Denis Sander’s Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973) is a science fiction film with a high-concept premise. Women with the genetic material of bees have an insatiable desire to have sex. Despite having a gratuitous amount of female nudity, it is also a cautionary tale about promiscuity: any man who has sex with a Bee Girl will die.
Despite some hints of lesbianism between the Bee Girls, they only choose males as their victims. John Grubowsky, a married man, is found dead in a motel room after having sex with Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford)—the Queen Bee. An autopsy reveals he died from a heart attack caused by sexual exhaustion. Dr. Harris and her Bee Girls use sex as a weapon against men.
The social anxieties of the 1970s concerning sexually transmitted diseases are reflected in the plot. In a town hall meeting, the officials fear that a new STD may be killing the men. In the early 1970s, the number of cases of gonorrhea was increasing at an exponential rate. The Bee Girls are symbolic of someone who has an STD.
Despite the increasing number of deaths, many men in Peckham don’t want to stop fooling around. Following the town hall meeting, two married men, Barney Braddock and Herb Kline, are seduced by Dr. Harris, and suffer the same fate as Grubowsky. There is no evidence that Dr. Harris is trying to punish men who commit adultery, but the consequences of cheating on their wives serves as a warning to the viewer. Three adulterers die after having sex with a Bee Girl.
The film reminds the viewer that death from sex is preventable. To prevent more deaths, the citizens in Peckham are advised to practice abstinence, which results in mockery and outrage. After Nora Kline is transformed into a Bee Girl, she tries to seduce Captain Peters, but he resists her seductive charms. Men who practice abstinence live, but those who give in to sexual temptation end up dead.
The funeral scene underscores the film’s theme about sex. The minister quotes from the New Testament: “For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” All the men who die have sex outside of a committed relationship. They suffer the consequences of having sex sex with a Bee Girl.
In nature, a queen bee only mates once to reproduce. The Bee Girls have an uncontrollable urge to mate, but they cannot get pregnant due to the radiation that transformed them, so they keep having sex with men. Their inability to conceive could be symbolic of birth control, which is what made the sexual revolution of the 1960s possible. The Bee Girls have been liberated from the historical constraints of sex which would normally result in a pregnancy. They represent unrestrained sexual freedom.
A film’s theme is often revealed by the consequences of the characters’ actions. Invasion of the Bee Girls reminds the viewer that promiscuity can have deadly consequences. Although Susan Harris and her Bee Girls kill promiscuous men, they are not divine agents of God’s judgment. Instead, they tempt men to cheat on their wives. As in film noir, the Bee Girls are femme fatales—seductive women who lead wayward men to their doom.
Christopher John Lindsay 
Thank you, Mitch. I love watching 20th Century films, and it’s interesting to see how often they reflect the the time they were made.
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SO of it’s era!
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