Wasp Woman (1960)

Insect Woman

The Bee Girl

Cast:

Susan Cabot is Janice Starlin
Anthony Eisley is Bill Lane
Barboura Morris is Mary Dennison
William Roerick is Arthur Cooper
Michael Mark is Eric Zinthrop

What the box says:

Founder and owner of her own cosmetic factory, Janice Starlin becomes concerned with the drop in her company sales. A potential solution to this problem comes from scientist Eric Znthrop. He offers to her his research on wasp enzymes, which makes animals younger. Arranging so that she will personally become his human subject, Janice decides to hire him immediately. From there, she takes it upon herself to accelerate the treatment by injecting more serum. In her quest to observe earlier results, Janice transforms into the lethal Wasp Woman.

Plot:

Rogers, a beekeeper, is emptying some honeycombs. Dr Zenthrop, a scientist, is researching royal jelly. Rogers isn’t happy with Zenthrop researching royal wasp jelly. He was to research royal bee jelly. Zenthrop gushes about possibly being able to reverse the aging process. Rogers fires him.

City, at the Starlin Cosmetic Company board meeting, the board of directors is less than enthused about the decline if profits. Janis Starlin, president of the company, had been the model for the company and started to see north of 40 which is a death toll.

Janis meets with Dr. Zenthrop about using royal wasp jelly extract. Zenthrop demonstrates how animals grow younger after being used with his formula. He wants to research without any interference and a small percentage of the formula. Janis agrees but demands to be the human test subject.

As the SCIENCE montage ensues, the business men suspect that Zenthrop is some sort of con-man, fooling Janis.

Later, Zenthrop shows Janis another of his animal test subjects. He’s ready to start the injections on her.

You'll love this stuff...

Bill and Art, the business men, think that Zenthrop is scamming the company. They can’t believe that Janis is falling for his ideas. Mary, Janis’s secretary, takes the letter that Zenthrop sent Janis. They read about using royal wasp jelly extract and are convinced that the good doctor is nuttier than the proverbial fruit bat.

Janis wants the process to be accelerated. She sneaks into the lab late one night and injects herself to amp the dosage.

I'm riding the E Train...

The next day, Janis is looking younger. At the board meeting, she mentions how the new product and ad line will revolutionize the company.

Zenthrop sees that the test cat has turned into some sort of monster.

Mary, Bill, and Art are positive that Zenthrop is the second coming of Dr. Frankenstein. Art sneaks into the lab to get a look at Zenthrop’s notes. Janis breaks into the lab for another dosage of the E, extract.

Zenthrop wanders onto a street and is hit by a car.

Janis is worried by the good doctor’s disappearance. She hires a private eye to find him. This is when Mary reveals she took the letter from Janis’s desk.

The private eye checks Zenthrop’s apartment and discovers he’s in the hospital in a coma and has some brain damage.

Janis rides another does of the E train and hides from Art sneaking to study the lab notes more. Suddenly, about time, Janis turns into the Wasp Woman and kills Art, 51 minutes into the movie.

At the next board meeting, Janis is getting more determined to start her “return to youth” campaign with her

Zenthrop wakes out of his coma and has some very important thing to warn Janis concerning but can’t remember it.

Muy frito grande...

Bill tries to find Art who has disappeared.

That night, the night watchman disappears while on duty. Everyone knows he came in but didn’t leave.

Janis tells Zenthrop about not being able to control her.

Bill finds Art’s notes and is convinced that he must be dead.

Janis needs more Extract made for her. However, she wasps out and kills the nurse.

Mary and Bill rush to Zenthrop’s room. Janis heads to the lab.

Zenthrop finally remembers what he should warn Janis. Bill tries to call her and sends Mary to call the police.

Bill keeps ignoring Zenthrop who is babbling about enzyme changes to Janis.

Janis wasps out and chases Mary.

Hep me...Hep me...Please hep me....How's my Fly impression?

Bill and Zenthrop rush to the rescue. At the lab, Wasp Woman attacks the good doctor. Bill versus Wasp Woman. The dying Zenthrop tosses some acid on Wasp Woman’s face. Bill and Mary are fine and the only 2 left alive.

What I say:

For B-movie fans, some directors would be the low budget equivalents of Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford. Ed "Plan 9 From Outer Space" Wood may be considered the worst director of all time. I'd disagree and say he made some badly entertaining movies. Well, lets try to finish my attempt at an introduction. Aother of the B-movie directors in the Pantheon would have to be Roger Corman. Producing more than 350+ movies and directing over 50 + movies is quite a list like Bucket of Blood and Terror. He has given us the Vincent Price-Poe movies from the early 1960s: House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death, Pit and the Pendulum, the Raven, Tales of Terror, Tomb of Ligeia. The 1950s and 1960s had Corman doing probaly his most acknowledged streak of horror and mainly sci-fi films.

The late 1950s saw the rise of the insect sci-fi movies. Bert I Gordon almost had a strangelhold on the giant insect movies with things like Beginning of the End after the far better Them showed that giant bug movies could be successful. 1958 saw the release of the greatest insect monster movie of that time: the Fly. Corman had to jump on the insect monster bandwagon and thus Wasp Woman was born.

For a 73 minute, not to have the monster appear until the 51 minute mark is awfully hard to get through. Keeping the monster hidden can work in some movies like the Fly which makes it seem that more shocking, it doesn't work for Wasp Woman. From the opening credits, the audience knows there is a Wasp Woman somewhere. At least the Fly, no one is quite sure of what the Fly is.

The movie may sound that Janis is a shrew or bitter about the march of time. In the beginning, she doesn't seem that much concerned about growing older. The company is blaming her. Having most of the company blame you for being the older face of a makeup company and blaming you for not longer modeling seems a bit hard to grasp.

The Wasp Woman may be one of the few movies that doesn't focus entirely on the evil of corporations. No company wants to use the Zenthrop's work for their own benefit. Granted, they all thought whatever he was doing was a complete waste of time and money. It seems the executives are more against Zenthrop only because they're not in the loop. If told, they would have defintely thought he was a charaltan. Another large portion of the movie concerns the executives who after they browbeat Janis into believing its her fault for the company's downturn. They immediately think the scientist is quack who's conning Janis and decide to figure out his game.

It is good to know that not all scientists are evil. With the foreign-accented bald scientist, why he must be evil? If the 1950s movies could have attached xenophobia to a rocket, the moon landing would have been a decade sooner. Zenthrop doesn't actually do any of the typical mad scientist experiments we've seen in far too numerous movies to count. Mainly because he's not a mad scientist. He wants to keep experimenting before moving onto human tests. Read that again, he wanted to keep testing before moving to human subjects. However, once again, science is the wages of death. Normally, the hero survives with some sort of anti-scientifical spiel about tampering into realms best left unexplored.

Point to Ponder: Anyone realize the wasp buzzing in the background near the end of the movie?

Quotable Dialogue
"I've got 2 words for you: drop dead twice."
"Socially, the queen wasp is on a level with the black widow spider."
"Hi pretty puss."
"How'd you like the phone wrapped around your ear?"
Morals of the Story
Wasps make excellent movie backgrounds.
Slapping someone is calming.