The
Wasp Woman (1959)
(a.k.a Insect
Woman, The Bee Girl)
Directed
by Roger Corman
Susan Cabot stars in
The Wasp Woman
as Janice Starlin, who owns a large cosmetics company and is
worried about the company's flagging sales. Sales for the last fiscal
quarter are down by fourteen and a half percent; she tells her senior
staff members and demands an explanation. To one member of her team,
Bill Lane, the problem is obvious and he tells her so: it is
her. Miss Starling had always been the face of Starling
Cosmetics, but that is no longer the case. Janice is getting older and
now, after sixteen years, a new and younger face features in the
company's advertising campaigns. The company was built, he tells her,
on the strength and appeal of one person: Janice Starling and Janice
Starling Cosmetics should have Janice Starling's picture advertising
them.
Enter Scientist Eric Zinthrop.
Zinthrop's last employer was
paying him to
research the values of Royal Jelly and Royal Jelly comes from bees. So,
as you can imagine, the people signing Zinthrop's paycheck were less
than impressed to discover that he was actually working with wasps.
Zinthrop tried to explain that he'd made some significant success in
reversing the aging process and it was all because of wasp royal
jelly. His
employers are not interested though, and tell him to buzz off which is
just what the nutty professor does and he makes a beeline for Starlin
Cosmetics.
Zinthrop needs somewhere
to continue his experiments and Janice Starlin needs a way to turn back
her biological clock, so, after a little demonstration with a guinea
pig, Janice gives Zinthrop a job and tells her people to provide him
with everything he needs. Janice does impose one condition on
Zinthrop though: she
is to be his first human guinea pig. The professor agrees and is soon
injecting his concoction into his new employer on a regular basis. The
treatment is a success and Starlin's secretary is soon telling her that
she could pass for twenty three, or maybe even twenty-two. If this
sounds like a happy ending, I am sorry to disappoint you, it is only
the start because the treatment has some rather nasty side effects and
the queen bee of Starling Cosmetics is winging her way to disaster.
Lame is not a word that I normally
use, but
it is the first word that comes into my head when thinking about The
Wasp Woman. I found the film
very disappointing. The original version is 73 minutes long and mine
has been cut to just 54 minutes, but I still felt like fast forwarding
through it. It is hard for me to say exactly why I didn't like it. The
story is very basic, but so are a lot of stories. The special effects
are minimal, but the same can be said of a lot of older films and yet they
don't bore me. One problem that I can put my finger on is that I found
it very hard to feel sympathetic towards any of the characters. To be
honest, I didn't even like the characters and so that is probably one
of the biggest reasons why I didn't enjoy watching The
Wasp Woman.
Different people have different
tastes
though, and just because I didn't like the film it doesn't mean that
you won't. You can download it from the link below and watch it for
free. All it will cost you is 54 minutes of your time and if you want
to you can delete the file even quicker.
CAST
Susan Cabot ...
Janice Starlin
Anthony Eisley ... Bill Lane
Barboura Morris ... Mary Dennison
William Roerick ... Arthur Cooper
Michael Mark ... Eric Zinthrop
Frank Gerstle ... Les Hellman
Bruno VeSota ... Night watchman
Roy Gordon ... Paul Thompson
Carolyn Hughes ... Jean Carson
Lynn Cartwright ... Maureen Reardon
Frank Wolff ... Man
Lani Mars ... Secretary
Phillip Barry ... Man
Watch The Wasp Woman
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Also
available to buy from Amazon
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