Invasion of the Bee Girls. That’s a movie I’ve wanted to see ever since I spotted it in video rental stores.
It was always tucked away in the back, high up on the shelf, practically taunting me with its VHS box. Alas, when I was still seeing it in video stores, I wasn’t mature enough to watch it.
But what is Invasion of the Bee Girls?
It’s a sci-fi exploitation film written by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Denis Sanders—two very notable names. If you’re a Star Trek fan, you might recognize Nicholas Meyer as the guy behind the best Star Trek films. He wrote and directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. He also wrote, but did not direct, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
Invasion of the Bee Girls was the first movie he ever wrote.
Denis Sanders, meanwhile, is something of a cult figure in cinema. His most famous film is probably Shock Treatment—a wild movie, and if you haven’t seen it, you absolutely should. He also did the screen adaptation of The Naked and the Dead and directed the documentary Soul to Soul, about American musicians performing in Ghana. It’s one of the best music documentaries of the ’70s.
Invasion of the Bee Girls wasn’t the last thing Sanders directed, but it was probably the last movie of his to get a theatrical release. And what a movie.
The Premise
Being an exploitation film, there’s a lot of nudity. Pretty much every woman in this film shows her boobs, and there are a few butts. No genitals, though—this isn’t an X-rated film. But it does have quite a few triggering elements, and you probably don’t want to watch it around children. Or teenagers, for that matter.
Now, the premise—well, that’s a doozy.
The film takes place in a small town full of scientists, where men are suddenly dropping dead. The cause of death? Exhaustion. Specifically, they’re dying in the throes of passion—right in the middle of sex, their hearts just give out.
The U.S. government assigns the FBI to the case. Mind you, they only send one agent, which tells you how much of a priority they considered it at first. But given the title—Invasion of the Bee Girls—you can probably guess what’s behind these mysterious deaths.
That’s not a spoiler. If the key plot point is in the title, it doesn’t count as a spoiler. A good portion of the film is spent with investigators trying to figure out who is killing these men and how they’re doing it.
The Gender Subtext
Some say this movie is nothing more than an excuse to gawk at boobs. I disagree.
In fact, the movie itself explains its own subtext—and it’s actually pretty interesting. In less exploitative hands, this could have been a truly compelling film. The core idea here is about how men fear the thing they desire most. They desire sex, but they also fear it will kill them. Specifically, heterosexual men desire the love of a woman, but they fear that a woman will suck the life out of them—literally and figuratively.
I’m not saying that’s a rational fear. I’m saying that’s what this movie is about.
And here’s something funny: While watching, I realized this premise wouldn’t work if the genders were reversed. You couldn’t have a movie where women keep dropping dead after sex with men—not in this style, at least. If you flipped the genders, it wouldn’t be science fiction anymore. It would be real life.
Women do die at the hands of men, often in the context of intimate violence. And the scene that triggered this thought for me—trigger warning—was one where a female character is sexually assaulted by three men. She’s almost raped, and the film plays it off as just another plot device. The male hero swoops in, saves the day, and that’s that.
The fact that sexual assault was such a common, almost casual trope in films from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s speaks volumes about rape culture—then and now. And that makes the whole premise of Invasion of the Bee Girls… well, strange.
The Lesbian Subtext
One thing that stood out to me is the film’s very real lesbian subtext. Or rather, not even subtext—it’s practically text.
The Bee Girls are heavily implied to be lesbians. They hunt down men, essentially to steal their seed. And, of course, in classic pulp sci-fi logic, this movie suggests that you could just flip a switch to make a woman a lesbian. Because, you know, science fiction.
This ties back to an interesting discussion I once heard: If a woman is walking through the woods, would she rather encounter a bear or a man? A lot of women would say the bear, because at least the bear isn’t malicious. That’s the kind of fear this movie plays with—except, of course, from a male perspective.
Yes, women can kill men, and yes, women do commit acts of intimate violence. But society doesn’t condition us to think of women as threats the way it conditions us to see men as threats. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong—I’m saying that’s just how it is.
And I bet there are plenty of women who, if they could, would turn off their attraction to men entirely. Some do, especially after experiencing trauma. But desire is a powerful thing.
And I can’t believe I’m talking about all of this in the context of Invasion of the Bee Girls.
Why This Matters
This is a dumb movie. It was not meant for deconstruction.
And yet, I genuinely believe that throwaway films like this—the ones designed purely for titillation—are the ones that need deconstruction the most. Even 50 years later, they tell us so much about the world we live in now.
The boys who grew up watching Invasion of the Bee Girls? They’re the ones in power now. They’re our politicians, our decision-makers. This is the world they were raised in, and for many of them, it’s the world they want to return to.
And honestly? We’re not that far removed from the world of Invasion of the Bee Girls. I just watched it on Amazon Prime.
Mind you, I’m probably one of the few people watching it now and actually thinking about it. But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
We live in a world shaped by gendered violence. Invasion of the Bee Girls is a fantasy about gendered violence—but flip the script, and it’s no longer fantasy. It’s just reality.
The 1970s, when this movie was made, was a time when cultural norms around gender and sex were being challenged—heterosexuality, monogamy, male authority in the household. Did we go too far in some respects? Maybe in the sense society back then didn’t value consent.
Until very recently, we didn’t even talk about consent. When I was in school, sex ed didn’t cover it. Now that I’m a father—a father of a daughter—I talk about consent all the time.
So what does Invasion of the Bee Girls really say? It speaks to the fear that desire leads to death. And by the end of the movie? Heterosexuality reigns supreme. The social order is preserved. The male protagonist gets to have his cake and eat it too.
Is Invasion of the Bee Girls a good movie? No. Is it worth watching? No. But is it worth critiquing? Absolutely.
And that’s why I find it fascinating, even though I don’t recommend it.
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