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The Wasp Woman (1959)

4.1
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Ratings: 4.1/10 from 1,917 users  
Reviews: 73 user | 62 critic

A cosmetics queen develops a youth formula from jelly taken from queen wasps. She fails to anticipate the typical hoary side- effects.

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(screenplay), (story)
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Title: The Wasp Woman (1959)

The Wasp Woman (1959) on IMDb 4.1/10

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Cast

Complete credited cast:
Susan Cabot ...
Anthony Eisley ...
Bill Lane (as Fred Eisley)
Barboura Morris ...
William Roerick ...
Michael Mark ...
Frank Gerstle ...
Les Hellman
Bruno VeSota ...
Night Watchman (as Bruno Ve Sota)
Roy Gordon ...
Paul Thompson
Carolyn Hughes ...
Jean Carson
Lynn Cartwright ...
Maureen Reardon
Frank Wolff ...
First Delivery Man
Lani Mars ...
Secretary
Philip Barry ...
Second Delivery Man (as Phillip Barry)
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Storyline

Janice Starlin, the owner of a cosmetics firm, sees that her fading beauty is not only causing waves in her personal life but causing some prestige problems for her also-fading business. She becomes an easy mark for a pseudo-scientist, Eric Zinthrop, who claims to have developed a serum from the enzymes of wasps that will turn aging skin to youthful-looking skin. The second-best thing to a time machine. She, without any hesitation, agrees to be the first human to try the Zinthro injections. But, as her beauty returns, her secretary, Mary Dennison, and her advertising executive, Bill Lane, notices she is also having a personality change and it isn't for the better, albeit she was no Miss Congegeniality to begin with. Then, Zinthrop gets hit by an automobile, for plot-development purposes, and is somewhat incapacitated and not in any shape to be whipping up any new batches of Zinthrop's Wasp Enzyme Injection Serum and, without her enzyme injections, Janice turns into a wasp-like woman ... Written by Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>

Plot Summary | Add Synopsis

Plot Keywords:

wasp | cosmetics | enzyme | injection | serum | See more »

Taglines:

Strong men forced to satisfy a passion no human knows. See more »

Genres:

Horror | Sci-Fi

Certificate:

Approved | See all certifications »
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Details

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

30 October 1959 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

Insect Woman  »

Box Office

Budget:

$50,000 (estimated)
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Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

Sound Mix:

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1
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Did You Know?

Trivia

This was Susan Cabot's final movie. See more »

Goofs

When Janice injects herself to make herself even more younger looking, you can clearly see the needle isn't in her arm. See more »

Quotes

Bill Lane: You're as bad as she is! Oh, women!
Mary Dennison: Men! Every time you search for an answer, you always come up with women. You're not getting out of this one so easily. I'd like to know why you think Zinthrop really hasn't got something.
Bill Lane: Well, you can call it male intuition if you like... except there's something about this whole business that doesn't smell right... a private laboratory! A secret experiment! Zinthrop himself! The only thing missing is a genie with a lamp!
See more »

Connections

References Dr. Cyclops (1940) See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

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User Reviews

 
The Wasps and the Bees
12 March 2004 | by (brooklyn NY) – See all my reviews

******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.


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