The Wasp Woman


Dir: Roger Corman
Starring: Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley, Barboura Morris, Michael Mark

I remember something very similar in one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. It's clear now that was a shameless ripoff of this movie, about a female cosmetics tycoon who finds regular royal jelly has lost its effectiveness, so moves to the hard stuff: wasp royal jelly. The results are...well, the poster at the right gives it away, though as portrayed in the film, it's actually the opposite: regular woman, wasp head - and a pretty dodgy-looking head it is too. This falls uncomfortably between two stools; it's impossible for me to dismiss completely, since I have a near-phobia of wasps, and think they've been sadly underused as movie monsters (compared to, for instance, bees). I personally thus find the concept of a giant wasp stalking an office building freaky enough to work. But there's no real attempt to generate tension - someone finding wads of chewed-up paper, for instance - and the payoff is, as mentioned, so lame that neither is it sufficient in itself. The wasp attacks are surprisingly gory for the time, I'll admit, but this one is definitely a Bee-movie...

D


Nice poster - shame
about the film
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