Like none of his other late 50's/early 60's horror & Sci-Fi tryouts (and there were quite a lot of them), "The Wasp Woman" truly proves that Roger Corman was, and still is, a very creative and versatile filmmaker! The plot of his ultra-low budget quickie is mundane and unbelievably predictable, yet the whole film is stuffed with ingenious little twists and elements that make the premise feel fresh and original nevertheless! There are very few directors out there, apart from Corman, able to achieve this! Susan Cabot, who starred in a handful of contemporary Corman productions, plays a businesswoman leading a prominent cosmetics company. She's unable to accept her own natural ageing process and righteously fears that her looks will bring down the monthly profits. When a scientist announces that he developed a rejuvenation liquid by extracting enzymes of ordinary wasps, Janice Starling immediately wants to commercialize it and test it on herself. The miraculous discovery is highly efficient, but when Janice injects herself with too much doses, she transforms into a murderous wasp overnight. "The Wasp Woman" is no more or no less than fun & undemanding Sci-Fi entertainment! The film has a good pace and there's the occasional suspenseful moment to enjoy. The monster-transformations and special effects are really tacky but what else did you expect considering the money that was involved? This charming little movie may not be very appealing to the younger generation of fans, but I warmly recommend it to admirers of classic science fiction. The rating here on IMDb is WAY too low!
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Coventry28 August 2006
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shepardjessica8 August 2004One of Roger Corman's better directorial efforts about reversing the aging process to sell cosmetics in the early 60's! Susan Cabot, the lead, finished her film career with this one before returning to the theatre in New York after many films in the 50's. Unfortunately, she was bludgeoned to death by her dwarf son sometime in the 80's which ended her promising career. She was a serious actress with a terrible final act.
A definite 6 out of 10. Best performance = Susan Cabot. Worst performance = Anthony (Fred) Eisley - the "actor" who always managed to reach the pinnacle of Blandness in every film he made in the 60's. Dr. Zin in his spotted pajamas reminds me of someone's Uncle Luigi. An under-rated low budget flick which hits a nerve (cosmetics, pshaw). This is on DVD. Seek it out! -
Space_Mafune19 January 2003THE WASP WOMAN is certainly not a film to be taken very seriously as it details the hideous and unexpected transformation of a woman looking for the fountain of youth into a rather nasty flesh-eating monster instead...an unforeseen side effect of Dr. Zinthrop's wasp enzyme treatments. The common be wary of science theme is certainly in full force here and it does feel comfortable in this low budget environment.
The best thing about this film is it has a great pace as it keeps moving along nicely and is consistently entertaining. The worst is the low budget look of the monster and the awful music. -
AlsExGal27 December 2018Actually, it's an interesting take on a familiar idea - that women should not try to hold on to youth, that they should grow up and age gracefully. And yet everything in our culture has always told us that path leads to invisibility, loss of affection, and in cosmetics queen Janice Starlin's (Susan Cabot) case, loss of revenue. At age 40, Janice Starlin's cosmetic company is losing ground, and her board tells her that is because she has always been the face of her products, but putting the faces of other models on those products instead has caused women to lose confidence in her products. She replies that her now 40 year old face will not sell products either.
She is then visited by scientist Eric Zinthrop who tells her he believes he has invented a serum from wasps that can rejuvenate the old. He wants only a small percentage of any sales she might make and full credit for the discovery. Starlin in return demands to be the first human that his serum is tested on.
When testing begins on Janice she does begin to lose years - she now looks 35 instead of 40. But she wants the transformation to occur faster. Without Zinthrop's knowledge she takes extra injections, and she now looks 22 years old. But there is an unknown side effect. The cat that Zinthrop was testing has become deranged and attacks him. Before he can tell anyone, he wanders into traffic, is injured badly in an accident, and is transported to a hospital with possible brain damage.
Meanwhile Janice is acting antsy, hearing wasps buzzing in her head, and frantically looking for Zinthrop because she thinks her problem is that she will soon be out of serum when her fate is far worse.
You can tell this is purely poverty row, because every shot is a close up so the art direction can be kept to a minimum. And for Starlin's company to be so big and busy I count about half a dozen people who work at the firm, including two secretaries who seem to constantly be loafing. If not for the really laughable and very cheap special effects, this might have been better. Like other 50s sci-fi horror films it distills horror down to a basic fact - that humans are afraid of their bodies getting out of control either by the aging process or by disease. It is the reason cancer is so scary. I'd mildly recommend this one. -
Infofreak2 December 2002'The Wasp Woman' is one of Roger Corman's better monster movies (personally I prefer his biker, black comedy, gangster and psychedelic movies, but that's me). Susan Cabot stars as an ambitious head of a cosmetics firm. Being the public face of the company, she takes a downturn in sales as a personal criticism. So when a scientist experimenting with Royal Jelly, not just your average Royal Jelly, but some made from wasps, comes to her attention she hires him to experiment with its alleged anti-aging effects. Initial tests on assorted animal are so successful she begins to try the stuff herself, with impressive results. Only problem is that in her enthusiasm she forgot to see if there are any negative side effects, and by looking at the title of the movie, it's pretty obvious that there are! Herein lies the fun of this goofy movie. Sexy Cabot is good in this her final role. A bizarre footnote to her short career is her death in the mid-80s at the hands of her dwarf son. Amazing but true! But that strange event aside, the movie itself stands on its own merits. Nothing too ambitious, but an effective low budget trashy shocker that makes a great popcorn movie. By no means Corman's best work but very entertaining just the same.
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Did Roger Corman do the original "Little Shop of Horrors"? I'll have to check. As predictable as a soap opera. A bumbling (not quite mad) scientist invents a youth serum that turns test animals and people into giant fuzzy mutant wasps that buzz. Cabot wears a hairy fright mask with curly "antennae" and sucks several victims dry. It's supposed to eat 'em too which saves a ton on special effects.A shameless steal from "The Fly". A human with an unintentionally funny face. Giant claws like a lobster. It could have been much more horrible if the results had been shown on camera. A flattened dead body in a web or rolled up like old toothpaste. It evokes memories of every awful-stupid horror movie from Gabor's "Queen of Outer Space" to the more recent "Cat Woman". Women seeking the fountain of youth always turn left at the wrong exit. Fun but not really that wonderful. Hardly worth viewing twice. When I was a kid, this actually scared me to death on the big screen. Remade at least twice by other studios and many variations on TV as well. (Remember the "Outer Limits" episode where a pretty girl is actually a transformed queen bee and wants to "mate" with a human male?)
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Long before Olivia de Havilland warned us that a swarm of killer bees were coming our way, and a few years after the public at large fled from "The Deadly Mantis", the staff of a beauty supply company must deal with "The Wasp Woman", unknowingly their big boss, who has been surprising them recently with her sudden youth-creating beauty. Actress Susan Cabot is made to look "old" (sans make-up and with large framed glasses) as the creator of a line of beauty products which no longer work for her. She decides to be the human experiment of a scientist obsessed with wasp jelly which makes an old lab mouse young and turns an old cat back into a kitten. Unfortuanately, thanks to the sudden attack of the no longer friendly kitty, the scientist learns that his wasp jelly has serious side effects, turning the creature who takes it into a wasp-like creature, attacking the nearest victim and literally eating them from inside out. But before he can warn Cabot, he is hit by a car, and pretty soon, she is having flashes of the demon inside her, all the while desperate to take more youth-creating jelly in order to remain youthful.
A combination of genuine horror and camp, this is also a very moralistic tale of how the obsession with youth can literally destroy one's soul. Cabot's loveliness in real life isn't hidden by the dowdy way she is clothed and made up in the open scenes (it's funny how lack of make-up and ugly glasses are always used in movies and on T.V. to indicate plainness), and she is publicly humiliated in a meeting with fellow executives and her secretary of how by remaining cover girl for her own product, she has caused the sales of the product to go down. It doesn't help that she's surrounded by younger secretaries and clerks who are quite voluptuous and often comment behind her back (which she somehow manages to overhear) on her looks.
While it is insinuated by the bee keepers in the very first scene that scientist Michael Mark is quite mad, he never really shows serious signs of that, although his obsession with angry wasps over the usually man friendly bees is quite odd. His performance is basically very subtle, especially in the scenes following his accident. Other good performances come from William Roerick as one of Cabot's executives, Anthony Eisley as another employee and Barboura Morris as Cabot's devoted secretary. The film really doesn't explode into horror until the final quarter, but it is still interesting to see how it develops. -
The plot of this film has the head of a cosmetics firm trying out a new formula formed from the jelly of a queen wasp. The make-up actually makes the woman younger, but has the horrible side effect in that it turns the woman into a killer human wasp.
Oh what a silly film this is. Its also a great deal of fun. The story is wildly silly, there's a monster that looks ridiculous, and enough skill behind the camera to produce just the right amount of tension to keep you watching. It all combines to form a perfectly charming little movie.
Good, but far from great, the Wasp Woman gets its classic status from the fact that the film used to be in permanent rotation on late night horror TV. I can't tell you how many times my mind was warped by this little gem over the years. It seemed it was always on and pretty much everyone I knew saw it over and over again. It became a joke of sorts as the quintessential "bad movie", its bug eyed monster in tights was exactly the sort of monster you didn't want to see in a movie.
Highly recommended to those who want to see a what horror films used to be like at the height of the drive- in era, or to those who just want something to keep themselves distract on a dark and stormy night. -
"The Wasp Woman", a routine low-budget horror outing by Roger Corman, finds aging makeup mogul Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) experimenting with wasp royal-jelly as a rejuvenating agent. Unfortunately, the potion does not turn her into a giant wasp with a woman's head hovering over a pile of skulls (as promised by the poster), but rather a woman with a vaguely insectoid mask wearing claw-like oven mitts. Various secondary characters are dispatched before the mad boffin who provided her with the elixir, realizing the evil that he has unleashed, throws acid into her face causing the wasp woman to fall to her death (a fate she would have avoided if she had the wasp-wings promised by the poster). The film includes an unconvincing attack by a psychotic cat and lots of stock footage of bees while wasps are being discussed, but very little of the 'lust' promised in the poster. Standard Corman shtick - not great by any stretch of the imagination, but short and entertaining enough to watch 60 years later (and to make some quick cash for the auteur and his crew at the time of production).
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sol121812 March 2004******SPOILERS***** Decent Roger Corman film about the goings on in a top cosmetic company and the story of it's CEO and founder who hit upon hard times when her looks who were the companies best advertisement began to develop wrinkles as she began to approach middle-age as did the companies, in being cut in half, profits.
Cosmetic Queen Janice Starlin, Susan Cabot, needs something to jump-start her falling business and just then pops in Eric Zinthrop, Michael Mark, an eccentric scientist. Zinthrop's experiments with wasp royal jelly has brought on his subjects, hamsters dogs and cats, miracles in retarding the aging process and bringing them back to their youth. Seeing first hand and being convinced by Zinthrop's experiments Janice eagerly volunteers to be injected with Zinthrop's serum and becomes more youthful looking as the injections continue. But like most women Janice feels that she not youthful enough and starts, against Zinthrop's advice, to take them by herself and in larger and larger dosages. As Janice becomes more youthful she also becomes more waspish and wasps especially a queen wasp are dangerous and deadly creatures.
The acting is much better then you would expect from an early Roger Corman horror movie. Even though you don't see Janice transform into the deadly Wasp Woman until almost in the last third of the movie which makes the horror scenes very limited but their still both shocking as well as effective. The very good acting by all involved in the film keeps you interested in the story up until the horror and action scenes starts.
Even though Janice is both a small and delicate woman, even made up as the Wasp Woman, she's very physical aggressive and frightening in all her action scenes in which all her victims are far bigger then she is.
Zinthrop being more or less the mad scientist type in the movie was anything but mad but very concerned for Janice in his experiments on her and it was Janice who went too far not him in pursuing them. "The Wasp Woman" is one of Roger Corman's better earlier movies with a sound plot and top notch acting By Susan Cabot, Michael Mark, Arthur Cooper Anthony Eisley and the very likable Barboura Morris that rises the film above the B-Horror movie that you would have thought that it would be. -
lost-in-limbo18 May 2005A professor is working on the deadly jelly of a Queen Wasp. Where he learns that this drug his working can slow down the aging cycle and make one look young again. So a boss of a cosmetics company in need to boost her companies falling sales becomes interested in it. So she becomes the first human guinea pig for the drug and soon enough she becomes a youthful beauty again. Though, there are nasty side effects to follow.
I will start off by typing that the DVD I watched it on didn't have such great picture quality, with some scenes being too dark and real grainy, but maybe that's the way it was shot. Since the production would have had a shoestring budget, but anyway it was still viewable.
Roger Corman's The Wasp Woman which I borrowed from a friend is one weird, but mostly a lacklustre thriller. It has a very slow first 50-miutes and it suddenly picks up in the last quarter of the film. I just found it quite a tedious viewing, with two or three moments of sheer excitement and interest in just basically the last 20-minutes of the film.
The film premise was interesting enough, but the discussions and theories leading up to the thrilling last quarter weren't entirely enticing or particularly fun viewing. They were more of a snore fest and a real drag. Well, maybe some scenes early on involving a Professor and his mumbo jumbo have its moments. But saying that, the story was generally unpredictable and it had its amusing situations. Like the fruity Prof. Zenthrop going into a trance and having a scuffle with a cat, the first appearance of the wasp woman and some moments when she decides to feed on some unexpected guests, but most of these humorous scenes come too late in the film.
The wasp costume came as a surprise; it looked ridiculously funny and truly unimaginative. With someone running around in black clothing, black high heels, a fury mask that covers the face with some feelers and beady eyes added on, but what do you expect from a Roger Corman z-grade film. Reading some reviews from fellow IMDb users I see I'm not the only one to feel a bit conned, as the cover art on the DVD box actually had a wasp with a woman's head on it ;). Cheap and shoddy effects were to be expected and are definitely a humorous sight to see.
There are stilted performances, except for the main leads Susan Cabot as the vain boss of a beauty products company during the day and the vicious wasp woman at night and Michael Mark as Professor Eric Zinthrop are pretty good.
The script is fairly corny and at times it will unintentionally cause a snicker. The plot has its usual flaws and inconsistencies. Though, these are the reasons to watch these types of films.
The mostly loud and forceful music score was a bit over-the-top and it kind of got on my nerves. It was just too distracting for me. The dim lighting and cheap sets really added to the atmosphere side of things.
It has an enjoyable and thrilling climax, but the sudden ending just felt forced and unconvincing. I wasn't expecting big things or anything grand from this film, but I was hoping for more fun and for me the film sorely lacked that.
Well, maybe I'm being too critical, but I just couldn't get into this film liked I hoped, as I usually enjoy these types of films. It's not awful, I just found it plain dreary well, most of it. -
Blitz-522 January 1999Good movie, with very very few effects and the ones they do use make the movie completely campy. Roger Corman did well with movie at least in my opinion. Dr. Xinthrop is a riot! The music of Fred Katz is great as well. You just can't turn this one down. A 10!
What ever happened to flicks like this...hmmm:) -
twanurit28 June 2001That great phrase was spoken by cosmetic magnate Susan Cabot's secretary on the telephone to her deadbeat boyfriend, one of many quirky passages in this electrifying shock-fest. Cabot, in her last film role, worked for director Roger Corman several times, and is amazing as a 40 year old executive seeking youth and beauty to boost her sagging company (and face). She hires an eccentric (Michael Mark), who has discovered that wasp enzymes can bring back youth to animals. Cabot volunteers herself to some periodic injections, and is transformed, but not without ghastly side effects. Taking the idea from "The Fly" (1958), she develops wasp claws and head and becomes a deadly eating machine at times. The jazzy music is riveting, and the editing quick and vicious, just like a buzzing insect's moves. The climax is tense and terrifying. Barboura Morris is good as Cabot's assistant, while Marks is charmingly funny, especially when flirting with the secretaries. Deserves all its accolades.
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brando64713 April 2016THE WASP WOMAN was my first excursion into the work of Roger Corman. Aside from assorted clips of his buried FANTASTIC FOUR I've found on YouTube, I'm never actually seen one of his movies. I was curious. He's considered a legend in the industry and he's had a hand in the early careers of modern masters such as Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron. Great! And it's science fiction. What more could I want? The film was released in 1959, a great time for corny drive-in sci-fi, and the poster features an enormous wasp with the face of a woman ready to feed on a man trapped in its clutches. Wicked poster image; I wouldn't mind having it hanging in my office. The movie opens with the title card and a first-minute error. Well, possibly an error. The titles are played over swarming bees. Bees, not wasps. Whatever, moving on. We start on a honey farm where a visiting suit becomes annoyed because the scientist they hired to study the royal jelly from queen bees has turned out to be a mad scientist studying the royal jelly of wasps. He's fired for obvious reasons (being a mad scientist, wasting research funds, etc.) despite his promising experimentation with dogs where he's successfully halted the aging process using the wasp jelly. The mad scientist, Dr. Zinthrop (Michael Mark), turns to the cosmetic industry for further funding, where he finds cosmetic mogul Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) moping over the fact that her advanced age makes her unsuitable as a cover model. She used to be the face of her company (literally) but, shucks, she's aging like a human and she hates it. When Dr. Zinthrop arrives with his wasp jelly serum, he's progressed to the point where he can actually reverse aging and Starlin insists on being his human test subject. It's cheesy 50's science fiction, so you can probably guess what happens from here.
If you guess long stretches of nothing, you are correct. Oh man, I was beyond bored through most of THE WASP WOMAN. From the point where Zinthrop meets with Starlin until the transformation (which doesn't occur until more than 50 minutes into a meager 73 minute movie), there isn't much that happens. We're treated to gossip in the company's secretary pool (oh, that Irving) and the crawling pace of Starlin's descent into obsession with regaining her youth through the serum. Dull. Extraordinarily dull. There's some classic 50's era misogyny and groan-worthy dialogue. I don't know. It's hard to post a meaningful comment for a movie where I spaced out for the majority of the runtime. It starts off promisingly enough with the mad scientist and his inexplicable obsession with wasps but once he settles in with the cosmetic company, I stopped caring until he was hit by a car or a bus or something. Nothing serious, we just needed a convenient plot device to keep him from telling Starlin of his terrifying discovery: that the animals he had de-aged with the wasp serum had turned into hideous, violent monsters. When the transformation finally occurs and we're introduced to the wasp woman, I laughed. Oh man, did I laugh. That cool poster? You can forget about that. I mean, it was 1959 so I didn't expect much but what we got was anything but terrifying.
I mean, I guess I can see how this qualifies as a wasp woman. She's got bulging insectoid eyes and furry little antennae. Instead of mandibles, they gave her fangs that appear to jut from her lower jaw. The rest of her body is pretty normal for a woman except her hair has turned into a terrifying mullet and her hands appear to be her wasp stingers. At first I thought she was just strangling her victims but I soon realized she was apparently stinging them to death. It's momentarily hilarious before returning to tedious. She claims a couple victims and, when in human form, continues to obsess over the serum, demanding the near comatose Zinthrop (still recovering from that fight he lost against New York traffic) whip her up another batch. It's all a bust. I'm sure Corman has got some great work in his career but THE WASP WOMAN is not one to brag about. A little research into the film led me to the understand that this was one of the early films with his production/distribution company Filmgroup where he would make films on the cheap and create throwaway drive-in movies for double features. Frankly, I don't know that I could sit through two movies of this quality back-to-back without sticking my own head in a wasps' nest. -
RBlake7729 August 2008"The Wasp Woman" is a 1959 film directed by Roger Corman, who is known for being prolific in his production and direction of low-budget shlock such as "Teenage Zombies" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches".
Anyway, "The Wasp Woman" is about a woman who develops a youth formula from jelly taken from queen wasps. She overdoses on the stuff and turns into this half-human, half-wasp thing. Hilarity ensues.
I actually enjoyed this one, despite it being a bit on the slow side, but entertaining nonetheless. The acting is decent for a film such as this, and the sheer campiness that is trademark of Roger Corman films is there also.
Sure, the story is silly, yet somehow believable. A woman ODs on wasp jelly and the result is she turns into a wasp woman. TOTALLY BELIEVABLE! Even though it was really just the woman with a wasp-like mask on with some buzzing noise playing in the background while she killed things, it's all good. It's a shame she couldn't have sprouted wings and flew around town with some buzzing noise playing in the background while she killed things. Seriously, that would have been GOLD and would have catapulted this film to such heights of cheesy goodness that nothing else could compare.
My only nitpick is the scene jumping in some points is a bit sloppy and the overall picture quality isn't so great either. But I'm willing to forgive that since neither really effects the fact that I enjoyed the film. I got it one of those 4-in-1 dollar DVDs from Wal-Mart, so I would say it's a quarter well-spent. -
LeonLouisRicci10 October 2013With Echoes of The Fly (1958) still Buzzing at the Box Office, Schlockmeister Roger Corman grabbed a couple of People and took a Week to make this Gloomy Monster Movie. The Cast, some Corman Regulars including B-Movie Babe Susan Cabot who was never Credited with an A-Budget Film but a lot of Bees, did a fine Job. The background Music is also quite Appropriately Uncanny.
But the "Star" of the Movie is the Monster and for the few times It/She is on Screen there is some Tension and Gore that looks quite Bizarre. There are some glaring Missteps along the way, the kind that Corman never minded, at least in His Ultra Quickies. Like the Bumble Bees instead of Wasps Iconography, and the Guinea Pigs to Rats Mind Boggler. There are some others but Who cares?
Overall, there is much Talk in this Thing and hardly Anyone moves in the Claustrophobic and Drab Sets, but there is enough Drive-In Movie Madness to make it Worth a Watch. -
hitchcockthelegend7 January 2012The Wasp Woman is directed by Jack Hill and Roger Corman and written by Leo Gordon and Kinta Zertuche. A Roger Corman production, it stars Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley, Michael Mark and Barboura Morris. Music is by Fred Katz and photography by Harry Neumann.
Janice Starlin (Cabot) is the owner of a large cosmetics company, once a successful operation, the company is starting to lose customers who can see that Starlin is beginning to show her aged years. But hope may be at hand form scientist Eric Zinthrop (Mark), who has been experimenting with the royal jelly from a queen wasp, creating a serum that reverses the aging process. She strikes a deal with Zinthrop to fund his research as long as she can be his first human subject...
Schlockmeister Corman obviously took notice of the success of Kurt Neumann's The Fly from the previous year, for here he tries to bring us the female variant on the sci-fi mix up movie for half the budget. It marks the last time that Susan Cabot would appear in film, this also being the last of six films she made with Corman. For a low budget schlocker it's not half bad, the berserker insect/human science is good fun and there's potent thematics within involving the search for eternal youth, drug addiction and the cautionary warning about man pushing science too far. Even the effects, whilst cheap and rightly kept in the shadows for the most part, have an antiquated charm about them. If only the film wasn't so static, so ordinary, for two thirds of its relatively short running time, then this would be talked about as one of Corman's better offerings, especially since the cast are actually fine, particularly the pretty and stoic Cabot.
Most of the film is played out from the offices of a high-rise office complex, this is unusual but gives the film a little uniqueness, with Neumann and his directors managing to set the ambiance at uneasy. But it's mostly talky stuff, meaning mood is built up to the point that when the picture does shift into creature feature gear-budget restrictions mean expectations can't possibly be met; even if what little horror is in the picture is actually pretty spicy: though the makers do miss a trick because it's explained to us early in the piece that the Queen Wasp eats her mate! But Janice has no love interest here, shame that! Fred Katz's music is deliciously mad, at times sounding like Wacky Races on LSD, at others some gentle jazz beat fusion, it's in the right movie, just not used at the right times! The accompanying buzzing sound affect for a Wasp Woman attack, though, is most agreeable. Corman would use the score again for Little Shop of Horrors the following year.
Nobody, you would like to think, would be viewing The Wasp Woman expecting a sci-fi classic, but it's a frustrating watch in many ways, even to the fans of cheapo B movie schlockers. 5/10 -
13Funbags26 April 2017The first time I saw a Roger Corman movie I swore I would never watch another one but for some reason I can't seem to avoid them.I chose this movie based solely on the title, which seemed far too average to be a Corman title.I guess this was one of his earlier works and the hard to see black and white is Corman's best friend.The plot summary is wrong.A scientist develops the "youth formula",not the cosmetics queen.We don't see the wasp woman until the last half hour and it's just a woman in a crappy mask.The camera shakes wildly so you can't see how truly lame she is.If you saw the cover before you watched this,you will be even more disappointed. On top of all the bad stuff,at 73 minutes this movies is 25 minutes too long.How can that be?Corman spends countless minutes on driving and walking scenes that have no dialogue or purpose,as usual. Don't watch this movie.
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GroovyDoom2 July 2004Beee-eautiful Janet Starlin doesn't realize that her nerdy glasses and her constipated expression make her look older, and when her "age" beee-gins to interfere with her successful cosmetics company, she takes some never-bee-fore-attempted measures to regain her youth.
Teaming up with a would-bee mad scientist, she allows him to inject her with a serum made from the royal jelly of wasps, and pretty soon she looks 22 again. Unfortunately, it also makes her turn into a wasp monster at certain inopportune moments, like when she gets a tension headache. Needless to say, when she's a wasp, she's a beee-itch.
Some good buzzing bee-woman action in this one, I love the part where Janet/Wasp Woman confronts a mild-mannered nurse and rushes at her, blocking her escape by body-slamming a door closed right in front of her. Lots of fun for campy monster fans, anybody expecting anything really scary or thrilling...well, don't bother this movie and it won't bother you. -
emmerich-mazakarini7 January 2017Genre-addicts are and still will be happy enough to find treasures as well as garbage on the search for all kind of horror-, scifi- and fantasy-pics in our time - thanks to the 1950ies and the following decades having produced enough material to satisfy the fans. Corman's "The Wasp Woman" can undoubtedly be regarded as one of the worst movies of the decade and of the genre as well. Guinea Pigs turning into rats, bees appearing as wasps or vice versa, terrible performances of actors and actresses in even more terrible set designs. Annoying for all people with a lack of good humour, still entertaining for an open-minded audience.
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ChuckStraub4 July 2004It's not a bad movie. I found it to be fun and entertaining. It is another low budget B movie production but in my opinion it is slightly under rated and maybe a half step in front of most of it's contemporaries. Being produced and directed by Roger Corman probably has a lot to do with this. The acting isn't bad especially that of the leading lady Susan Cabot, and the plot interesting although in places flawed. The costume for the wasp woman was a big disappointment. I have no doubt that it had a much bigger effect in 1960 but it is pretty poor. When you see the design on the box for the DVD or VCR tape remember, never judge a book by it's cover. The wasp woman's appearance is nothing like the artist's conception. It's still well worth watching and I have done so several times over the years. Just remember not to be too critical. Relax and enjoy it.
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Cheapjack thriller from director Roger Corman is kind of fun, if you're not too demanding. 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!). Corman-quickie (distributed theatrically by "The Filmgroup") is operating on perhaps one cylinder due mostly to a stock screenplay by Leo Gordon, working from an original treatment by Kinta Zertuche. Our heroine has been given no personality or dimensions; as portrayed by the wooden Susan Cabot, she doesn't even have any 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? She can't call the professor--he's 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 ****
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eyesofsociety8 August 2004i cannot believe this movie was rated so low. I have only seen one other of roger corman's films, and that is Bucket of Blood which i did like (rated it 7 out of 10) but i found the wasp woman to be way more enjoyable. judging for what it was, a low budget black and white creature feature, i rated this a 10 out of 10 for its excellent soundtrack, and the character Janet Starlin. so now, i can't wait to get into the next roger corman film. i also like how the scientist that was portrayed as crazy to everybody in the film, but then showing the audience that he actually wasn't so out there. this director has not failed to disappoint me. if you are a fan of the fly then you will surely be fond of this movie.
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ccthemovieman-128 October 2006This Roger Corman B- horror film isn't bad. It good have been better with a little more action earlier on. When you advertise a film featuring a monster, you don't want to wait for over three-quarters of that film waiting for it. That was the case here with the Wasp Woman who doesn't become that and start killing people until the last 15 minutes of the 72-minute film.
However, it wasn't totally boring up to then. It was still fairly interesting as it showed an eccentric scientist inventing a serum that would reverse the aging process. He finds a willing subject in the head of a cosmetics firm that is falling on hard times. The owner, who was the centerpiece of the company's advertising for so many years, is no longer young and attractive, and sales of their products have fallen off.
But once she begins to take this serum, after being convinced it works because she's seen the effect on rabbits and cats, she slowly begins to look young and prettier again. However, she gets greedy and takes too much. The result: when angry, she turns into a wasp, killing and devouring its prey - whoever is in her way at a particular moment. Worse things happen: the scientist is a victim of a hit-and-run, is in a coma for about a week and our lady exec is just about out of serum. It's panic time. The rest of the select circle of employees, meanwhile, have been suspicious of this whole thing from day one and have spied here and there. One of them was the Wasp Woman's first victim. The guy nosed around too much in the lab. The rest of the crew, however, is still alive and now pretty much knows what's going on as the doctor begins to slowly snap out of it and warn them about "Janice Starlin," aka The Wasp Woman. A confrontation with all of them ensues in a violent, dramatic ending.
Susan Cabot does a nice job playing the cosmetics CEO and ''Michael Mrk" isn't bad as the scientist, "Eric Zinthrop." None of the actors are terrible, actually, which I usually except in these kind of B-films. They aren't Laurence Oliver or Meryl Streep, but they're competent enough.
Corman's goofy music score was very reminiscent of his 1960 hit, "The Little Shop Of Horrors." This movie didn't have that pizazz to it but, as said in the first sentence, wasn't bad. It certainly is worth a look for sci-fi or horror films of the '50s and '60s. With its short running time, even if you don't like it, it didn't take up the whole night. -
poolandrews8 April 2006The Wasp Woman starts with scientist Dr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark) getting fired from his research job, Dr. Zinthrop had been commissioned to examine royal jelly from Bees for it's cosmetic potential but he has instead been focusing on royal jelly from the Queen Wasp which basically means he's out the door & looking for an alternative source of income! Cut to Manhattan, New York & 'Starlin Industries' where the latest sales figures for it's cosmetics are dropping faster than a lead balloon so owner Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) calls a meeting to discuss the situation, Bill lane (Anthony Eisley) suggests that because she, the company's main advertising figure head, has aged people no longer trust Starlin's products & as a result consumer confidence is at an all time low! Desperate to try anything Janice accepts a meeting with Dr. Zinthrop who claims he can reverse the ageing process with enzymes taken from the royal jelly of Wasp's which at first seems to be the case but as Janice becomes more & more desperate to retain her new found youth she injects more of the untested serum into herself, Janice soon discovers that the serum has some very unwelcome, unwanted & unexpected side effects...
Produced & directed by Roger Corman (Jack Hill also directed, uncredited) who also appears uncredited in the film as the Doctor in the Hospital, I thought The Wasp Woman was an OK time waster but nothing especially good. The script by Leo Gordon could have made for a great little 'creature feature' type film but even at only 72 and a half minutes the film drags when it really shouldn't. Amazingly it isn't until the 52 minute mark that the Wasp woman actually appears, that's just far too long when the film is sold on the notion of a half woman half Wasp creature running around killing people, I started to lose interest. It's just too much boring exposition & time padding nonsense to wade through before anything even remotely exciting happens. The character's are basic to say the least & the dialogue is stiff, the film moves along in fits & starts, it can drag badly then it can pick up again but overall it's pretty inconsistent. As a whole I found The Wasp Woman a fairly painless way to pass 73 minutes but it could have & indeed should have been a lot better, this is one of those films which looks & sounds a lot better than it actually ends up being.
Economy conscious director Corman doesn't do anything special & the film is quite drab & dull to watch although to be fair it's competently made throughout. The Wasp woman isn't in it nearly enough as she/it only gets about 3 minutes of screen time throughout the entire film & when she/it finally does make an appearance she/it looks terrible with an awful & cheap looking mask. The filmmakers forgot to do anything with the actors neck which still remain 'human' in appearance. It doesn't even resemble a Wasp particularly, the number of legs is wrong, there's no stinger, no wings & is pretty much humanoid in shape & size so forget about any nice looking monsters on the artwork for DVD/video covers. There aren't really any scares, the entire thing is set in about four offices so there's no atmosphere & because it drags in places there's no tension.
With a supposed budget of about $50,000 The Wasp Woman is quite well made, Wasp creature mask apart. The acting isn't up to much but it's not too bad & isn't as bad as in some of these 50's & 60's monster films.
The Wasp Woman is a decent time filler & I quite liked it but the fact that the monster doesn't show up until past the 50 minute mark means I won't be in any hurry to watch it again & surely the monster is what a film called The Wasp Woman is all about? Worth a watch if you like this type of thing but other's should use more caution.