BEES IN PARADISE (1944)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

Two years after Val Guest wrote KING ARTHUR WAS A GENTLEMAN--which contained a minor "fallacious figment" trope -- for British comedian Arthur Askey, Guest both directed and co-wrote this oddball trifle in which four British airmen get stranded on an "island of women." (I say "four," but it's really just Askey and three guys who exist to feed him lines but play nearly no real role in the story.)

Fantasy-fans have celebrated Guest for his rigorously logical sci-fi dramas like QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, but he did a lot more comedy than he did "straight" sci-fi, and it's clear that Guest regarded BEES IN PARADISE as nothing but a lark. His script doesn't bother giving any history for the titular island of Paradise. The uncharted desert isle lies somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, but it's populated entirely by beautiful young Englishwomen, with the exception of one older woman and one underage child. The society's rules were written down some time back and kept in a temple, but there's no sense as to how long ago this happened, or who founded this gynococracy. The ladies have apparently modeled their culture on that of honeybees, for many of them wear similarly-striped apparel, and they only allow men to come in and propagate new children if they agree to become "drones" whose fate is to die after breeding. Said drones are killed indirectly, being cast from the island in one way or another, which is a call-out to the way real male bees get expelled from the hive when the queen doesn't need them any more. Finally, even though a lot of girls dress up in FLASH GORDON costumes and though the upper ramparts of their city are dominated by Islamic-looking minarets, all the occupants know current slang and references (like the names of movie stars) and they have modern conveniences like indoor plumbing.

So, at the very time the airmen parachute down to Paradise, the queen and her advisors happen to be in need of new men, preferably to breed a new generation of girl babies. (What the bee-girls do with the male infants is not specified.) Usually the queen herself is the one in need of a new consort, but for some reason the main rapacious female is one Rouana (Anne Shelton), who is in charge of the government's "propaganda." Rouana immediately claims shrimpy Arthur Tucker (Askey), but though the other girls talk a lot about their frustrations, there's only one other hookup between an airman and an island girl, and it's the girl that Arthur wants. Rouana, though, tricks Arthur into going through a ritual of betrothal, and this leads to silly scenes in which she tries to persuade him to join in a mad honeymoon of passion before he has to take the big sleep. What little plot there is revolves around Rouana's pursuit of Arthur, which is ambivalently fulfilled at the climax, and everything else consists of episodic routines, ranging from a girl's rugby contest (over the unclaimed guys, of course) and a strange jungle-woman who plays games with a small alligator. 

Though I doubt this opus ever made it to American shores, the performers all speak very clear, unaccented English, and the script, as mentioned before, rattles off half a dozen references to American movie stars, not to mention "Mister Disney's Bambi." I grant the movie a fair mythicity rating simply for carrying through with the conceit of female "workers" who only use the "drones" to breed and then dispose of them. But most of the jokes  and the songs (oh, yeah, it's also a musical) are instantly forgettable.