ROGER CORMAN and CHEESE part IX: "The Bees" and Tony's Meat-Trio Pizza

The majority of Roger Corman productions made money - that's due largely to the fact that he rarely spent money, and when it shows, it shows. But even beyond ticket sales, these movies managed to make a profit in other ways. 

In the case of 1978's The Bees, Roger supposedly took a sizable check from Warner Bros. providing he would delay the release of the film until their own bee movie, The Swarm, had its run in theaters. Regardless of whether or not that was a good deal, the quality of The Bees wouldn't have helped its chances; it's basically the boring 1950s SciFi snoozer updated for the "Natural Horror" trend of the 1970s. An extremely plot-heavy story cuts back and forth between bureaucratic jargon and pseudo science stuff, but sometimes there's a break and we get to watch John Saxon and Angel Tompkins flirt their way through actual swarms of bees, often creating a confusing mood throughout the picture. When the fake bees show up and attack unsuspecting character actors and bell-bottomed extras it gets amusing but not enough to sustain all 83 minutes. It could have been much shorter considering there's enough stock footage in here to make an entirely separate movie consisting only of fighter planes and Eisenhower-era civilians running through city streets.

 

While it was entirely free of graphic violence and nudity, it was still very much the stereotypical Roger Corman production - it was just more Atomic Age than Disco Age. The same can be said of Tony's frozen pizzas which have been around as long as we can remember (though most folks will tell you the recipe has changed over time). The reason it's sustained for so many decades is because it lives up to the very idea of what a frozen pizza should be; it meets expectations in a psychologically pleasing way. We're not seeking gourmet cuisine, we know it's just a circular ice cube of processed cheese and sauce but that's still a standard, and despite any changes in its elements, Tony's still meets that standard: flavorful, crispy, consistent, cheap. The generic "meat-trio" of toppings actually didn't add or take away much but that's only because all the basic ingredients were on-point. You get what you expect -- sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes not. Case in point:

The Movie: D+

The Pizza: B+