Why do we make the decisions we do? Watch the movies we do? I have to confess that for me a number of strange factors combine to make for some weird choices. For example, Invasion of the Bee Girls is difficult to explain apart from compounding oddities. One is that Amazon Prime auto-suggested it too me (for free). Yes, I have a history of watching bad movies and this definitely fits that bill. Fuzzy-headedness during my weekend afternoon slump time probably played into it. Along with the fact that I’d been researching bees and that brought the movie The Wasp Woman back to mind. Wasp woman, bee girls? It’s free and I’m not going to be able to stay awake otherwise. The movie is about what you’d expect from a low-budget 1970s sci-fi horror film. It did make me think I should read about movies before I watch them rather than after.
Nevertheless, I’m trying to develop an aesthetic for bad movies. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I have a fascination with Ed Wood and his films. I even read a book about him and also read a book on why it’s okay to like movies that we tend to label as bad. No matter how you parse Invasion of the Bee Girls, it’s bad. The acting, the writing, the plot. Still, some of us have a taste for films from the seventies—it’s kind of a nostalgia trip since I was really only becoming aware of the odd world of science fiction about then. Nicholas Meyer, who wrote the initial screenplay wanted his name removed after he saw the changes that’d been made. That should be telling you something.
Meyer, while not a household name writer, did pen some good detective stories about Sherlock Holmes, and wrote, uncredited, both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Fatal Attraction. Invasion of the Bee Girls has a somewhat salacious plot that fits the Zeitgeist of the seventies of which I was unaware, growing up. The seventies were my sci-fi high point, it was good escapist material for someone living in a situation less than ideal for day-to-day living. I watched, for example, Killdozer about that time and thought it was great. Now that streaming is how we watch, the amorphous internet has a record of what we’ve seen and then recommends products for us based on our record. I really thought we outgrew being tracked all the time. Little did any of us know that it was only getting started in high school. And as long as you have a penny to spend, those who track us will try to figure out how to take it. You could get stung.
