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| Wasp woman goes on the attack! |
THE WASP WOMAN (1959).
Colorized. Directed by Roger Corman.
Sales for Janice Starlin's (Susan Cabot) cosmetic company have been dropping since she stopped using herself in advertisements, but as she's on the wrong side of forty, she figures she has no choice. But when elderly Professor Zinthrop (Michael Mark) tells her that he has come up with an age-defying formula using royal jelly from wasps, she has hope and insists he use her as a guinea pig. At first the results are miraculous, with Janice looking as if she's in her twenties (Cabot was 32 at the time), but when she uses more and more of the formula to remain young, the results are less than felicitous. Janice turns into a horribly mutated wasp woman who attacks and feeds upon various people around her, including a solicitous nurse (Lani Mars) and a very obese night watchman (Bruno VeSota).
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| Susan Cabot with Michael Mark |
I have always gotten a kick out of this fun Corman cheapie-creepy, and I enjoyed it even more in well-done
color! In addition to Cabot's excellent performance, this time around I appreciated Lynn Cartwright as the saucy secretary Maureen, who is given some amusing dialogue and runs with it. Fred Katz' jazzy musical score is a little odd, but it works well enough, and the film is full of a whole host of interesting B movie players: Anthony Eisley of
Hawaiian Eye; Roy Gordon from
Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman; Barboura Morris from
Bucket of Blood; the aforementioned VeSota; and even Aron Kincaid [
The Girls on the Beach] as a briefly-seen beekeeper, Roger Corman himself also shows up briefly as a doctor, so briefly that I didn't even notice him! I love the scene when Cabot and Morris have excited, happy girl talk over Janice's new youthful appearance.
Verdict: Be careful what you wish for! ***.
2 comments:
Has been a long time since I’ve seen this one but time for a repeat viewing. Got to love Corman’s great storytelling and casting on a shoestring budget. He worked a lot of low budget miracles.
- Chris
Corman was also an adept director, keeping things moving, and as you say, making the most of very limited budgets. He also was good at choosing actors that could deliver what was required almost on instinct -- his and theirs.
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