The Wasp Woman

A 1950's Roger Corman original 'Wasp Woman' gets the 90's tv remake treatment courtesy of b-movie director Jim Wynorski. You might be interested in where this sci-fi / horror pic is going initially - kill thrills, T&A - but trust me when I say it goes off the rails in cheap fashion. It's never a good thing when special effects are meant to scare, but instead make you wanna laugh.

Janice Starlin (Jennifer Rubin) is a model who runs her own successful cosmetics company, but she's getting up there in age which has both her and investors worried. They go about looking for younger talent to represent the brand when Janice learns of a new experimental youth serum being invented by Dr. Zinthorp (Daniel J. Travanti) with the use of wasp hormones. She's told it has potentially dangerous side effects, but is desperate enough to be the first human test subject. At first, everything seems great and it does the job making her 10-15 years younger and then the side effects kicks in.

Rubin - a 90's b-movie regular - is joined by a stable of low budget actors particularly Maria Ford, Julie K. Smith, Antonia Dorian. These ladies are used to supplying nudity, but surprisingly only Ford get naked though Rubin has a sex scene with an obvious body double. Where things fall apart is when it comes time for - surprise, surprise - the main lady or a cat to actually transform into a wasp. In either case the results look ridiculous and not at all scary. Plus because they're working with a low budget, the death scenes only supply bad acting & stage blood in equal dose.

You never buy that Rubin is a woman in her 40's neither. The makeup isn't well done and kinda obvious, but telling you that is just beating a dead horse. 'Wasp Woman' is a flick you watch but aren't shocked when you find out the inevitable. I hoped it's silly premise would lead to a good time, but it didn't. Wynorski with another stinker on his resume that sports a typical bad ending.

This was part of a series of Showtime produced remakes of Roger Corman classics. I don't know if the world was clamoring for a remake of WASP WOMAN but we got it. Jennifer Rubin stars as the owner of a cosmetics company who starts to depend on the experimental work of an discredited doctor (Daniel J. Travanti) in order to maintain her youth. Hey, that is the exact same plot as CATWOMAN! Only this cost about $84 million less. Director Jim Wynorski fares well enough with this entry in his extensive filmography. The movie is filled with bad acting (most notably from Rubin), cheesy effects and bad dialogue. But it moves fast enough, contains plenty of nudity (courtesy of Maria Ford) and features some B-acting greats (Gerrit Graham, Jay Richardson). And, at the very least, you get to see Emmy award winner Travanti get attacked by a big wasp that used to be his pet cat.

There is a long list of movies that should never have been made. Congo, 200 Cigarettes, Cool World, My Blue Heaven, Eye of the Beholder to name a few, and alas, Wasp Woman. This movie was beyond bad. I could have done better with a ten year old Camcorder, a fifth grade drama class, and a shoebox diorama. I'm all for campy films that appeal to my sense of goofy, but this film tried to pass itself off as legit. My husband and I watched it on late-night cable and scarily enough, found ourselves unable to turn it off. We were just so amazed at the horrible acting, wretched makeup (drawing lines with an eye pencil on Jennifer Rubin's face does not an aging woman make), ridiculous "special" effects, and lack of continuity. In one scene, the receptionist is walking down a hallway. She has straight hair. When she opens the door and sits down outside, she has very curly hair. Bad. But, if you want to watch a complete no-brainer, this is for you!

The Wasp Woman (1995)

I was up late one night, and The Wasp Woman was on TV. It was from Roger Corman, so I thought why not. It wasn't exactly a waste of time, and was entertaining. It is about a lady who is beginning to get to old to model for her skincare company, so she resorts to Dr. Zinthorp, who has a creation made of wasp DNA that reverses the aging process. She tests it on herself, and it begins to have some crazy side effects. The monster effects are cheesy and cheap, but it isn't too bad of a movie. I give it a 7 out of 10.

An aging model/cosmetics executive (Jennifer Rubin) finds a way to reverse the aging process through an experimental wasp drug, but it has deadly consequences as she morphes from time to time into a giant man eating wasp.

Much better then you would expect remake of the original Roger Corman camp classic, though this remake is dead serious. It features a very appealing turn by Jennifer Rubin, and actually focuses more on characterization then cheap scares (even though it does have its share of them). However, the film does feature poor monster effects.

Rated R; Nudity, Violence, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.