Based on H.F. Heard’s 1941 novel A Taste for Honey, this Freddie Francis film-part of UK science fiction and horror history-predates the 70s killer bee craze by nearly 10 years.

You know, singers don’t just get exhausted today and have to escape from reality. They used to in 1966, Vicki Robbins (Suzanna Leigh, Lust for a Vampire, Son of Dracula) collapses on television and has to go to Seagull Island to get her life back together. Look for a young Ron Wood in the opening number.

Originally adapted from Heard’s novel by Robert Bloch, director Freddie Francis and writer Anthony Marriott worked to improve the script, but the film was poorly received, perhaps because it lacked expected stars like Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, which might have influenced its reception.

Bloch never saw the completed film, although he was a gentleman in how he felt about Francis, Marriott and Amicus, the studio that produced the film. He did say, however, that the movie “buzzed off into critical oblivion, unwept, unhonoured and unstung.”

If you want to see a movie with plastic bees glued to the faces of thespians, by all means, this would be that film.