La femme guêpe

Actually, 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.

It frustrates me when people refer to The Wasp Woman as a good B-movie or, even more condescendingly, as a good Roger Corman movie. The Wasp Woman is simply an excellent film - no caveat required. This film is well acted, logical within its premise and most impressively, still disturbing. The special effects may have dated but the psychological horror which underpins the action remains as brutal as ever.

The beauty of The Wasp Woman is its simplicity. Dr Zinthrop discovers an anti-ageing antidote in wasp jelly and brings it to the attention of Janice, the owner of a cosmetics company. Janice, faced with the prospect of falling sales and her own fading beauty, agrees to fund the scientist's work on the condition that Dr Zinthrop use her as a guinea pig. Unfortunately, this has the unwanted side effect of turning her into a homicidal wasp/woman hybrid. As with all good genre films, The Wasp Woman defines its premise early and the narrative never strays from these clearly defined plot constraints. The developments in the film might be outrageous but taken within their context, they make perfect sense.

The Wasp Woman is without a doubt one of Roger Corman's best films. I am a big fan of the wonderful crap that he has produced since retiring as a director but this film is a poignant reminder of what Roger Corman is capable of when he takes his subject matter seriously. The Wasp Woman also underlines Corman's considerable skill as a director. The film is taut, cohesive and brilliantly paced. From the moment the film begins, there is a sense of tension and desperation about these characters that is almost palpable. This is due to both the excellent script and some impressive acting.

Susan Cabot has never struck me as the most gifted actress but her turn as Janice is extraordinary. Janice could have easily come across as a vain, ruthless woman. However, Susan's performance is so well calibrated that it is hard not to feel sympathetic to her plight. The scene where Janice realises that the company is failing due to her no longer being a "glamour girl" is devastating. The supporting cast is equally good. Michael Mark is particularly impressive as Dr Zinthrop. Dr Zinthrop's dedication to his research is creepy from the very outset. Anthony Eisley and Barboura Morris are solid as Lane and Mary, the voices of reason in the face of Janice's increasingly demented mindset.

The Wasp Woman would basically be nothing more than a well executed museum piece if it no longer had the capacity to be taken seriously as a thriller. The first glance of Janice, elegantly dressed and wearing a wasp mask, is jolting. My first reaction was to laugh but that quickly subsided. There is something psychologically unsettling about Janice's fate. Here is a woman used to being in charge, slowly but surely being taken over by something evil that is well and truly out of her control. The campy wasp effects are all the most disturbing because Janice is still so recognisable. Furthermore, there is something plain creepy about a killer wearing pearls and a twin set - even if the killer is half wasp.

The Wasp Woman steadily builds momentum until the impressive and satisfying conclusion. The film is psychologically violent and brutal, yet beautiful in a way that only these low budget black and white movies can be. The Wasp Woman is a fine achievement. Modern horror directors could learn a thing or two by watching this.

'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.

THE 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.

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.