5/24/2007
In honor of the cicada invasion, we continue talking about some of the killer insect films that have graced the television screen. I know I went overboard yesterday talking about my old favorite, “Beginning of the End” with the giant grasshoppers- but there are so many more!
There have been way too many movies about killer bees- I’d make a joke about “killer B-movies” but you guys are probably way ahead of me! There was a movie called “Killer Bees”-actually, two of them! 1974’s “Killer Bees” has aging movie queen Gloria Swanson as a woman who can actually control a flock of killer bees, bedeviling none other than “Charlie’s Angel” Kate Jackson! The other is a 2002 flick where a truck overturns, releasing said buzzing murderers- but the town’s sheriff can’t convince people that they are a real (even if computer generated for the film) menace! There’s a British film called “the Deadly Bees” that is similar to the first “Killer Bees” I mentioned. And, there’s “Invasion of the Bee Girls”- where women are being turned into “queen bees’ who kill their men while …uh… “mating.” It stars a “Price is Right” ‘Barker’s Beauty’ from the early 70s. Come on down!!!
On the night-time “Koz Zone” back in 1989, I showed a movie called “Bug!” (not to be confused with the current Ashley Judd flick) It was a great William Castle exploitation flick, in which an earthquake released these killer cockroaches who could shoot flames out of their rears. Really! They also spelled out words. Really! And the set for an early attack, where a “BUG!” set a woman’s head on fire- was actually the same set used for the “Brady Bunch’s” home. Really! I’m not making all this up!
You can’t mention big bugs without “Them!” The giant ants of that 1954 epic were truly frightening, and many consider this the first of the “big bug” movies of the Fifties.(This is not a sequel to “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman”-“Attack of the Big Aunts!”)
“The Deadly Mantis” was another giant bug, “preying” on the likes of Craig Stevens (the reporter in “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll, etc.” and TV’s “Peter Gunn”) and William Hopper (no relation to the “Beginning of the End” GRASS Hoppers) –the mantis is released from the Arctic (?) where it has been frozen…sounds like a party drink- a frozen mantis…
Another big bug we had on Sven was the “Monster from Green Hell”- giant wasps who attacked Jim Davis, who went on to battle a bigger pest- J.R. Ewing on “Dallas!”
Got a favorite killer insect flick I haven’t mentioned? Fill us in- svengoolie@wciu.com - and send along your Cicada Attack ’07 stories, as well- since that’s what got me started on this whole bug thing…
There have been way too many movies about killer bees- I’d make a joke about “killer B-movies” but you guys are probably way ahead of me! There was a movie called “Killer Bees”-actually, two of them! 1974’s “Killer Bees” has aging movie queen Gloria Swanson as a woman who can actually control a flock of killer bees, bedeviling none other than “Charlie’s Angel” Kate Jackson! The other is a 2002 flick where a truck overturns, releasing said buzzing murderers- but the town’s sheriff can’t convince people that they are a real (even if computer generated for the film) menace! There’s a British film called “the Deadly Bees” that is similar to the first “Killer Bees” I mentioned. And, there’s “Invasion of the Bee Girls”- where women are being turned into “queen bees’ who kill their men while …uh… “mating.” It stars a “Price is Right” ‘Barker’s Beauty’ from the early 70s. Come on down!!!
On the night-time “Koz Zone” back in 1989, I showed a movie called “Bug!” (not to be confused with the current Ashley Judd flick) It was a great William Castle exploitation flick, in which an earthquake released these killer cockroaches who could shoot flames out of their rears. Really! They also spelled out words. Really! And the set for an early attack, where a “BUG!” set a woman’s head on fire- was actually the same set used for the “Brady Bunch’s” home. Really! I’m not making all this up!
You can’t mention big bugs without “Them!” The giant ants of that 1954 epic were truly frightening, and many consider this the first of the “big bug” movies of the Fifties.(This is not a sequel to “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman”-“Attack of the Big Aunts!”)
“The Deadly Mantis” was another giant bug, “preying” on the likes of Craig Stevens (the reporter in “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll, etc.” and TV’s “Peter Gunn”) and William Hopper (no relation to the “Beginning of the End” GRASS Hoppers) –the mantis is released from the Arctic (?) where it has been frozen…sounds like a party drink- a frozen mantis…
Another big bug we had on Sven was the “Monster from Green Hell”- giant wasps who attacked Jim Davis, who went on to battle a bigger pest- J.R. Ewing on “Dallas!”
Got a favorite killer insect flick I haven’t mentioned? Fill us in- svengoolie@wciu.com - and send along your Cicada Attack ’07 stories, as well- since that’s what got me started on this whole bug thing…
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