I loved watching television game shows in the early 1970’s. In 1972, CBS started showing The Price is Right, starring Bob Barker. This was an updated version of a successful show from nearly a decade earlier. Contestants guessed the prices of various products and some of the prizes they could win. I enjoyed seeing the attractive models who posed with the products being promoted. My favorite model was Anitra Ford. I found out a few years after this series started that Anitra Ford also appeared in several movies around the same time she was on The Price is Right. I would not see most of these until many years later. My favorite that had her in a primary role is Invasion of the Bee Girls.
Anitra plays a scientist doing research on bees and their culture. In the community around her research center, young men start dying of exhaustion during sex so naturally the federal government sends investigators to find out why. It turns out that Anitra’s all female group of researchers have become bee girls. Along the way, the viewer is treated to a scene of where a woman is transformed into a bee girl by stripping her nude, pouring something like honey over her body, then allowing bees to cover her while she is exposed to radiation. After this Peter Parker-type process, the bee girls have the ability to sap the life right out of their sex partners. The good girl co-star of the film is rescued by the male government agent at the start of her transformation process. The agent is able to shoot the equipment with his pistol which releases a gas that kills all of the bee girls.
This film has nudity but no graphic sex. It is a typical 1973 R rated movie. The goofy title and plot line are the main things that drew me to this film, but the added bonus was to get to see more of Anitra Ford than I ever did on The Price is Right. It would be re-released in 1981 with the title Graveyard Tramps. I don’t understand why anyone thought this was a better title.
