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The Wasp Woman (1959) More at IMDbPro »

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17 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
Good stuff from Roger Corman, 19 January 2003

Author: Space_Mafune from Newfoundland, Canada

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.

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14 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
PMS: Pesky Metamorphosis Syndrome, 2 July 2004

Author: acidxian from Haddonfield, IL

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Beee-eautiful Janet Starlin doesn't realize that her nerdy glasses and her constipated expression make her look older, and when her "age" beee-gins to interfere with her successful cosmetics company, she takes some never-bee-fore-attempted measures to regain her youth.

Teaming up with a would-bee mad scientist, she allows him to inject her with a serum made from the royal jelly of wasps, and pretty soon she looks 22 again. Unfortunately, it also makes her turn into a wasp monster at certain inopportune moments, like when she gets a tension headache. Needless to say, when she's a wasp, she's a beee-itch.

Some good buzzing bee-woman action in this one, I love the part where Janet/Wasp Woman confronts a mild-mannered nurse and rushes at her, blocking her escape by body-slamming a door closed right in front of her. Lots of fun for campy monster fans, anybody expecting anything really scary or thrilling...well, don't bother this movie and it won't bother you.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Not Bad; Just Needed A Little More Sting, 28 October 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This Roger Corman B- horror film isn't bad. It good have been better with a little more action earlier on. When you advertise a film featuring a monster, you don't want to wait for over three-quarters of that film waiting for it. That was the case here with the Wasp Woman who doesn't become that and start killing people until the last 15 minutes of the 72-minute film.

However, it wasn't totally boring up to then. It was still fairly interesting as it showed an eccentric scientist inventing a serum that would reverse the aging process. He finds a willing subject in the head of a cosmetics firm that is falling on hard times. The owner, who was the centerpiece of the company's advertising for so many years, is no longer young and attractive, and sales of their products have fallen off.

But once she begins to take this serum, after being convinced it works because she's seen the effect on rabbits and cats, she slowly begins to look young and prettier again. However, she gets greedy and takes too much. The result: when angry, she turns into a wasp, killing and devouring its prey - whoever is in her way at a particular moment. Worse things happen: the scientist is a victim of a hit-and-run, is in a coma for about a week and our lady exec is just about out of serum. It's panic time. The rest of the select circle of employees, meanwhile, have been suspicious of this whole thing from day one and have spied here and there. One of them was the Wasp Woman's first victim. The guy nosed around too much in the lab. The rest of the crew, however, is still alive and now pretty much knows what's going on as the doctor begins to slowly snap out of it and warn them about "Janice Starlin," aka The Wasp Woman. A confrontation with all of them ensues in a violent, dramatic ending.

Susan Cabot does a nice job playing the cosmetics CEO and ''Michael Mrk" isn't bad as the scientist, "Eric Zinthrop." None of the actors are terrible, actually, which I usually except in these kind of B-films. They aren't Laurence Oliver or Meryl Streep, but they're competent enough.

Corman's goofy music score was very reminiscent of his 1960 hit, "The Little Shop Of Horrors." This movie didn't have that pizazz to it but, as said in the first sentence, wasn't bad. It certainly is worth a look for sci-fi or horror films of the '50s and '60s. With its short running time, even if you don't like it, it didn't take up the whole night.

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Buzz off, you uncanny ladybug!, 28 August 2006

Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

Like none of his other late 50's/early 60's horror & Sci-Fi tryouts (and there were quite a lot of them), "The Wasp Woman" truly proves that Roger Corman was, and still is, a very creative and versatile filmmaker! The plot of his ultra-low budget quickie is mundane and unbelievably predictable, yet the whole film is stuffed with ingenious little twists and elements that make the premise feel fresh and original nevertheless! There are very few directors out there, apart from Corman, able to achieve this! Susan Cabot, who starred in a handful of contemporary Corman productions, plays a businesswoman leading a prominent cosmetics company. She's unable to accept her own natural ageing process and righteously fears that her looks will bring down the monthly profits. When a scientist announces that he developed a rejuvenation liquid by extracting enzymes of ordinary wasps, Janice Starling immediately wants to commercialize it and test it on herself. The miraculous discovery is highly efficient, but when Janice injects herself with too much doses, she transforms into a murderous wasp overnight. "The Wasp Woman" is no more or no less than fun & undemanding Sci-Fi entertainment! The film has a good pace and there's the occasional suspenseful moment to enjoy. The monster-transformations and special effects are really tacky but what else did you expect considering the money that was involved? This charming little movie may not be very appealing to the younger generation of fans, but I warmly recommend it to admirers of classic science fiction. The rating here on IMDb is WAY too low!

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Classic R. Corman with unique Ms. Cabot!, 8 August 2004

Author: shepardjessica from sparks, nevada

One of Roger Corman's better directorial efforts about reversing the aging process to sell cosmetics in the early 60's! Susan Cabot, the lead, finished her film career with this one before returning to the theatre in New York after many films in the 50's. Unfortunately, she was bludgeoned to death by her dwarf son sometime in the 80's which ended her promising career. She was a serious actress with a terrible final act.

A definite 6 out of 10. Best performance = Susan Cabot. Worst performance = Anthony (Fred) Eisley - the "actor" who always managed to reach the pinnacle of Blandness in every film he made in the 60's. Dr. Zin in his spotted pajamas reminds me of someone's Uncle Luigi. An under-rated low budget flick which hits a nerve (cosmetics, pshaw). This is on DVD. Seek it out!

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
The Wasps and the Bees, 12 March 2004

Author: sol1218 from brooklyn NY

******SPOILERS***** Decent Roger Corman film about the goings on in a top cosmetic company and the story of it's CEO and founder who hit upon hard times when her looks who were the companies best advertisement began to develop wrinkles as she began to approach middle-age as did the companies, in being cut in half, profits.

Cosmetic Queen Janice Starlin, Susan Cabot, needs something to jump-start her falling business and just then pops in Eric Zinthrop, Michael Mark, an eccentric scientist. Zinthrop's experiments with wasp royal jelly has brought on his subjects, hamsters dogs and cats, miracles in retarding the aging process and bringing them back to their youth. Seeing first hand and being convinced by Zinthrop's experiments Janice eagerly volunteers to be injected with Zinthrop's serum and becomes more youthful looking as the injections continue. But like most women Janice feels that she not youthful enough and starts, against Zinthrop's advice, to take them by herself and in larger and larger dosages. As Janice becomes more youthful she also becomes more waspish and wasps especially a queen wasp are dangerous and deadly creatures.

The acting is much better then you would expect from an early Roger Corman horror movie. Even though you don't see Janice transform into the deadly Wasp Woman until almost in the last third of the movie which makes the horror scenes very limited but their still both shocking as well as effective. The very good acting by all involved in the film keeps you interested in the story up until the horror and action scenes starts.

Even though Janice is both a small and delicate woman, even made up as the Wasp Woman, she's very physical aggressive and frightening in all her action scenes in which all her victims are far bigger then she is.

Zinthrop being more or less the mad scientist type in the movie was anything but mad but very concerned for Janice in his experiments on her and it was Janice who went too far not him in pursuing them. "The Wasp Woman" is one of Roger Corman's better earlier movies with a sound plot and top notch acting By Susan Cabot, Michael Mark, Arthur Cooper Anthony Eisley and the very likable Barboura Morris that rises the film above the B-Horror movie that you would have thought that it would be.

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
"I got 3 words for you: drop dead..twice!", 28 June 2001

Author: ronnie from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

That great phrase was spoken by cosmetic magnate Susan Cabot's secretary on the telephone to her deadbeat boyfriend, one of many quirky passages in this electrifying shockfest. Cabot, in her last film role, worked for director Roger Corman several times, and is amazing as a fortyish executive seeking youth and beauty to boost her sagging company (and face). She hires an eccentric (Michael Marks), who has discovered that wasp enzymes can bring back youth to animals. Cabot volunteers herself to some periodic injections, and is transformed, but not without ghastly side effects. Taking the idea from "The Fly" (1958), she develops wasp claws and head and becomes a deadly eating machine at times. The jazzy music is riveting, and the editing quick and vicious, just like a buzzing insect's moves. The climax is tense and terrifying. Barboura Morris is good as Cabot's assistant, while Marks is charmingly funny, especially when flirting with the secretaries. Deserves all its allocades.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
"American (Wasp) Woman... Stay away from me-hee!", 9 February 2008

Author: (Vomitron_G) from the Doomed Megalopolis of Blasphemous Technoids

"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.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Okay, but mostly dull, 18 May 2005

Author: lost-in-limbo from the Mad Hatter's tea party.

A professor is working on the deadly jelly of a Queen Wasp. Where he learns that this drug his working can slow down the aging cycle and make one look young again. So a boss of a cosmetics company in need to boost her companies falling sales becomes interested in it. So she becomes the first human guinea pig for the drug and soon enough she becomes a youthful beauty again. Though, there are nasty side effects to follow.

I will start off by typing that the DVD I watched it on didn't have such great picture quality, with some scenes being too dark and real grainy, but maybe that's the way it was shot. Since the production would have had a shoestring budget, but anyway it was still viewable.

Roger Corman's The Wasp Woman which I borrowed from a friend is one weird, but mostly a lacklustre thriller. It has a very slow first 50-miutes and it suddenly picks up in the last quarter of the film. I just found it quite a tedious viewing, with two or three moments of sheer excitement and interest in just basically the last 20-minutes of the film.

The film premise was interesting enough, but the discussions and theories leading up to the thrilling last quarter weren't entirely enticing or particularly fun viewing. They were more of a snore fest and a real drag. Well, maybe some scenes early on involving a Professor and his mumbo jumbo have its moments. But saying that, the story was generally unpredictable and it had its amusing situations. Like the fruity Prof. Zenthrop going into a trance and having a scuffle with a cat, the first appearance of the wasp woman and some moments when she decides to feed on some unexpected guests, but most of these humorous scenes come too late in the film.

The wasp costume came as a surprise; it looked ridiculously funny and truly unimaginative. With someone running around in black clothing, black high heels, a fury mask that covers the face with some feelers and beady eyes added on, but what do you expect from a Roger Corman z-grade film. Reading some reviews from fellow IMDb users I see I'm not the only one to feel a bit conned, as the cover art on the DVD box actually had a wasp with a woman's head on it ;). Cheap and shoddy effects were to be expected and are definitely a humorous sight to see.

There are stilted performances, except for the main leads Susan Cabot as the vain boss of a beauty products company during the day and the vicious wasp woman at night and Michael Mark as Professor Eric Zinthrop are pretty good.

The script is fairly corny and at times it will unintentionally cause a snicker. The plot has its usual flaws and inconsistencies. Though, these are the reasons to watch these types of films.

The mostly loud and forceful music score was a bit over-the-top and it kind of got on my nerves. It was just too distracting for me. The dim lighting and cheap sets really added to the atmosphere side of things.

It has an enjoyable and thrilling climax, but the sudden ending just felt forced and unconvincing. I wasn't expecting big things or anything grand from this film, but I was hoping for more fun and for me the film sorely lacked that.

Well, maybe I'm being too critical, but I just couldn't get into this film liked I hoped, as I usually enjoy these types of films. It's not awful, I just found it plain dreary… well, most of it.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Very entertaining Roger Corman quickie., 2 December 2002
Author: Infofreak from Perth, Australia

'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.

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