I had no initial plans of watching this. As a matter of fact, as of a few days ago, I didn’t even know this movie existed. But see, during the past week, I’ve been dealing with my own bee invasion in my apartment. Yellowjackets to be exact. So I figured there had to be a movie somewhere that could teach me how to properly deal with this nuisance. Thankfully, Deadly Invasion stars Robert Hays (Ted Striker from Airplane!). So obviously, I knew he would take this situation seriously. Surely.
I have vague memories of news stories in the early-to-mid 90s about swarms of Africanized bees coming to the U.S. to bring overwhelming doom. And after looking into it, sure, it seems like there were a few isolated incidents, but overall it was just overblown media panic. Turns out, the real killer bees we got were the Wu-Tang Clan. And ya know what? That’s pretty awesome.
Well, okay, obviously we also got this movie, Deadly Invasion. A made-for-TV film, which premiered on, yeah, you know it, Fox.
Basically, a family moves to a small California town and picks the absolute worst time to relocate. A swarm of Africanized killer bees descends on the town, leaving Hays and his family to figure out how to survive this buzzing ordeal.
It’s about everything you’d expect from a TV movie. Cheap production with a formulaic story & dialogue. It checks all the boxes. To its credit, I guess it does an okay job at making the bees feel like a threat. In a budget-friendly, ridiculous way. And they did indeed use real bees with professional assistants on hand. But it has those moments where I couldn’t contain my laughter. Unintentionally, of course. Like the swarm cutting off the phone lines. Classic move.
The thing of note would be the cast. We established the lead, but you get early appearances from Ryan Phillippe, years before I Know What You Did Last Summer and Gina Philips (Jeepers Creepers). The director, Rockne S. O’Bannon went on to create the cult-favorite sci-fi show, Farscape. So, okay, it worked out for some. And as for Hays, it seems he stayed on the made-for-TV route with… Unabomber: A True Story. Uh, well, hey, how great is Airplane!, though.
Honestly, the boredom level is off the charts. You end up feeling like you’re waiting forever for something to happen. It wants to be Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, but ends up more like The Birds II: Lands End. That seems very fitting actually. Even though that movie has a much more fun climax. Deadly Invasion just ends on a dull note. With an ominous text warning that the bee onslaught has started, and will be hitting Los Angeles by the end of ‘95. But in the year of Waterworld and Cutthroat Island, those were the true Hollywood disasters.
And of course, I didn’t actually need this movie’s help on how to deal with my own personal insect problem. I simply decided to burn the building down instead.
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