The Wasp Woman (1959) Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley, Barboura Morris, William Roerick Movie Review

The Wasp Woman (1959)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Susan Cabot in The Wasp Woman (1959)

Not Much Sting

With age Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) knows her beauty is fading and with it she is finding her cosmetics empire also on the decline with executive Bill Lane (Anthony Eisley) seemingly ready to pounce on any opportunity. So when self proclaimed scientist, Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark), shows up with a claim that his wasp enzyme extract has rejuvenating qualities she signs on and agrees to be his human guinea pig. And all goes well for her as she starts looking increasingly younger except with comes a personality change with Janice becoming increasingly waspy. But when Zinthrop is injured in a car accident and is unable to keep the treatment going things takes an even darker turn for Janice as she starts to evolve in to a wasp woman.

As 50s/60s sci-fi go I hate to say this but "The Wasp Woman" is one tedious movie which nothing really happens in. To put this even clearer here is a movie which lasts just 73 minutes and by the half way point all there has bee n is a lot of people standing around talking or in the case of Janice acting mean spirited. Eventually something happens at the half way mark as Janice sneaks in to start injecting herself whilst Zinthrop has to take extreme measures when a cat he experimented on shows unwelcome side effects. But there is nothing here to write home about.

What this means for "The Wasp Woman" is the wait for the appearance of the wasp woman and how Susan Cabot will look, will she be a sexy wasp, a hideously deformed one or just one with a seriously bad costume. But truth be told even waiting for the inevitable to happen is not that exciting and this sadly is one of those movies where you end up repeatedly looking at your watch and every time you edge closer to the end you wonder whether anything good is going to happen.

What this all boils down to is that maybe if you are a devotee of 50s/60s sci-fi movies "The Wasp Man" may offer up some sort of nostalgic entertainment but for me it comes extremely short on that ingredient.


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