TheWaspWoman

The Wasp Woman (1959)

Janice Starlin is an aging “Glamour Girl” (50s speak for supermodel) who owns and runs a cosmetics company that is suffering from declining sales because of her declining appearance. All of her problems appear to be solved when a scientist named Zinthrop shows up with a miracle cure for aging. A drug that the good doctor has developed from the royal jelly of the queen wasp that appears to reverse the aging process. Janice agrees to fund his research if he agrees to use her as his first human test subject. But when the process isn’t quick enough for her Janice sneaks into the lab and uses a more powerful form of the drug to speed things up, with dire results. Instead of becoming young and beautiful she ends up turning herself into the monstrous Wasp Woman and starts killing anyone that has the misfortune of getting in her way!

This is yet another low budget effort from Director/Producer Roger Corman. As is the case with most of his other films it was shot on an extremely low budget and under time constraints. The story moves along briskly and never gets boring. For the most part the movie is a straightforward creature feature. The one unique thing about this film is that the lead character and monster is a woman. Other than that the movie plays out just as you would expect it to. I do wish that they had introduced the creature earlier on, but that is a minor complaint. The cast is decent, but honestly not asked to do much. Being a Corman directed film the Wasp Woman was clearly made under the “assembly” line atmosphere of most of his films. Hit your marks, deliver your lines and move on to the next scene. I won’t say the performances suffered, but they certainly didn’t flourish under this sort of schedule.

The Wasp Woman makeup is pretty cool looking, and clearly inspired by 1958’s the Fly. While not anywhere near as convincing or creepy as that film it still gets the job done. Other than that the rest of the production is awfully cheap. As a fan of Corman films I instantly recognized the musical cues as those he used over and over again in his early films. Also most of the sets have a flimsy look to them and were clearly put together from whatever they happened to have on hand. The best example of this is the door that everyone locks and unlocks that clearly doesn’t have a lock.

I dig old “B” movies and no one did them better, well at least cheaper than Roger Corman. Honestly the Wasp Woman isn’t the greatest of films and isn’t even Corman’s best horror movie. But it won’t cost you much to get and can be fun to watch. This movie is available from Mill Creek on several of their budget DVD sets. Check them out at http://www.millcreekent.com/ for more information.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer