. On
his way to work, lawyer Chad Ingram (Robert Hays) sees a local
Department of Agriculture employee putting up bee traps in some
trees near the road. She tells him that the Sacramento Valley is on
alert for the arrival of the Africanised honey-bee – the so-called
"killer bees". Chad continues on to the farm of apiarist Ken
Oliverti (Michael A. Nickles), who is rearranging his finances on
the eve of his wedding. To Chad’s surprise, Ken does not seem
worried by the news of the killer bees. He explains to Chad that
although the hybrid strain is far more aggressive than the European
honey-bee, he does not believe that there is any real danger. At the
local high school, troubled teenager Tom Redman (Ryan Phillippe) is
elated when the town’s rich kid, Travis (Jeff Johnson), invites him
to a motor race in which his father has a car entered. Overhearing,
Kevin Ingram (Gregory Gordon) is amused by Tom’s subsequent attempt
to behave as if the invitation were no big deal to him. Out on the
road, Travis entertains himself by having his girlfriend, Kristyn
(Mindy Lawson), flash her breasts at passing truck-drivers. The two
pull over by a billboard to make out, not realising that a hive has
been established on the underside of the structure. The next moment,
the teenagers are covered in bees. Travis tries to drive away but
loses control of his car and smashes into a passing truck…. At the
morgue, Travis’s grief-stricken father (Scott Wilkinson) swears
revenge on the truck-driver, but Dr Kelly (Anthony Leger) points out
the self-inflicted scratch marks on the two victims, saying he
thinks they were attacked by something. Examining Travis’s body, he
then finds a dead bee…. The residents of Blossom Meadow gather
around the billboard as the hive is destroyed. Kevin looks on in
concern as the distraught Tom pelts the hive with rocks. Karen
Ingram (Nancy Stafford) exclaims angrily that all the local bees
should be wiped out. She is contradicted by eccentric entomologist
Pruitt Taylor Beauchamp (Dennis Christopher), who points out that
bees are responsible for billions of dollars of produce each year.
Chad, Karen and Beauchamp return to town and have coffee together.
Beauchamp tells the Ingrams that he fears the danger hasn’t been
averted by the destruction of the hive. He also warns them that
while an adult might survive a killer bee attack, as few as five
stings could kill a child or an elderly person. The following
weekend, Ken Oliverti marries his fiancee, Linda (Danielle von
Zerneck). As the guests, including the Ingrams, celebrate, there is
a movement in the trees nearby….
Comments:
I must confess, when I picked up my TV program and saw the listing
for Deadly Invasion, my immediate response was a
cry of, "Whoo hoo! A killer bee film I haven’t seen yet!" – a burst
of enthusiasm that anyone with anything more than a nodding
acquaintance with this strange little subgenre would know was almost
certainly unfounded. There seem to be few subjects than can beat
killer bees for their ability to bring out the very worst in writers
and directors; most of the films that this topic has spawned so far
run the gamut from the thoroughly dull to the gloriously, supremely
dreadful. When I reviewed The Bees (a major guilty
pleasure) way back when, I stated that the best killer bee film was
probably 1976’s Savage Bees. Well, it’s been a few
years and a few more killer bee films since then, and I stand by
that statement: they ain’t getting any better, folks. The problem,
as I see it, is two-pronged: no-one seems to have much interest in
making a good
killer bee film, yet there’s no way any film made now, no matter how
bad, could possibly challenge the rarefied awfulness that is
The Swarm. The only territory that’s left is mediocrity;
and this is certainly where Deadly Invasion sits.
It’s not a bad
movie – or at least, not consistently bad enough to be entertaining
– merely sucky and bland in the worst made-for-TV tradition. The
mistake that most killer bee films make, including The Swarm,
is that they misjudge their audience. They keep trying to make us
care about
the characters. Gimme a break! What we want is bee action, and
plenty of it! But, alas! – the makers of Deadly Invasion
didn’t just fall into this trap, they took a running jump and
cannonballed in: for every one part of bee action, there are easily
three parts soap. From the moment we meet the lovey-dovey Ingrams
and their three just-too-adorable-for-words
children, we just know we’re in for a painful ninety minutes.
(There’s one reason in particular, apart from the obvious, why
Deadly Invasion irritated me so much [well,
actually, there are two; I’ll get to the second one in a moment];
and although I was about halfway through the film before it occurred
to me what that reason was, I thought I’d share it with you now,
just so you understand exactly what watching this film entails. The
problem is – Nancy Stafford's haircut. Intentionally or not [not, I
guess, since this came first], it makes her look just like Catherine
Hicks; and that thought, combined with the general insipidness of
the production, left me subconsciously convinced that I was watching
a particularly dragged-out episode of Seventh Heaven.
It didn’t help my attitude….
Reason #2 is having to watch Robert Hays in this dreck. Urgh….
There’s even a moment early on where he does the Ted Striker "At
this hour"
eyebrow lift, and--- Well, it hurts, that’s all. It just hurts.)
So,
soap. Let’s see…. Native Bostonians, the Ingrams have transported
themselves to rural California and invested in an orchard, thus
setting up the traditional "we can’t afford to leave" subplot.
Lawyer Chad plans, once the orchard is up and running, to cut back
his practice and "work on my novel". Interior decorator Karen frets
that as a working mother, she is neglecting her children. Youngest
child Lucy is having trouble fitting in at school. Her mother buys
her a pet rabbit. Meanwhile, Ken Oliverti’s fiancee, Linda,
struggles to be accepted by her future stepson, Joshua. Aren’t you
just fascinated
by all this? And can’t you feel the
lurrve?
There
is, however, one more soap-strand in Deadly Invasion
that almost makes the rest of it worth putting up with, since it
challenges some of The Swarm in terms of its sheer
stupidity – and I mean that quite literally. Teenager Kevin Ingram’s
best friend is the troubled Tom Redman, portrayed by Ryan Phillippe
in a performance that almost landed him in my "Skeletons Out Of The
Closet" section, only it’s not like Mr Phillippe has ever really
come out of that particular closet, right? We get our first glimpse
of Tom when he comes to give Kevin a ride to school on the back of
his motorbike, and from his very first line of dialogue – "So, what
did Mommy
fix you for breakfast this morning?" – we have him pegged as
sensitive-teen-who-hides-his-pain-behind-a-tough-façade; "tough"
being a relative term here, given that we
are talking about
Ryan Phillippe, after all. (And that stupid little chin beard
doesn’t help, either.) For myself, I’d seen enough by this stage to
predict that Tom would ultimately be revealed as the product of a
broken home, just for maximum contrast with the sweet-as-pie Ingrams
– and whaddya know? Now, I’m sure we were all supposed to be moved
by all of this, and deeply concerned about Tom’s state of emotional
vulnerability, but the brutal truth is, the kid is such a wiener you
really don’t blame his mother for leaving – and by the end of the
film, I doubt you’ll be blaming his father for having taken a few
swings at him, either.
Tom,
you see, is Deadly Invasion’s version of the
Plot-O-Matic 3000; every time the film needs a crisis, Tom does
something stupid. This is a necessity since, unlike most killer bee
films, Deadly Invasion does not follow the experts
who are trying to deal with the crisis, and who naturally have
dangerous encounters with the little horrors, but stays with its
"average family", who by rights shouldn’t encounter them at all.
Obviously, a showdown between the bees and the Ingrams had to be
contrived somehow and, thanks to Tom, they contrived a beauty. Early
in the film, Tom is seen talking to the doomed Travis, who
goodnaturedly invites the boy to accompany him to a motor race in
which his father has a car entered. (It is one of Deadly
Invasion’s few original touches that rich kid Travis,
although a Compleet Jerk, as you would expect, is not also a
Compleet Bastard.) Tom reacts with an embarrassing display of puppy
dog gratitude (which I’m sure is meant to make viewers nod wisely
and say, "See? The poor boy just needs a little friendship and
affection!"), which turns into a still more embarrassing display of
emotional devastation when Travis becomes the bees’ first onscreen
victim. As the fire brigade destroys the hive of bees with a deluge
of soapy water, Tom pelts futile rocks at it. "Travis was the
coolest guy around!" he announces when Kevin tries to intervene. "He
talked to
me – and he let me hang out with him. That’s more than anyone else
in this stinking town ever did!" (Hey, Tom? I hate to break it to
you, buddy, but there’s a reason
for that….) Soon afterwards, it is discovered that the bees have
taken up residence in the Ingrams’ orchard. The Ingrams react,
sensibly enough, by starting to pack their bags. But we can’t have
that, can we? Never fear, Tom’s here. After brooding on Travis’s
grim fate, Tom decides he has to do something to retaliate.
Consequently, he goes to his trailer and collects – a shotgun. Let
me just repeat that. A shotgun.
And so armed, he rides out to the orchard, currently occupied by
about 10,000,000 bees, and blasts away at two masses of them. He
then has the temerity to look surprised when the remaining 9,999,800
bees get just a tad ticked off with him.
While
it comes as no great shock to learn that the makers of
Deadly Invasion had seen The Swarm, it
is rather
startling to realise that they thought that recreating one of the
most hysterically stupid scenes in a film chock full of them would
be a good idea.
And in fact, Deadly Invasion goes The Swarm
one better here. While noxious little Paul Durant eventually
succumbs to his bee-stings, Tom Redman actually
survives to the end of the film.
And guess what, folks? He’s still got plenty more acts of stupidity
up his sleeve….
Because we’re going to have such a deep emotional investment in them
– right? – Deadly Invasion spends some time at the
outset letting us get to know the Ingrams. The bee action doesn’t
kick in until Travis and Kristyn take their fatal drive. (Hmm….beer,
fast car, making out--- Yup, they’re
dead!) This leads to two of the film’s more chucklesome scenes. The
first comes when Travis’s father barges into the morgue – although
not, it
seems, to identify the body; rather, he just hangs around while the
coroner examines the dead teens. Tasteful. The coroner finds a dead
bee on Travis (oh, gee, and I thought killer bees always carried
their dead away with them!?), which leads most of the population of
Blossom Meadows to the fatal billboard. Now, as we all know, you
can’t have a "killer animal" film these days without some Evil
Guv’mint involvement; and while the makers of Deadly
Invasion stopped short of making the bees the result of an
Evil Guv’mint Experiment, they do
feel obliged to serve up, not Evil Guv’mint Sp00ks, exactly, but
Evil Guv’mint….Department of Agriculture employees!? These two
respond to the frantic pleas for help from the Mayor with the
suggestion that information pamphlets be distributed in town, and
"bee drills" introduced to the schools. "That’s all?" demands the
Mayor, appalled by this indifference. "That,"
responds the female E.G.D.A.E., "is the Government’s Africanised
Honey-Bee Draft Action Plan as it now stands" – and then she tilts
her head and gives the Mayor a broad smirk, as if she’d just
zing-ed him past
any possibility of his recovery. She and her fellow E.G.D.A.E. then
drive off. Boo!! Evil
Guv’mint Department of Agriculture employees!!
This
scene also serves to introduce Taylor Pruitt Beauchamp, an eccentric
entomologist (oh, wow, now there’s
a redundancy, right?) who will wander around being the Voice Of Doom
for the next scene or two, until the film just forgets about him.
The makers of Deadly Invasion must have assumed
that no-one watching this had ever seen a killer bee movie before,
because they let Beauchamp crap on and on about bees and their
habits, first at the billboard, and then in town, in company with
the Ingrams. (As he talks, Beauchamp pours
honey all over
his hamburger – hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!
Those wacky entomologists, hey?) It’s hard to know quite how to
react to Dennis Christopher’s performance here. On one hand, it’s a
shameless display of scenery chewing. On the other, it’s the only
instance of colour and movement in the whole film, and given the
lifeless nature of the production overall, it’s hard to be anything
other than grateful for it.
(I
was less grateful, however, for the shot of a bee stinging
Beauchamp, then disembowelling itself, all rendered in glorious
close-up. There’s a Humane Society disclaimer on the credits of
Deadly Invasion, but I guess their concern didn’t
extend past the treatment of Lucy Ingram’s wretched rabbit.)
Of
course, it was clear all along that the callousness and carelessness
displayed by the E.G.D.A.E.s could only lead to more mayhem for the
good citizens of Blossom Meadows, and the bees are next seen
crashing the Oliverti wedding – which, the town being the centre of
a killer bee invasion, is naturally being held in a garden. (See?
Reverend Lovejoy was right!).
The sub-woofers of the band hired to play at the reception set the
bees off this time, and they express their displeasure in a rather
direct fashion. (Everyone’s a critic, I guess.) This leads to an
extended sequence containing much of the traditional screaming and
flailing about and bumping into stuff – and also to one of the
film’s few good moments. Suds a-flying, the heart-rending "child
won’t accept new stepmother" subplot has eaten up an irritating
amount of screentime to this point, but it does pay off here. As the
attack mounts, new bride Linda looks across the lawn to see that her
bratty stepson has collapsed beneath a barrage of bees. She doesn’t
hesitate: pulling up her long white gloves, and dragging her veil
down over her décolletage, she draws a deep breath, hitches up her
train, and bravely wades in…. (Linda and Joshua are reconciled after
this. I just had to tell you that, ‘cos I
knew you’d be
fretting otherwise.) This is enough for the Olivertis: they leave
town, prompting the Ingrams to do the same – or rather, to plan to.
It is at this moment that Tom Redman pulls his masterstroke, which
leaves himself and the entire Ingram clan besieged in their house.
(By the way, can I just say how amusing I find it
that in the midst of an infestation of killer bees, everyone
continues to dress in T-shirts and shorts??)
As
film sieges go, this one doesn’t exactly summon up memories of
Night Of The Living Dead, if you know what I mean.
Given that they are in relative safety, the Ingrams (with help from
Tom, of course) are forced to manufacture a series of crises that
will keep the film running for another thirty minutes or so. First
of all, the bees take out the phone-line –
clever little
bees! Then adorable little Lucy Ingram remembers that her adorable
little bunny rabbit is in her room, where the bees are breaking into
the house. So in she goes, getting her adorable self stung. (What
isn’t so
damn adorable is that Lucy has apparently been keeping that
unfortunate rabbit in the one-foot by one-foot pet carrier it came
home in!) So then we go through the whole routine of adorable Lucy’s
ador---uh, I mean tragic
illness, knowing full well they’re not going to kill the little brat
off – or
her rabbit. About this time, Tom thinks it would be a good idea to
confess his role in the current situation to his fellow siege-ees.
Unfortunately, instead of the Ingrams lining up to take turns at him
with a baseball bat, which you might have expected (and which might
have enlivened the proceedings), his punishment consists of nothing
more forceful than a few of those pathetic movie-world girly slaps
from the teenage daughter, Tracy. Chad Ingram then demonstrates his
sense of proportion by overlooking Tom’s role in the possible death
of his youngest child, but telling him sternly, "If I’d known you
smoked, I wouldn’t have let Kevin hang out with you!" But Tom’s not
done yet, ladies and gentlemen! Kevin Ingram discovers that the bees
have broken into the attic, and jury-rigs a detergent solution
spray-gun to battle them. Unwisely, however, he asks Tom of all
people for help, the fact that Tom has certain difficulties keeping
his head in a crisis apparently not having sunk in with him yet.
Sure enough, although he is asked to do nothing more arduous than
"make sure I have enough hose", Tom freezes. Kevin tries to free the
"tangled" hose, then loses his footing and plunges through the attic
floor into – Lucy Ingram’s bee-infested bedroom. Where else? We then
get the only scene that challenges Tom’s shotgun antics for sheer
hilarity. Kevin, attacked on all sides, dashes to the bedroom door,
only to find he can’t open it. We then cut outside the door, as
Kevin shrieks for help, and a dramatic pan-down shows us that the
door is jammed on the towels placed on the floor earlier to keep the
bees in. Just one slight problem: the towels are on the outside
and the door opens inwards!!
Nevertheless, Kevin continues to bang on the door and wail for help,
not knowing that good ol’ Tom has collapsed in a sobbing heap nearby
and is therefore physically incapable of turning a doorknob….
Well,
a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do; and Chad Ingram finally has
a brainwave, and devises an escape route for his family via a
crawlspace leading to the barn, the existence of which was
established in a less than subtle plot moment early in the film.
Incredibly, Chad includes Tom in his mass rescue, although
personally I doubt that history would have judged him with any
harshness, had he left the useless dweeb to fend for himself (‘cos,
you know, Tom’s so good
at that!). And then – everything just
stops. The bees go away, or so we
assume, and we’re left with shots of the Ingrams cleaning up their
house and a closing crawl that matches the one with which the film
opened (although that
one was read out loud, so that illiterates wouldn’t miss anything),
warning us that the killer bees could
reach Los Angeles by the end of the decade – bum, bum,
buuummmm….
So
there you have it, folks: a killer bee movie with a body count of
two horny teenagers – and I guess you can’t really have a killer
animal film without that
happening, can you? Oh, yeah – and they do (off-camera) kill off a
fat Texas deputy and a bunch of Mes’kins in the opening sequence,
but it’s not like anyone cares about
them, right?
Of
course, if I’d
directed this film, it would have ended with the Ingrams throwing
open their barn doors and staggering out into the safety of the
early morning light – only to be instantly engulfed by killer bees.
And then the whole family – and
that damn rabbit – and
Tom – particularly
Tom – would have died in slow, screaming agony….
….which is probably the
reason why no-one’s ever offered me a chance at directing a sucky TV
movie….
 
Apismellifera scutellata
Doofus incredabilis
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