The Wasp Woman

Release: 1959
Director: Roger Corman
Company: The Filmgroup

Notable Cast:

Susan Cabot as Janice Starlin
Anthony Eisley as Bill Lane
Michael Mark as Eric Zinthrop
Frank Gerstle as Les Hellman
Roy Gordon as Paul Thompson
Bruno VeSota as Night Watchman

Plot: Janice Starlin is the owner of a large cosmetics company. Sales have been dropping and the theory is that it is due to Starlin's aging appearance. A doctor has been able to extract enzymes for wasp queen royal jelly. He begins to experiment with this new drug on animals.

Janice becomes impatient with the slowness of the experiments and begins taking the drug behind the doctors back. The drug has an immediate impact as Janice becomes much younger almost overnight. Not all is well as the test animals begin to become uncontrollably violent. This of course leads to Janice transforming into The Wasp Woman!

The Monster: There was some false advertising going on here as the creature in the film looks nothing like the movie poster. I know this had a limited budget but an actual wasp would have been cool and then we might have some powers to talk about here.

What we got is Susan Cabot wearing a Halloween mask and pretending to bite a couple of people. I guess the creature has fangs and maybe some enhanced strength?

Thoughts: This one started off really strong. Above average acting and a solid foundation of a plot. I was also hopeful because Roger Corman was at the helm and he has a real skill for making some hidden gems of movies. So with all that said, the first 15 minutes of this film are pretty good and then it just kind of comes to a crashing halt.

Look, I have a good attention span but with a movie like this. When we're in minute 50 and it's still people talking around tables, you've done something wrong. We're here to see some monster mayhem and this movie was severely lacking in it. The Wasp Woman only makes a few appearances in this film and she honestly has very little impact on the overall direction of the film. Janice doesn't really remember of feel impacted by the killings she is committing as the Wasp Woman. Zinthrop's main injuries aren't even sustained by the monster, he gets hit by a car!

This trope of taking an experimental drug and becoming a monster has been done a million times and it's been done a lot better. The Wasp Woman as a monster isn't particularly interesting and we don't even get a cool transformation scene like in the 1941 Wolf Man film.

The Wasp Woman was also exceptionally terrible as far as special effects go. I understand they did this on a budget but come on, you could do better than this. The monster isn't even remotely scary for starters. The mask just looks bad and I feel like they could have made it at least look a little more wasp like.

I will say some nice things about this film though. I thought Susan Cabot as Janice Starlin was a fairly good performance. I would say it's an excellent performance by B movie standards. Her excitement at being young and her desperation that leads to her taking the drug behind everyone's back. She really gave a stand out performance here and it makes me think I might do War of the Satellites for my next review just to see her again.

Verdict: I think I might be a little too harsh on this film the more I think about it. It kind of lures you in with familiar faces of actors you have enjoyed in other films and it has Roger Corman's name on it. Unlike other movies, you can kind of see that there was some potential lurking under the surface here. Sadly, we get a lackluster and boring movie with barely a Wasp Woman to be hard. It's with a disappointed heart that I give this one a *1/2.

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