The IMDb summary for a certain 1944 British musical comedy seems to have a lot of camp potential: “During World War II, a plane crashes on an island of domineering women.” What’s not to love? But Bees in Paradise, directed by Val Guest, despite a clear level of effort and at least one life-threatening crisis on set, is for the most part excruciating, even at its mercifully brief 71-minute length.
“With a sunbeam in your pocket
With a sunbeam in your pocket
You can face the most depressing day
If you haven’t got a pocket
Keep a sunbeam in your locket
But be sure it doesn’t fly away”
That’s the first production number, introducing us to the Queen Bee (Antoinette Cellier), who presides over a new municipal building being constructed by worker bees happily laying bricks and mortar in a process that seems to evoke Communist pageantry.
The song sounds fluffily charming, but despite a cute honeycomb motif in the set design and sharp, if not especially bee-like costumes, there’s absolutely no life in the music or choreography. The worker bees follow their queen, all of them singing the livelong day, but the lyrics and delivery are completely soulless, and the arrival of the men doesn’t improve things one iota. As my wife said while we were trying to get through this, “It’s as if the British didn’t know how to make music!”
The matriarchal kingdom of Paradise Island laments a declining population that has resulted in only two births (both boys) in the past year and a half. Luckily for them, an Allied bomber runs aground on the island, depositing four potential mates for the island’s 2000-odd domineering women. There’s a love story, of sorts, as the worker bees vie for their attention. For some reason, the most enticing of these heaven-sent bachelors is bespectacled mechanic Arthur (Arthur Askey). Are women that desperate?
In the context of the war, with men in the trenches and women holding down the fort, there may be some justification for the division of domestic labor so quaintly depicted here. But through the eyes of director Guest, a prolific filmmaker who would go on to helm the only slightly less awful Olivia Newton-John musical Toomorrow in 1970, this spectacle goes over like a Luftwaffe dud.
How can you resist a movie whose poster features a bee with eyeglasses? That little buzzer may look adorable, but pay it no mind; its sting isn’t a swift painful poison but a dull slog that seems like it will never end.
Yet there’s one source of life in this film. When Arthur and bis buddy Max (Max Bacon) are wandering near the beach, they unexpectedly see a crocodile charmer battling a pair of gators on the shore. With her scraggly hair, faux-animal print dress and feral gait, Koringa, as the performer is known, faces down the beasts and conquers them in a pre-Herzogian triumph of human over nature, while Arthur and Max cower in fear. What is she even doing in this picture? Koringa is uncredited in this, her only feature film as an actress, but in her few minutes onscreen she doesn’t just steal the movie but she pounces on it and eats it, loudly, mouth open, showing the filmmakers how to entertain the public in time of global strife.
A June 1943 article in the Hartford Courant notes that during the location filming in the seaside town of Torquay, German bombers swung by and left the cast and crew running for cover. “The raiders headed straight for the location,” the article continues. “A bomb fell. Machine gun bullets sprayed the spot, and the planes roared on.” When Askew left the bomb shelter where he sat out the attack, a small boy approached to ask for his autograph. That anecdote is far more entertaining than the movie that people risked their lives to complete.
At the Gaumont cinema in Manchester, home to the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, a 1944 movie listing warned that April 15 was the last day you can catch two features, Jack London and Bees in Paradise. One wonders how Bees got paired up with an American literary biopic. But what else could you do with an atrocity so stingless? Koringa, come and save this hopelessly bland society, you’re our only hope.
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