Mesa of Lost Women

This mess is one of the worst science fiction movies of the 1950's. It makes Ed Wood's films look good. It does have its moments though.

The acting is terrible and too daft to laugh at. The guitar/piano music score, which hardly stops throughout the movie, is utter rubbish and drove me mad. The only good points about The Mesa of Lost Women are the giant spider scenes. Even the spider looks terrible.

This is grade Z rubbish. A real golden turkey.

Rating: 1 and a half stars out of 5.

I just saw this gem on the big screen and it is terrible! The audience laughed with glee. It has what may be in serious contention for the worst sound track of all time! A constant Mexican Guitar that plays really obnoxiously for dreadfully long periods. There is one scene that is supposed to be scary but is very funny. Some Spider Women and midget Spider men are sneaking up on the films heroes and suddenly someone turns to look in their direction and the scantily clad spider women and midgets have to scamper to hide and it is just an outrageous sight seeing these grotesque midget men scampering around for cover...if you love horrible B films then you have a winner here!

This is one of the zeniths of bad films. We often hear about movies that are so bad they will make you laugh. This film is just one of those films. It's awful! A doctor has hidden himself away in the interior of Mexico on some huge mesa...way up in the sky that can only be reached by plane. His name is Dr. Aranya(that's spider in Spanish). Jackie Coogan, later to be rolly poly Uncle Fester, plays Dr. Aranya. Coogan looks and acts like a madman with his huge black mole and his incessant barking of orders. His performance is achingly bad. But soon he is supported by a horde of very bad performers. It seems that Dr. Aranya makes spiders into humans. The serum he uses only works well on girls and many of his female tarantulas turn into scantily clad females with big bosoms while the male spiders turn into hunchbacked, ugly midgets. Hmmm. Anyway, Aranya has a quarrel with a fellow doctor who has been hypnotized somehow, placed in a mental institution, and later found in a bar where he takes a group of five people with him in a plane that suspiciously lands on the mesa of the lost women. The actors start to die and we see midgets(one of which is famed Angelo Rossitto!) and more scantily clad women(one of which is Delores Fuller no less!) jump in and out of the light of the fire or a flashlight. The acting is just sooo bad and will have you laughing in no time. Harmon Steven plays Dr. Masterson, the fella who is hypnotized. He has an expression on his face that looks so corny and his dialogue made me wince with glee. The film ends as it begins with the two survivors telling the tale of how they escaped. The plot is like a bad serial from the forties. Easily the most annoying aspect of the film is the musical score of a guitar that plays almost throughout the whole film. It is repetitive and loud. I actually had trouble hearing what the characters were saying because that music would not stop. It had my hairs(what few I have left)on edge! The film even has a narration by Lyle Talbot of Ed Wood fame in the beginning. This is one of the most fun bad films I have ever seen. The acting, the direction, the script had me rolling with laughter. I don't know if anyone else caught it, but the name of the mental hospital was Muerto Hospital...Death Hospital. One major plus performance-wise is the sight of Tandra Quinn. She is breathtaking as she does her spider dance and exudes sex appeal. If you want to watch a real, real bad movie that will make you laugh...watch Mesa of the Lost Women. For my money it tops even Plan Nine From Outer Space as a truly inept in every fiber of its being film.

One of the best of the so-bad-it's-beautiful movies. MESA OF LOST WOMEN tells the story of a mad scientist (Jackie Coogan with a wart the size of a Roosevelt dime!) who creates beautiful dancing girls out of spiders. (most likely to help out the struggling Rockette industry!) I absolutely loved the scene with the mad doc's victim, a scientist driven insane by a spider-woman encounter. He goes around bars, quoting something close to the Bible, in a silly Elmer Fudd voice.

What I really loved about this movie was Tandra Quinn, as Tarantella, the mad doc's best spider to mucha-cha creation. She's something like a brunette Jayne Mansfield with a little bit of Vampirella thrown in. Ms. Quinn, you made film history with your really strange spider dance.

I saw this movie TWICE within the same week. Yes I did, believe it or not, but I do not ordinarily subject myself to such pure torture, but the main reason was (other than sharing my find with a close friend) - I wanted to count the number of times that the exact same chord sequence and jangling flamenco guitar riff repeated (plus, I kept expecting a villain to appear from behind the bat-wing doors of an old western tavern). I confess that I gave up and threw my notebook at the screen after only about ten minutes in. Yet I continued to watch it again, slowly tugging at my hair, whilst my friend stared at the screen with his mouth open during the amazingly weird voice-overs that may have found a place in a commercial for men's cheap cologne...

Okay, it isn't a movie solely about an infinite flamenco guitar motif as it also has someone banging a key or two on the piano here and there at inopportune moments throughout... I confess that I still heard parts of the soundtrack in my head about three days after I last saw this, so be careful if you value your sanity.

Anyway, it's about a mad doctor who seemingly doesn't even know the difference between spiders and insects, which is no surprise, really. His experiments, other that making giant mutant spiders that are shy and need to hide behind a folding dressing screen, is producing beautiful strong women, and very short ugly men. Why the women turn out beautiful instead of more spider-like (unlike what is implied) is anyone's guess.

I would guess that the dance of Tarantella is supposed to be somewhat erotic and I guess it is, in a way, and probably the only thing worth watching other than laughing yourself sick at Masterson's gleeful stare whilst pretending to be quite mad. (I assume he was just pretending, anyway.)

Seriously, if you want to hear an endless flamenco guitar motif that deeply embeds itself in your brain forever and ever, this is the one to watch!

1/10.