Basil's Blog: MST3K: Episode 905

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

MST3K: Episode 905 - The Deadly Bees

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes in order. More about that here and here.

Episode 905: The Deadly Bees

First aired: Sci-Fi Channel on 9 May 1998
Availability: MST3KVideos.com fan copy

Featuring music by The Birds.
Get it?

When they have a Ron Wood film festival, if they don't include The Deadly Bees on the program, it's not complete.

Yes, the actor that played the rock star party guest in 9 1/2 Weeks -- oh, and he also plays guitar for some music band -- is in this film.

Before he was in The Rolling Stones and before he was in Faces, Ron Wood was in The Birds who were in this film.

Yes, it's just a brief scene where The Birds are playing, but you can clearly see Ron Wood jumping around. He plays the guitarist, in case you were wondering.

The pop singer and the killer.

The group is there, singing a song on some British show, sorta like American Bandstand, but it's not American and the host seems more like Max Quordlepleen than like Dick Clark.

Ron Wood was destined for greater things, however. The others in this movie? None of them quite had the career Ron Wood has had, but the leads in this film all had careers in movies and on TV that began before The Deadly Bees and would go on well after it.

The movie killed no one's career. Didn't help, though.

Here's what the movie's about:

A pop star collapses so her manager sends her to relax in the most relaxing place in England, an apiary run by The Lockhorns with a creepy neighbor who looks kinda like Porthos who also raises bees, only either Porthos or Number Two is raising Deadly Bees to kill people, but we're not supposed to know which, but it's really easy to figure out, so anyway the Deadly Bees kill a dog, apparently thinking it's people, but then they kill the woman who owns the dog at the place where the pop star is staying, so the head of the local police, who runs a pub, investigates while his daughter flirts around the house, and there's a fire or something, so it ends up that Porthos is the killer, and Number Two saves the girl and a man with a bowler hat walks by greeting everyone. The end.


Everyone's favorite pasttime?	Leaning on doorjambs.

It's not a stick-icepicks-in-your-eyes bad, but it's a bad film. Just not a horribly bad film. It's like they almost got close to getting it right.

Observer and Observer come to take Observer with them.

Besides some decent British TV/movie actors, the screenplay was written by Robert Bloch, although they "fixed it" after he turned it over. He wrote it with Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff in mind. That might would've worked. But, they weren't in it and, with the changes the director and producers made, the whole thing didn't work.

Mike & the Bots had lots of fun with this one. I did too.

The Host Segments are pretty funny. The Observers find Observer and want to take him back to ... well, they aren't exactly clear on that. Pearl and Bobo sing with Observer, convincing him to stay. Mike tries to communicate like a bee. Crow sings a song to the cigarette lady. Oh, and the guy with the bowler hat walks bay a couple of times.

The end credits, after dropping thanks to the Authors of the First Amendment in Season Eight, finally drop their thanks to Teachers of America.