INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS

   Film (1973). Centaur/Sequoia. Dir Denis Sanders, starring William Smith, Anitra Ford, Victoria Vetri, Rene Bond. Screenplay Nicholas Meyer. 85 mins. Colour.

   This softcore erotic movie - perhaps inspired by The WASP WOMAN (1959) - has deservedly developed a minor cult reputation for the outrageousness of its tacky if typical exploitation premise, that SEX is death. A woman becomes a nymphomaniacal but sterile "queen bee", and conscripts housewives and other women to join the group; they are covered with jelly and irradiated, and emerge as beautiful human-seeming ALIENS, wearing dark glasses to conceal their insect eyes. They kill their male victims through repeated induction of orgasm. The story hinges on the murder investigation. Part parody, the film is intermittently amusing and arguably perversely proto- FEMINIST. Meyer went on to cowrite The NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA (1975), to write and direct TIME AFTER TIME (1979),to direct STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982), to direct The DAY AFTER (1983), to cowrite STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986), and to cowriteand direct STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1992). He has also written excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiches (Sir Arthur Conan DOYLE.)

   PN