Review of "The Wasp Woman" (1959)

The Wasp Woman (1959)

Smooth as honey, painful acid.

I think those are bees.

Dr. Zinthrop extracts royal jelly from a queen wasp, which is the key to his development of a rejuvenation formula. On the other side of the world, Janice Starlin is a former model/starlet that has created a cosmetics company based on her image. Her age is now affecting her sales. By Corman chance(I mean random), Zinthrop meets with Starling to develop a human version. Zinthrop decides to test it on Starlin herself. Starlin's patience with science wears thing & she decides to overdose on the test compound, with comic results.

The eventual results of watching this movie: madness.

I wish I could tell you there is more, but sadly Corman packed the movie with as many items from an office-supply company catalog as possible. Makes one wonder who funded the movie. 73 long minutes loaded full of scenes of bureaucracy including office phone calls, business lunches, several board meetings, filing, paying invoices, office small talk, searching through drawers, searching for missing persons, driving around, sneaking around rooms, delivery of things, delegating tasks, riding elevators and going over an itinerary. The scenery more than makes up for this by placing us in remote & exotic locations like a boardroom, an office and a room made to look like a laboratory. In all honesty, there is a scene with Dr. Zinthrop walking around the woods, by himself, or the scene where we are driven around to crazy carnival music. Neither seems to have much relevance to the actual movie, however.

Bruno VeSota, in one of his finest roles, as the expendable night watchman.

In the end, not even the presence of Bruno VeSota (a.k.a. the poor man's Orson Welles) could salvage this monstrosity of boredom. Under no circumstances should you watch this without the accompaniment of friends or in a non-Cinematic Titanic version. 1.5x setting was the perfect speed to keep from going into a coma. Failure to do so will result in severe psychological damage.

All the screen shots available here.