Killer Bees a made-for-TV thriller, (airdate: February 26, 1974) directed by Curtis Harrington, is the story of a strong willed woman with a curious power. Madame von Bohlen (Gloria Swanson) matriarch of a family and controller of the family wine business rules her family with an iron hand. What is becoming increasingly obvious, after a series of mysterious bee attacks, is that she also has psychic control over a swarm of bees that reside in her vineyard. This silly, fun thriller has a great cast including Kate Jackson, Craig Steven and Edward Albert, and they all seem to be having as much fun with their roles as Gloria Swanson. Swanson attacks her role with the same feline energy that make her a star. She is outstanding as the controlling, iron-willed woman who will stop at nothing to get her way. A fun time is had by all in this outlandish, well-acted thriller.

Killer Bees was the only full length television movie that Gloria Swanson did.

The film garnered a small degree of success and is still shown occasionally. Swanson had no qualms about filming some of her scenes covered with bees - after all, she had let a lion paw her in 1919 in Male and Female!

Filmed in what is now Francis Ford Coppola's house in Rutherford, this made-for-TV movie puts a pretty good twist on biodynamic farming. The van Bohlen family owns a winery so important that their town near St. Helena is named after them. The family is completely controlled by Swanson, a silent-film diva in her next-to-last film part (she played herself as a passenger in the disaster film "Airport 1975" the following year). The van Bohlens successfully specialize in sweet wines, a reminder that America's love for dry wines is a relatively recent phenomenon. When Jackson, the fiancee of Swanson's grandson Albert, first tastes one, she says, "It's strangely sweet, as if there were honey ..." And just then a bee goes after her. Don't divulge the trade secrets!

In fact, the van Bohlens have figured out how to deal with the shortage of trained viticultural workers in Napa Valley. Their swarm of Africanized bees follows Swanson's orders, including attacking people who trespass on the vineyard. And they're 100 percent organic. One of the family's winemaking techniques is novel: Albert's father, explaining why the family reserve Chenin Blanc is so delicious, says, "The very least touch of honey added to wine as it ferments ..." Wonder if anyone other than meadmakers has tried that? Some scenes in a nondescript diner remind us how Napa culinary culture has changed, but none more than this line from Albert to Jackson: "You think you're going to meet a nice American family -- frozen dinners, bowling on Wednesdays." He then explains that his grandmother is European; hence, no frozen dinners. Damn 1974 Europeans, didn't they understand how food technology had advanced? Set the bees after them.

The following is an excerpt of an exclusive interview of Killer Bees Director Curtis Harrington from the Terror Trap Website. You can access the whole interview by clicking here.

CH: Best of all my TV horror films though is KILLER BEES (1974), which I'm very proud of.
TT: That was next on our list. It looks like it could have been a difficult shoot because of the subject matter.
CH: It was very difficult to work with live bees. It was a real conundrum to work all that out. The interesting thing about that is that we had planned to use drones. You know, drones don't have stingers.
But the season was past for drones. We had these worker bees and the bee wrangler (the guy who took care of the bees for the production) came up with an extraordinary idea. At least I think it was.
He would have a crew of people working all day long who would put the bees in dry ice and the cold would make them go to sleep...like they're anesthetized. And then we had these people who would take the bees out of the container one by one and squeeze them a little...
TT: Squeeze them?
CH: Well, so the stinger would protrude and they would chop it off with a doctor's scalpel.
TT: Fascinating. Sort of like cleaning shrimp.
CH: Yes. So all the bees in the film are bees that have been treated that way. Otherwise, they would have all been stinger bees. We had a whole staff of people with the doctors' scalpels.
Maybe ten people at a table, working on the bees so we would have enough of them. Remember, Gloria Swanson had a lot of bees on her. It was a fascinating process to watch.
TT: Tell us the story about how Bette Davis almost played the role of the German matriarch.
CH: Barry Diller, one of the heads of ABC at the time, wanted Bette to play the part. I had met Miss Davis socially and one day the producers came and they said, "Bette Davis is on the phone and she wants to speak to you."
And so I came on the phone and the first thing Bette said to me was...I'll never forget this...this is a direct quote: "I'm absolutely terrified! I'm so sorry I can't do this part."
She explained to me that her doctor wouldn't let her do it because if there was any danger at all of being stung, she would go into anafeletic shock, you know?
TT: The medical condition where one bee sting could start a chain reaction and kill you?
CH: Yes, indeed. So her doctor would not let her do the picture. But Gloria Swanson had no fear of the bees at all. She was very ecologically oriented.
TT: So had Bette been able to do it, you would have proceeded with her?
CH: Yes. Barry Diller was the head of the network and that's whom he wanted.
TT: Do you think she could have carried off the German accent at that point in her career.
CH: I doubt it. (Laughs.) But when she bowed out, I was THRILLED to be able to work with Swanson.
TT: What was it like working with the Queen of the Silents, Miss Norma Desmond herself?
CH: Well, as you might expect she was very professional and utterly charming. And I got along with her extremely well. We remained friends after the production and up until she died.
TT: What a masterful face Swanson had...long and almost like a marionette.
CH: It was a wonderful face. It's simply one of the great movie faces.
TT: And she looked so healthy for her age. She was born in 1897 so she was about 77 at the time!
CH: Yes, she looked great...and here she was playing a woman at the age of 80. That poor cameraman...I remember the first shot we made of Gloria, he turned to me and said, "I don't think I can make her look much over 40."
TT: Well preserved, without a doubt. As with THE CAT CREATURE, we wish KILLER BEES had been released on home video...
CH: I wish it would have been too.
TT: There are some memorable set pieces and excellent setups in KILLER BEES. The ending with Kate Jackson taking over the 'duties' for Swanson...the sequence in which the telephone repairman is killed...those are great scenes.
CH: Well, thank you...
TT: What do you recall about working with the young Jackson?
CH: She hated the bees. And she especially hated the scene where we put some bees on her. She was shuddering and had a totally different attitude than Gloria.
TT: Gloria looks really comfortable with them. It's actually a beautiful scene where she's wearing the large hat and talking to them.
CH: Her character sees them as some of God's creatures. Whereas Kate just found it repellant and horrible to feel them on her skin even though she didn't have very many in that scene in the tower room which is filled with bees.