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Bees have played more roles in movies than Johnny Depp. They’ve been killers, TV hosts, scapegoats, torturers, and even transportation. With such a wide range of characters available, we took a look at the 10 best movie scenes involving bees. Undoubtedly we left off your favorite, so feel free to angrily let us know.
10 Best in Show – Busy Bee Missing
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Best in Show is a movie all about neurotic dog owners, but it’s a squeaky toy named Busy Bee that throws a wrench in one couple’s blue ribbon dreams. Watching Parker Posey threaten to have a housekeeper deported because she can’t find Beatrice’s Busy Bee is nothing short of genius. The poor pet store owner definitely didn’t know he was dealing with a future vampire when he suggested a bear in a bumble bee costume was a suitable alternative.
9 Tommy Boy – Save Yourselves!
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Tommy Callahan isn’t good at much, but he certainly sold a bee attack. Why pay a speeding ticket when you can just pull off to the side of the road, hop out of your car, and pretend to have your flesh being torn away by a fictional swarm of bees? Admit it, you’ve 100% considered using this technique. Unfortunately, Tommy Boy is so awesome that just about every cop has seen the movie. They might let you go just for being ballsy enough to try it though.
8 The Swarm – Caine is Able
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If there’s one person I want running the show when a swarm of killer bees come to town, it’s Michael Caine. He’s seems so calm in the face of massive devastation in The Swarm. Not even a playground littered with the bodies of dead school children can phase him. Why do they fall? He also knows fun facts about bees, like that they don’t function well under 50 degrees. It’s that sort of knowledge, delivered with an accent, that can keep people calm and collected during a disaster.
7 Bee Movie – Larry King’s Common
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Bee Movie might be entirely about bees, but one stood head and stinger above the rest. That’s Bee Larry King, who’s a spot on replica of human Larry King right down to his stupid statements of how things were back in his day. While not technically breaking the 4th wall, the acknowledgement and mockery of real-world Larry King makes the scene. It’s also a good way to steal a character from real life without pissing off movie bloggers.
6 Pure Luck – Bees Onboard
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If you watch Pure Luck, you can see what’s going to happen from a mile away. Martin Short’s character is severely allergic to bees, and there’s nothing Danny Glover can do to stop the eventual bee sting. Normally a simple sting and swell wouldn’t be all that funny, but you can’t help laughing when tiny Martin Short balloons up into the bastard child of Chris Farley.
5 Mysterious Island – B-movie Bees.
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Bees are typically terrifying because they attack in swarms, but Mysterious Island took a different approach. They had one giant bee. We’re talking old school Godzilla-esque b-movie monster bee. Like most monsters though, it couldn’t reach it’s intended victims in a small space, even though that incredibly brilliant hiding space was an oversized honeycomb. I’ll bet Larry King misses the good old days when all you needed was an enormous insect and comically epic music to make a cult classic movie.
4 Honey I Shrunk the Kids – We Bee Ridin’
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The only think more wild than the bee-back ride in Honey I Shrunk the Kids was the shrunken children’s emotional roller coaster. Initially they were terrified that the bees were going to kill them, but in no time were riding around the yard on a bee and making kids in the audience green with envy. That airborne glee turned to shock when Rick Moranis tried to kill them with a bat. Talk about traumatizing. This scene was so awesome that there’s a Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground at Disney Hollywood Studios in which you can re-enact it.
3 Candyman – Can Bee a Mouthful
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While most evil insect movies are campy, Candyman was truly terrifying. Opening a jacket to reveal a chest filled with buzzing bees was bad enough, but I had nightmares about the moment Candyman opened his mouth an bees poured out. I had to watch Sandlot‘s pool scene a dozen times just to be ok with the idea of mouth-to-mouth again. Not even Squints and Wendy Peffercorn could get that image out of my mind though.
2 My Girl – Mood Ring of Death
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Thomas J Sennett was just a brave young boy trying to win over his new love after getting to first base with her in a tree. It may be harsh to put the death of Macaulay Culkin in My Girl so high on this list, but I had a crush on Anna Chlumsky so I was happy to have the competition eliminated. It’s funny to think that the Wet Bandits spent an entire movie trying to accomplish what a few bees did in just a couple seconds. Where was Marley with his shovel when Macaulay really needed him?
1 Wicker Man – Bees in a Cage
Neither words nor pictures can do justice to Nicholas Cage’s bee scene in Wicker Man.