The Wasp Woman (1959)

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

Director:

Roger Corman

Writers:

Leo Gordon (screenplay), Kinta Zertuche (story)

Stars:

Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley, Barboura Morris

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Susan Cabot	...	Janice Starlin
Anthony Eisley	...	Bill Lane (as Fred Eisley)
Barboura Morris	...	Mary Dennison
William Roerick	...	Arthur Cooper
Michael Mark	...	Eric Zinthrop
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)

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 ...

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Plot Keywords:

wasp | cosmetics | enzyme | injection | serum | 

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Taglines:

Strong men forced to satisfy a passion no human knows.

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Genres:

Horror | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

30 October 1959 (USA)

Also Known As:

Insect Woman

Filming Locations:

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$50,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Film Group Feature, Santa Cruz Productions Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

73 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The role of the Beekeeper played by Aron Kincaid was added after the film's initial release.

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Goofs

Despite the title and repeated assertions during the movie that the serum comes from wasp 'enzymes', the opening credits are superimposed over stock footage of a honey bee hive, and the same footage is shown after the first injection.

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Quotes

Janice Starlin: Something's happening to me. I can't control it.

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Connections

Referenced in American Grindhouse (2010)

User Reviews

"American (Wasp) Woman... Stay away from me-hee!"

"American Woman... Mama let me be-hee! ...Don't come hangin' around my door... I don't wanna see your (very ugly black waspy) face no more!"

Sorry, got a little carried away here. For some reason I got this superb THE GUESS WHO song stuck in my head...

Anyway, Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN from 1960... That's what I should be talking about, right? Well, there ain't too much to say about, except for the fact that it's a fun little creature feature from a director that I wouldn't exactly call the most versatile film-maker on the planet, but certainly one of the most productive ones and on top of that, one that is always very creative with a low budget. I can already agree with fellow commentators on here, that the IMDb rating for this Corman quickie is shamefully low. Too low, really, because THE WASP WOMAN isn't a bad movie. Okay, I have to admit that the opening scenes (sloppily filmed shots with the bee-doctor and the wasp-doctor and their buzzing little friends in the yard) looked pretty bad and were not very promising for the rest of the movie (I mean, a character - in this case Michael Mark as Dr. Zinthrop - taking to himself and his little wasp friends always looks pretty stupid in a movie). But as soon as the movie makes the switch to the interior sets of the cosmetic company, the movie gets considerably better and the directing becomes tighter.

It seems like Roger Corman saw and enjoyed the 1958 version of THE FLY (of course he did), and was also impressed by how well that one did at the time. THE WASP WOMAN, to me at least, showed a lot of similarities with the basic premise of THE FLY. This time, a cosmetic magnate (Janice Starlin) gets transformed into a man-sized wasp, instead of a dedicated scientist being transformed into a man with the over-sized head of a fly. Corman just switched the whole "scientist discovering the ways of teleportation"-part for a "mankind's desire to unravel the secrets to eternal youth"-angle. Now, THE FLY is a far superior film, of course, but that doesn't mean that THE WASP WOMAN is less enjoyable. The movie isn't too long, so the simple story hums along nicely. There's fun dialogues delivered by capable actors. One of the most remarkable aspects about THE WASP WOMAN, was the musical score. Sometimes it sounds a bit "classic", but over-all I'd say it was heavily influenced by the social-cultural environment of the era this movie was made in. The Beat Generation literary movement had just flourished immensely (converting many people into "Beatniks"), and also influenced (or was associated with) the musical landscape at the time (anybody seen Roger Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD?). One genre associated with the "Beatniks", was some sort of experimental, big-band sounding free-style jazz type of music. And you can clearly hear echoes of such music on THE WASP WOMAN's soundtrack, together with attempts at a few comical tunes (which sadly misfire - the scarce little attempts at humor don't work as well as the black humor in A BUCKET OF BLOOD, in my opinion). But all-in-all, because of the musical score being a hectic amalgam of different styles, it provides sort of an enjoyable nervousness (and always remains well-timed, increasing the tension when it's called for), making the movie a tad bit nuttier than your average creature feature from that era.

Now, the one complaint I have - and I owe that to myself - is that I expected just a little bit more from this movie, especially when it comes to the Wasp Woman/Creature itself. Two things basically: I expected the creature design to have a few extra legs, claws or wings even. But it's just just a dude/gal in a black costume, with a weird, black 'waspy' mask and funny looking hands. Nothing wrong with that, really, and considering the budget this was made on, they handled the Wasp Woman well. But the second thing that let me down was... I expected The Wasp Woman at least to do a bit more in this movie (and have a little more screen time while at it). I thought she was going to seduce men, trick them into making love to her and then... devour them in the bedroom. Or something... but nope, none of that. The lack of creature action became a bit annoying even, until the third act. Then the movie picks itself up and becomes a bit more fun. Well, that is... Janice Sterling only transforms into the Wasp Woman three times, and all she does is behave like a vampire: go for the victim's throat and bite him. But still, it's not like you'll have the time to become bored, because of the movie's 73 minutes running time. And after all, when the movie rushed towards its climax and the events came to an abrupt closure, THE WASP WOMAN remained a charming experience to me.

During the early 90's, Roger Corman started producing several re-makes of his own films from the 50's & 60's and THE WASP WOMAN was one of them. I saw the trailer for it, and it seems like the 1995 version of THE WASP WOMAN might even be more cheesy fun than the original, with a bit better make-up effects (of course), a bit of inept use of CGI and... I even saw some sort of seductive bedroom scene in that trailer. Seems like I might get what I wanted to see after all in the 1995 re-make.