TERROR OUT OF THE SKY (1978), TARANTULAS; THE DEADLY CARGO (1977)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

From my records I know that I watched TERROR OUT OF THE SKY when it made its TV-movie debut, but I remembered nothing about it except that it was just another "killer bee" movie. I also didn't remember that it was a sequel to 1976's THE SAVAGE BEES, which had a different director and an almost completely different cast, even though TERROR reprises the characters from SAVAGE.

TERROR's director Lee H. Katzin worked on television productions almost exclusively. and most of his shows, like the dismal 1979 SAMURAI, are unexceptional. But he seems to have warmed to his "bee-movie" theme, because he uses a couple of good storytelling tricks to compensate for a low budget and a lot of talking-head scenes. Not long after the credits-- which appear superimposed over a close-up on a single bee, buzzing in a menacing manner the whole time-- Katzin shows one of the main characters, entomologist Jeannie (Tovah Feldshuh), dreaming of her previous encounter with the savage insects. (Reportedly this was a reprise of a scene from the preceding film, refilmed with actress Feldshuh.) For me at least, this worked pretty well to make me more invested in her peril.

The other main characters are Jeannie's boyfriend Nick (Dan Haggerty) and her former professor David (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) David's in charge of the local Bee Institute, and the original "savage bees" got loose on his watch. Naturally, he's less than pleased when another blunder unleashes deadly African bees on the community. Thus Jeannie and David must collaborate on containing the threat again, with Nick somewhat unwillingly dragged along. There's a touch of tension in that David, who was apparently married in the first film and lost his wife in the interim, reveals that he has a thing for Jeannie. She in turn reveals that she crushed on him hard during her days as his student. This minor subplot doesn't have a heavy impact on the plot. Yet the simplicity of the older man-younger woman interaction proves more effective than most of the character-arcs one finds within this film-genre, arcs which tend toward being both overwrought and laughable.

I rate the mythicity at least fair because the bee-busters manage to keep up a good running scientific description of the infernal insects' habits and propensities. This leads to a good suspenseful scene in which Jeannie accidentally duplicates the enclosed horror of her earlier dream. When the bees attack a community carnival, Jeannie and a bunch of Boy Scouts take refuge in a sealed-up bus, and Jeannie can only save the other attendees by slamming on the bus-horn, knowing the bees, hating noise, will swarm toward the bus. The ultimate defeat of the little stingers is also well handled, with a nice dramatic turn for David's character.

In contrast, TARANTULAS THE DEADLY CARGO is absolutely ordinary in every way. There are some minor cosmological touches, as the script informs the viewer that these are a special type of tarantula, and that they have a prey-predator relationship to wasps, which factoid leads to their destruction when they infest another small town. But the script doesn't make the tarantulas interesting as a phenomenon of nature, and they're just barely imposing enough to register as "astounding animals." The human characters are thoroughly forgettable, though Claude Akins stands out as the one practical man who figures out how to stop the arachnids.

The telefilm's only point of interest might be termed "sympathy for the Mayor Murray Hamilton." Innumerable killer-animal movies have followed the pattern set by 1975's JAWS, where the nature of the menace is concealed from the public by some politician bent on keeping the trains running on time. Here the small town's commerce depends on a crop of oranges, and the spiders decide to nest amidst the produce in the local warehouse. The townsfolk must figure out how to squelch the spiders without destroying the crop on which their economy depends. In the end Akins' character does manage to kill the spider and preserve the oranges-- though I tend to think the town would have dubious success selling produce if anyone found out poisonous spiders had been swarming all over the fruits.