User reviews

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!

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!

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.

Actually, it's an interesting take on a familiar idea - that women should not try to hold on to youth, that they should grow up and age gracefully. And yet everything in our culture has always told us that path leads to invisibility, loss of affection, and in cosmetics queen Janice Starlin's (Susan Cabot) case, loss of revenue. At age 40, Janice Starlin's cosmetic company is losing ground, and her board tells her that is because she has always been the face of her products, but putting the faces of other models on those products instead has caused women to lose confidence in her products. She replies that her now 40 year old face will not sell products either.

She is then visited by scientist Eric Zinthrop who tells her he believes he has invented a serum from wasps that can rejuvenate the old. He wants only a small percentage of any sales she might make and full credit for the discovery. Starlin in return demands to be the first human that his serum is tested on.

When testing begins on Janice she does begin to lose years - she now looks 35 instead of 40. But she wants the transformation to occur faster. Without Zinthrop's knowledge she takes extra injections, and she now looks 22 years old. But there is an unknown side effect. The cat that Zinthrop was testing has become deranged and attacks him. Before he can tell anyone, he wanders into traffic, is injured badly in an accident, and is transported to a hospital with possible brain damage.

Meanwhile Janice is acting antsy, hearing wasps buzzing in her head, and frantically looking for Zinthrop because she thinks her problem is that she will soon be out of serum when her fate is far worse.

You can tell this is purely poverty row, because every shot is a close up so the art direction can be kept to a minimum. And for Starlin's company to be so big and busy I count about half a dozen people who work at the firm, including two secretaries who seem to constantly be loafing. If not for the really laughable and very cheap special effects, this might have been better. Like other 50s sci-fi horror films it distills horror down to a basic fact - that humans are afraid of their bodies getting out of control either by the aging process or by disease. It is the reason cancer is so scary. I'd mildly recommend this one.

'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.

The plot of this film has the head of a cosmetics firm trying out a new formula formed from the jelly of a queen wasp. The make-up actually makes the woman younger, but has the horrible side effect in that it turns the woman into a killer human wasp.

Oh what a silly film this is. Its also a great deal of fun. The story is wildly silly, there's a monster that looks ridiculous, and enough skill behind the camera to produce just the right amount of tension to keep you watching. It all combines to form a perfectly charming little movie.

Good, but far from great, the Wasp Woman gets its classic status from the fact that the film used to be in permanent rotation on late night horror TV. I can't tell you how many times my mind was warped by this little gem over the years. It seemed it was always on and pretty much everyone I knew saw it over and over again. It became a joke of sorts as the quintessential "bad movie", its bug eyed monster in tights was exactly the sort of monster you didn't want to see in a movie.

Highly recommended to those who want to see a what horror films used to be like at the height of the drive- in era, or to those who just want something to keep themselves distract on a dark and stormy night.

THE WASP WOMAN was my first excursion into the work of Roger Corman. Aside from assorted clips of his buried FANTASTIC FOUR I've found on YouTube, I'm never actually seen one of his movies. I was curious. He's considered a legend in the industry and he's had a hand in the early careers of modern masters such as Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron. Great! And it's science fiction. What more could I want? The film was released in 1959, a great time for corny drive-in sci-fi, and the poster features an enormous wasp with the face of a woman ready to feed on a man trapped in its clutches. Wicked poster image; I wouldn't mind having it hanging in my office. The movie opens with the title card and a first-minute error. Well, possibly an error. The titles are played over swarming bees. Bees, not wasps. Whatever, moving on. We start on a honey farm where a visiting suit becomes annoyed because the scientist they hired to study the royal jelly from queen bees has turned out to be a mad scientist studying the royal jelly of wasps. He's fired for obvious reasons (being a mad scientist, wasting research funds, etc.) despite his promising experimentation with dogs where he's successfully halted the aging process using the wasp jelly. The mad scientist, Dr. Zinthrop (Michael Mark), turns to the cosmetic industry for further funding, where he finds cosmetic mogul Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) moping over the fact that her advanced age makes her unsuitable as a cover model. She used to be the face of her company (literally) but, shucks, she's aging like a human and she hates it. When Dr. Zinthrop arrives with his wasp jelly serum, he's progressed to the point where he can actually reverse aging and Starlin insists on being his human test subject. It's cheesy 50's science fiction, so you can probably guess what happens from here.

If you guess long stretches of nothing, you are correct. Oh man, I was beyond bored through most of THE WASP WOMAN. From the point where Zinthrop meets with Starlin until the transformation (which doesn't occur until more than 50 minutes into a meager 73 minute movie), there isn't much that happens. We're treated to gossip in the company's secretary pool (oh, that Irving) and the crawling pace of Starlin's descent into obsession with regaining her youth through the serum. Dull. Extraordinarily dull. There's some classic 50's era misogyny and groan-worthy dialogue. I don't know. It's hard to post a meaningful comment for a movie where I spaced out for the majority of the runtime. It starts off promisingly enough with the mad scientist and his inexplicable obsession with wasps but once he settles in with the cosmetic company, I stopped caring until he was hit by a car or a bus or something. Nothing serious, we just needed a convenient plot device to keep him from telling Starlin of his terrifying discovery: that the animals he had de-aged with the wasp serum had turned into hideous, violent monsters. When the transformation finally occurs and we're introduced to the wasp woman, I laughed. Oh man, did I laugh. That cool poster? You can forget about that. I mean, it was 1959 so I didn't expect much but what we got was anything but terrifying.

I mean, I guess I can see how this qualifies as a wasp woman. She's got bulging insectoid eyes and furry little antennae. Instead of mandibles, they gave her fangs that appear to jut from her lower jaw. The rest of her body is pretty normal for a woman except her hair has turned into a terrifying mullet and her hands appear to be her wasp stingers. At first I thought she was just strangling her victims but I soon realized she was apparently stinging them to death. It's momentarily hilarious before returning to tedious. She claims a couple victims and, when in human form, continues to obsess over the serum, demanding the near comatose Zinthrop (still recovering from that fight he lost against New York traffic) whip her up another batch. It's all a bust. I'm sure Corman has got some great work in his career but THE WASP WOMAN is not one to brag about. A little research into the film led me to the understand that this was one of the early films with his production/distribution company Filmgroup where he would make films on the cheap and create throwaway drive-in movies for double features. Frankly, I don't know that I could sit through two movies of this quality back-to-back without sticking my own head in a wasps' nest.

Compared to the very bad face jobs around these days a beauty treatment that turns the user into a wasp isn't all that bad. A great 50s B movie or as others have noted, wasp movie. Most of the elements compulsory in a B movie were present except for bad acting as it was fairly good here. 63 years later and there are still plenty of women willing to try literally anything in the quest to look younger and in most cases they end up looking ridiculous. This film should be used in schools for educational purposes.

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.

"The Wasp Woman" is a 1959 film directed by Roger Corman, who is known for being prolific in his production and direction of low-budget shlock such as "Teenage Zombies" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches".

Anyway, "The Wasp Woman" is about a woman who develops a youth formula from jelly taken from queen wasps. She overdoses on the stuff and turns into this half-human, half-wasp thing. Hilarity ensues.

I actually enjoyed this one, despite it being a bit on the slow side, but entertaining nonetheless. The acting is decent for a film such as this, and the sheer campiness that is trademark of Roger Corman films is there also.

Sure, the story is silly, yet somehow believable. A woman ODs on wasp jelly and the result is she turns into a wasp woman. TOTALLY BELIEVABLE! Even though it was really just the woman with a wasp-like mask on with some buzzing noise playing in the background while she killed things, it's all good. It's a shame she couldn't have sprouted wings and flew around town with some buzzing noise playing in the background while she killed things. Seriously, that would have been GOLD and would have catapulted this film to such heights of cheesy goodness that nothing else could compare.

My only nitpick is the scene jumping in some points is a bit sloppy and the overall picture quality isn't so great either. But I'm willing to forgive that since neither really effects the fact that I enjoyed the film. I got it one of those 4-in-1 dollar DVDs from Wal-Mart, so I would say it's a quarter well-spent.

The Wasp Woman is directed by Jack Hill and Roger Corman and written by Leo Gordon and Kinta Zertuche. A Roger Corman production, it stars Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley, Michael Mark and Barboura Morris. Music is by Fred Katz and photography by Harry Neumann.

Janice Starlin (Cabot) is the owner of a large cosmetics company, once a successful operation, the company is starting to lose customers who can see that Starlin is beginning to show her aged years. But hope may be at hand form scientist Eric Zinthrop (Mark), who has been experimenting with the royal jelly from a queen wasp, creating a serum that reverses the aging process. She strikes a deal with Zinthrop to fund his research as long as she can be his first human subject...

Schlockmeister Corman obviously took notice of the success of Kurt Neumann's The Fly from the previous year, for here he tries to bring us the female variant on the sci-fi mix up movie for half the budget. It marks the last time that Susan Cabot would appear in film, this also being the last of six films she made with Corman. For a low budget schlocker it's not half bad, the berserker insect/human science is good fun and there's potent thematics within involving the search for eternal youth, drug addiction and the cautionary warning about man pushing science too far. Even the effects, whilst cheap and rightly kept in the shadows for the most part, have an antiquated charm about them. If only the film wasn't so static, so ordinary, for two thirds of its relatively short running time, then this would be talked about as one of Corman's better offerings, especially since the cast are actually fine, particularly the pretty and stoic Cabot.

Most of the film is played out from the offices of a high-rise office complex, this is unusual but gives the film a little uniqueness, with Neumann and his directors managing to set the ambiance at uneasy. But it's mostly talky stuff, meaning mood is built up to the point that when the picture does shift into creature feature gear-budget restrictions mean expectations can't possibly be met; even if what little horror is in the picture is actually pretty spicy: though the makers do miss a trick because it's explained to us early in the piece that the Queen Wasp eats her mate! But Janice has no love interest here, shame that! Fred Katz's music is deliciously mad, at times sounding like Wacky Races on LSD, at others some gentle jazz beat fusion, it's in the right movie, just not used at the right times! The accompanying buzzing sound affect for a Wasp Woman attack, though, is most agreeable. Corman would use the score again for Little Shop of Horrors the following year.

Nobody, you would like to think, would be viewing The Wasp Woman expecting a sci-fi classic, but it's a frustrating watch in many ways, even to the fans of cheapo B movie schlockers. 5/10

With Echoes of The Fly (1958) still Buzzing at the Box Office, Schlockmeister Roger Corman grabbed a couple of People and took a Week to make this Gloomy Monster Movie. The Cast, some Corman Regulars including B-Movie Babe Susan Cabot who was never Credited with an A-Budget Film but a lot of Bees, did a fine Job. The background Music is also quite Appropriately Uncanny.

But the "Star" of the Movie is the Monster and for the few times It/She is on Screen there is some Tension and Gore that looks quite Bizarre. There are some glaring Missteps along the way, the kind that Corman never minded, at least in His Ultra Quickies. Like the Bumble Bees instead of Wasps Iconography, and the Guinea Pigs to Rats Mind Boggler. There are some others but Who cares?

Overall, there is much Talk in this Thing and hardly Anyone moves in the Claustrophobic and Drab Sets, but there is enough Drive-In Movie Madness to make it Worth a Watch.

Genre-addicts are and still will be happy enough to find treasures as well as garbage on the search for all kind of horror-, scifi- and fantasy-pics in our time - thanks to the 1950ies and the following decades having produced enough material to satisfy the fans. Corman's "The Wasp Woman" can undoubtedly be regarded as one of the worst movies of the decade and of the genre as well. Guinea Pigs turning into rats, bees appearing as wasps or vice versa, terrible performances of actors and actresses in even more terrible set designs. Annoying for all people with a lack of good humour, still entertaining for an open-minded audience.

The first time I saw a Roger Corman movie I swore I would never watch another one but for some reason I can't seem to avoid them.I chose this movie based solely on the title, which seemed far too average to be a Corman title.I guess this was one of his earlier works and the hard to see black and white is Corman's best friend.The plot summary is wrong.A scientist develops the "youth formula",not the cosmetics queen.We don't see the wasp woman until the last half hour and it's just a woman in a crappy mask.The camera shakes wildly so you can't see how truly lame she is.If you saw the cover before you watched this,you will be even more disappointed. On top of all the bad stuff,at 73 minutes this movies is 25 minutes too long.How can that be?Corman spends countless minutes on driving and walking scenes that have no dialogue or purpose,as usual. Don't watch this movie.

It's not a bad movie. I found it to be fun and entertaining. It is another low budget B movie production but in my opinion it is slightly under rated and maybe a half step in front of most of it's contemporaries. Being produced and directed by Roger Corman probably has a lot to do with this. The acting isn't bad especially that of the leading lady Susan Cabot, and the plot interesting although in places flawed. The costume for the wasp woman was a big disappointment. I have no doubt that it had a much bigger effect in 1960 but it is pretty poor. When you see the design on the box for the DVD or VCR tape remember, never judge a book by it's cover. The wasp woman's appearance is nothing like the artist's conception. It's still well worth watching and I have done so several times over the years. Just remember not to be too critical. Relax and enjoy it.

Cheapjack thriller from director Roger Corman is kind of fun, if you're not too demanding. Female CEO of a cosmetics firm, concerned about her fading looks, turns to an erstwhile professor to help restore her youth through injections filled with the enzymes found in wasps (he's just been fired from his work on a bee farm, where he was caught going rogue!). Corman-quickie (distributed theatrically by "The Filmgroup") is operating on perhaps one cylinder due mostly to a stock screenplay by Leo Gordon, working from an original treatment by Kinta Zertuche. Our heroine has been given no personality or dimensions; as portrayed by the wooden Susan Cabot, she doesn't even have any sympathetic qualities. Eager to be beautiful again (and ditch those homely glasses!), the impatient businesswoman begins injecting the enzymes herself after hours--but what is she to do when the serum runs out? She can't call the professor--he's been sideswiped by a car and now lies in a coma! Second-feature has a silly-looking monster and hilarious attempts at 'natural' water cooler chit-chat, but B-movie addicts might find this shamefacedly irresistible. ** from ****

This is a very good old flick directed by Roger Corman. In My opinion the movie's plot is very much like the Wolf Man except the monster is woman instead of a man and that woman is Susan Cabot! Her performance was very good. The effects in the film is good and the music is different. The film is exciting and I think that it should keep horror and sci-fi fans busy whether you like old classic horror or new horror because the film is built up pretty good and you see the Wasp Woman pretty good and the make up and stuff looks good. Some people may think its not but keep in mind that this was a low budget film and stuff. I think that the cast acted good and did the best they could do and the crew did the same as well in My opinion. I think that most horror fans will like this so check it out!