The Wasp Woman (1959)

Memorable, crazy movie

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) is the owner of a cosmetics company whose prices are falling. Executive Bill Lane (Fred Eisley) tells her this is because of her aging looks...because that's how you get a bonus at Christmas, right? Anyhow, at the same time this is going on a scientist named Dr. Eric Zinthrop has been working on a serum which reverses the aging process. Might this be the ideal solution? Janice helps fund Zinthrop's efforts to perfect his work, then uses herself as a human test subject. It works, and she easily sheds 20 years. Unfortunately it has a side effect. It turns her into a woman with a wasp's head...exactly twice. Then she dies after falling out a window. Ironically The Wasp Woman has little or no wasp woman it. This might be excused if the characters or story were interesting, but most of the movie is just executives talking about things that we don't really care about. I don't really recommend it because it's pretty boring and doesn't even get the benefit of enjoyably bad.

Female CEO of a cosmetics firm, concerned about her fading looks, turns to an erstwhile professor to help restore her youth through injections filled with the enzymes found in wasps (he's just been fired from his work on a bee farm, where he was caught going rogue!). Roger Corman-directed quickie, distributed theatrically by "The Filmgroup," is operating on perhaps one cylinder, thanks mostly to a stock-screamer screenplay which might have been scrawled on a single sheet of paper. Our heroine has no personality; she's been written and portrayed without any dimensions or sympathetic qualities. Eager to be beautiful again (and ditch those homely glasses!), the impatient businesswoman begins injecting the enzymes herself after-hours--but what is she to do when the serum runs out and the professor has been sideswiped by a car and now lies in a coma? Second-feature has a silly-looking monster and hilarious attempts at 'natural' water cooler chit-chat, but B-movie addicts might find this shamefacedly irresistible. From the wooden acting to the flat dialogue to the buzzing of the Wasp Woman, the camp factor here--as with so many of the low-budget '50s monster movies--is dangerously high. ** from ****

For many years I had been aware of The Wasp Woman from its iconic poster, which showed a gigantic wasp with a seductive woman's head, attacking an unfortunate man. In keeping the best traditions of 50's exploitation cinema, this poster looks great while reflecting the content of the actual film in no way whatsoever! The wasp woman of the title is, unfortunately, no more than a lady in what amounts to a Halloween mask. So from that perspective The Wasp Woman is a little disappointing. But no matter because, overall, this one actually turns out to be one of the better sci-fi horror cheapies from the late 50's. Its story has a crazed scientist developing an enzyme derived from wasps which when used on a subject, makes them look much more youthful. He sells his idea to a female cosmetics magnate who insists on testing it out on herself first. All begins well but things deteriorate and she turns into the killer creature known as the wasp woman.What this one has on its side is entertaining and fast-paced direction from Roger Corman and a very good central performance from Susan Cabot. Her character is a little more interesting and believable than you normally get in these types of pics. She is a woman who fears the ageing process and seeks eternal youth; so her concerns are quite universal and it adds a welcome human dimension to a monster movie. As I said before, the make-up really is cheap-jack and unimpressive but the overall production is put together with some care otherwise, with some interesting characters and a decent enough script. Of additional value was the soundtrack, which consisted of some really great, manic music which accompanied proceedings very well. All-in-all, this is a bit of a favourite of mine when it comes to low-budget 50's creature features. Great fun.

This movie is really long on plot development and relationships. The acting wasn't really that bad but the whole film was lame. You have the board member, the one with some science background, running around with a pipe in his mouth most of the time. I guess that was to make him seem smarter. You have the female company owner in search of youth. Some side show secretaries that really are not germane to the movie at all. It takes a long time for this film to get to the so called horror part. When it gets there it is bad, bad, bad. The owner has been taking royal jelly injections from queen wasps. So guess what she turns in to a hybrid human/wasp. Kills a few people and gets killed in the end. Not a good movie.