Synopsis: Scientist Dr Eric
Zinthrop (Michael Mark) is fired from Halliday Honey when it is
discovered that he is conducting research with wasps instead of merely
extracting bee royal jelly, as he was hired to do. Zinthrop pleads
that he has discovered an enzyme extract with amazing regenerative
powers, but his employers are unmoved. The president and founder of
Janice Starlin Enterprises (Susan Cabot), a cosmetics company, chairs
a board meeting, demanding from her team an explanation of why her
company's sales have fallen so badly over the preceding months.
Advertising executive Bill Lane (Fred Eisley) tells her bluntly that
it is her fault: sales have fallen ever since she made the
decision to remove her own picture from her products; the public no
longer trusts them. Janice is deeply hurt by this, but can only point
out sadly that she had no choice: even she cannot remain "a
glamour girl" forever…. Janice's assistant, Mary Dennison (Barboura
Morris), tells her that a Mr Zinthrop is there to see her. Before
seeing Zinthrop, Janice calls her head of research, Arthur Cooper
(William Roerick), into her office, asking him his opinion of royal
jelly as a cosmetic aid. Cooper agrees it can have beneficial
properties, but that it depends very much upon individual reactions.
However, when Janice mentions the possibility of using extracts from
queen wasp royal jelly in such a way, Cooper advises her strongly
against it. Janice meets with Zinthrop, warning him that she will need
tangible proof of his extraordinary claims. Nothing loath, Zinthrop
unveils a cage containing two full-grown rats. He injects one with his
extract and, under Janice's stunned gaze, it reverts to a juvenile
stage. Zinthrop cautions Janice that his extract is only experimental,
and has yet to be tested on a human subject. She tells him that it
will be - on her…. Zinthrop's secret research, and his carte
blanche status within the company, alarms Janice's subordinates,
who fear that she is being taken in by a con-artist. Bill asks Mary to
find out what she can about what Zinthrop is doing. After more
successful animal tests, Zinthrop begins to treat Janice with his
extract. As the weeks pass, Janice frets over the slowness of her
progress, although Zinthrop assures her she looks at least five years
younger already. He then tells her about a new concentrated form of
his extract, which he thinks would work in a face cream. Mary purloins
Zinthrop's original letter to Janice and shows it to Bill and Arthur.
Arthur warns the others that Zinthrop is something much more dangerous
than a con-artist: a quack. Late that evening, Janice makes a fateful
decision: she steals into Zinthrop's laboratory, and injects herself
with his new concentrated extract….
Comments: Considering that it
was produced between--- Well, perhaps Golden Age would be
putting it a bit too strongly: between the Pyrite Age of Roger
Corman's mid-to-late fifties science fiction films, and the genuine
artistry of his Poe adaptations of the sixties, The Wasp Woman
is a disappointment. It was not at all an uncommon occurrence for
Corman's ambitions to outstrip his budget (indeed, how could it have
been otherwise?), but this is one instance where the end product truly
suffered as a consequence. Made for a pittance and shot in less than a
week, The Wasp Woman not only looks cheap, but lacks most of
the subsidiary virtues that make many of Corman's other films from
this era so improbably entertaining. Its cast (with one exception) is
unappealing, its screenplay is patchy and sorely lacking in wit, and
its "special effects", well…. However, the central concept
of the film is an intriguing one, even if it is never developed as
strongly as it should have been. While Corman himself claims that The
Wasp Woman's genesis lay in an article on the possible cosmetic
applications of bee royal jelly, a more likely "inspiration"
was the unexpected financial success the previous year of The Fly.
In one sense, at least, The Wasp Woman outdoes its model.
Instead of a mere accident, the transformation of cosmetics queen
Janice Starlin is the result of a deliberate yet fatal step taken by a
desperate woman. The most typically "Corman-esque" aspects
of The Wasp Woman are its sympathy for its ultimately monstrous
female protagonist, and its understanding of the social and financial
pressures that drove her to experiment upon herself. Unfortunately,
once Janice has transformed, the story ceases to be about
her in any meaningful way, and becomes merely an all-too-familiar tale
of a monster on the rampage; and a pretty pathetic monster, at that.
This letdown makes it difficult for the viewer to overlook, let alone
forgive, the film's more egregious shortcomings - like the complete
lack of reaction from any of the other characters to the various
disappearances that result from Janice's predacious activities. Also
hard to ignore is the repeated substitution of one form of animal for
another. This is perhaps most apparent in the laboratory scene,
wherein a large guinea-pig injected by Zinthrop turns into a small
rat! (I'm giving the film the benefit of the doubt and assuming that
both animals were meant to be rats, but still--- They couldn't
dig up two rats!?) And then there's the fact that the insects
crawling around beneath the opening credits of The Wasp Woman
are clearly bees! And this brings us to a couple of slight
scientific errors to be found in the script, namely that (i) royal
jelly is made for queen bees, not by them; and (ii) wasps
don't make royal jelly at all! Whatever the virtues of The Wasp
Woman, entomological accuracy isn't among them.
However, The Wasp Woman does
indeed have virtues - or at least, one big one; and that is the
intelligent, detailed and quite moving performance of Susan Cabot as
Janice Starlin. In justice, it must be pointed out that Cabot was
given quality assistance by the film's cinematographer, Harry Newman,
and its make-up artist, Grant Keats. Cabot was in her early thirties
when she made The Wasp Woman, and over the course of the story
has to look both ten years older, and ten years younger. She succeeds
at both admirably. Many film productions, even those made by major
studios, insist upon aging an actress (even one who is only meant to
be about forty, as here) by slapping a grey wig on her and burying her
beneath about three inches of latex and greasepaint. In contrast, the
work done here is commendably subtle. The "aged" Janice is
made so merely through unobtrusive shadow make-up, complemented by a
severe pair of glasses and unflattering camera-work; "young"
Janice is made up accordingly, and so lovingly photographed that she
literally glows. As much as either of these things, however, it is the
performance of Cabot that carries the transformation: she creates
purely through her body language two very distinct characters. As the
elder Janice she is brisk and assertive; as the younger, bright,
vivacious and almost giddy. The tragedy of The Wasp Woman is
that these externals have come to define, even to herself, a
woman who is clearly so much more than that.
When The Wasp Woman opens,
Janice Starlin Enterprises is in financial trouble, its sales falling
badly. Advertising executive Bill Lane alone sees a reason, and spells
it out bluntly: Janice herself is the problem. Her company's image
since its founding, Janice a few months earlier made the decision to
remove her own picture from her products: a ploy that has backfired,
creating distrust amongst the public. Intent upon blaming their
employer for the company's position (and covering their own you-know-whats),
not one of Janice's colleagues gives any indication of understanding why
she took this step in the first place, still less of recognising the
courage and the self-sacrifice that it required. Not even her poignant
admission that "Even Janice Starlin can't remain a glamour girl
forever" succeeds in winning any response from them. Susan
Cabot's acting through this section of the film is wonderfully
effective, allowing Janice's pain and loneliness, her fears for her
beloved company, and her dread of her inexorable aging, constantly to
peep through the veneer of sarcastic authoritarianism which she uses
as a shield when dealing with her colleagues. Faced with the dilemma
that whatever she does, her company will almost certainly suffer for
it, Janice is left at a terrible personal crossroads; and it is at
this psychologically vulnerable moment that Eric Zinthrop enters her
life.
To me, the single most interesting
thing about The Wasp Woman is the character of Dr Zinthrop - or
rather, the way in which that character seems to have perceived over
the years. Researching this piece, I was unable to find a single
review of the film that did not refer to Zinthrop as "a mad
scientist"; yet from my perspective, he is one of the sanest, and
moreover most ethical scientists found throughout the realm of
science fiction. At the film's outset, Zinthrop has made a staggering
discovery: that an enzyme extract from the royal jelly of queen wasps
[*cough*] is capable of retarding the aging process. In one of
filmdom's more amusing depictions of short-sighted bureaucracy,
Zinthrop is fired from his job at a commercial apiary for exceeding
his budget, the fact that he has just made possibly the most
incredible - and most profitable - scientific discovery of the
century, if not of all time, being dismissed as an irrelevance by the
outraged bean-counter. Out of a job, and out of funding, Zinthrop
writes a letter to Janice Starlin, offering his services. When the two
meet, Janice demands proof of Zinthrop's extraordinary claims, and he
proceeds to give it to her, regressing a rat [sic.] from
adulthood to adolescence. Janice immediately offers him a contract, on
condition that she herself will be Zinthrop's first human subject,
when the time comes.
At this point we are indeed trembling
upon the brink of textbook mad science-dom; but then several
interesting things happen. For one thing, the deal between Janice and
Zinthrop is a handshake agreement: two essentially honourable people
have recognised each other, and settled matters accordingly. ("I
know you are a good woman, Miss Starlin," Zinthrop comments,
declining a legal contract, "even though you don't like other
people to know it." In five minutes of Janice's company, Zinthrop
has seen further through her façade than her bone-headed colleagues
have managed to do over the preceding twenty years.) Secondly,
Zinthrop's "demands" are both believable and reasonable. He
wants his own lab, check; and a healthy budget, check; and no
interference, check. Should he succeed--- Zinthrop asks, sensibly
enough, for "a small percentage of the profits", but what he
really wants is "full credit for my discoveries".
I've rarely heard such credible dialogue in the mouth of a movie
scientist. Best of all, though, is Zinthrop's reaction to Janice's
insistence that he experiment upon her. Far from leaping at the
opportunity, the scientist backs off, insisting that his extract must
undergo much more animal testing first. He does, of course, eventually
begin experimenting upon Janice, and after testing that we recognise
as being grossly inadequate, no matter how successful it appears to
have been. But let's be fair here: The Wasp Woman was, after
all, made in the pre-Thalidomide era; grossly inadequate testing was
standard procedure. Zinthrop's treatment of Janice is carried out
slowly and cautiously. It is she who becomes impatient, she who gives
in to the exigencies of her situation and goes against the scientist's
warnings, overdosing herself with his concentrated extract. If
Zinthrop can be blamed for anything, it is failing to recognise the
extent of Janice's desperation; he should never have revealed the
existence of the concentrate in the first place. But aside from this
misstep, of what is Zinthrop guilty? What does he do that can be
classified as "mad science"? Nothing, I would have thought;
yet four decades of reviewers have labelled, condemned and dismissed
him - and they are not the only ones.
Generally, one of the strengths of
Roger Corman's films, be they ever so slapdash, is the supporting
cast, which manages to be interesting and amusing even if the
production around it really isn't. In The Wasp Woman, this is
unfortunately not the case. The people surrounding Susan Cabot's
Janice Starlin are unlikeable characters portrayed by dull actors. To
be fair, this may have been a deliberate choice, to increase our
sympathy for Janice (and if so, believe me, it works); but it makes
long stretches of the film a hard slog. Zinthrop's presence at Janice
Starlin Enterprises, and his evident hold over Janice herself, is
sorely resented by Bill Lane, JSE's advertising executive, Arthur
Cooper, its head of research, and Mary Dennison, Janice's assistant,
who is also involved with Bill. The Wasp Woman is unusual
inasmuch as there is no real "romance" anywhere in the
story; the Bill/Mary relationship is perfunctorily sketched in at
best, and there mainly to justify, or rather excuse, some very dubious
behaviour on Mary's part. That said, there is clearly unresolved
tension between Janice and Bill; but whether this represents a failed
relationship in the past, or a relationship offered and declined, it
is impossible to say. However, all of this lends an uncomfortable edge
to the attitude of Bill, Arthur and Mary towards Janice, which is
patronising and disloyal in the extreme.
Now, you might think that a woman who
had founded, built up and run a successful company over the course of
twenty years would need to be both strong-minded and strong-willed.
Well, not Janice Starlin; or at least, not in the opinion of those who
have benefited most from her success. Eric Zinthrop has barely moved
into his laboratory before Bill and Arthur make up their minds that
he's a con-artist to whom Janice has fallen victim. Bill then
convinces Mary to start spying on Janice, which she does,
eavesdropping on her phonecalls and stealing her private
correspondence. What is disturbing about all of this is that there is
no solid basis for any of it; no evidence for or against Zinthrop; and
the conspirators barely pretend otherwise. (When Bill first starts
ranting against Zinthrop, Mary actually has the temerity to inquire
why the scientist can't be on the level, only to be dismissed
with a contemptuous, "Oh, women!" This is no answer
at all, as Mary rightly points out; so Bill tells her that his
distrust of Zinthrop is based upon "male intuition". Yes,
you're quite right: Bill is a dick.) There seem to be only two
possible explanations for this instinctive hostility towards Zinthrop,
each one worse than the other. The conspiracy, and the consequent
spying, are of course carried out under the guise of protecting
"poor Janice" (although the trio never bothers to consider
why "poor Janice" should suddenly be so vulnerable,
still less recognise that even if that were the case, their own
attitude towards her might have had a lot to do with it), but it reeks
of self-interest. Arthur, of course, should Zinthrop succeed, will be
out of a job. Bill, that old dog in the manger, clearly resents anyone
having influence over Janice but himself; while Mary is, in many ways,
the worst of the three, since she has no real suspicion of Zinthrop,
but nevertheless agrees to spy on her boss not out of true concern for
her, but as a means of "buying" her boyfriend's approval.
However, none of this explains the instant distrust of Zinthrop,
even when he has barely set foot on the premises of JSE, that is
evinced not just by the trio of conspirators, but by everyone that the
scientist encounters. (Janice's secretary, for instance, sums him up
as "a two-eyed Dr Cyclops".) If one were to put the nastiest
possible construction upon this, one might have to conclude that this
antagonism is provoked by the fact that Zinthrop has - gasp! - a
foreign accent. But perhaps I'm being unfair in accusing the
characters of bigotry. More likely, they are simply guilty of invoking
a standard piece of movie shorthand: "foreign" =
"scientist", "scientist" = "bad".
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Zinthrop really does nothing wrong
in this film, no matter how strenuously the screenplay tries to
convince us otherwise. Ultimately, The Wasp Woman presents us
with an interesting variation on a common theme: "mad
science" as an Informed Attribute©.
The wasp enzyme treatment does work,
but not quickly enough for Janice, who can feel both her company and
her personal identity slipping away from her, and hence makes the
fatal decision to overdose herself with Zinthrop's concentrate. This
is immediately effective: Janice literally bounces into the office the
next morning, youthful and radiant, demanding homage from everyone she
encounters - and she gets it, too: "junior" Janice is
treated with noticeably more respect than her maturer incarnation.
(Watching these scenes, you can readily believe that years earlier, a
young, vibrant Janice would indeed have chosen her own face to be her
company's image, without a thought of the future consequences.) But
inevitably, triumph soon turns to tragedy - and the film, reasonably
compelling to this point as we suffer along with Janice, becomes dull
and silly in turns, as it falls back upon paint-by-numbers monster
movie clichés. Zinthrop enters his laboratory to find a cat, which he
had regressed to kittenhood, missing from its cage. This creature is
discovered perched up on a shelf, two ludicrous nubs meant to
represent wasp-like wings stuck onto its shoulder-blades (an
"effect" that makes Reptilicus seem aerodynamically sound by
comparison). It "flies" at Zinthrop via the time-honoured
technique of someone off-camera throwing the poor beast at actor
Michael Mark, who struggles with it in a way that makes the titanic
battle at the conclusion of Bride Of The Monster look
convincing. Zinthrop manages to overcome and kill (and dispose of)
this "horrifying" beast, but he is so shocked by what has
happened that he stumbles out into the street in a daze, only to be
knocked down by a convenient truck. Still more conveniently, Zinthrop
has no ID on him; and even more conveniently, he suffers a head
injury that makes him unable to recall what the "something
important" he had to tell Janice is. And a good thing, too,
because otherwise we would have been deprived of The Wasp Woman's
single most satisfying moment.
Zinthrop's disappearance sends Janice,
who is suffering an adverse physical reaction to her injection, into a
panic; and we pass some very boring minutes in the hunt for the
missing scientist. Meanwhile, Zinthrop's seeming triumph has thrown
the conspirators into still deeper gloom, and Arthur Cooper (visions
of a well-deserved future in the unemployment lines no doubt dancing
in his head) decides to break into Zinthrop's lab and snoop around.
While there, he steals Zinthrop's notebook (another mark in Zinthrop's
favour: he is one of those rare movie scientists who actually writes
his experiments up properly) and makes the staggering - and unwelcome
- discovery that his adversary is neither a con-artist nor a quack.
His response is to break into Zinthrop's locked cabinet, with a view
to stealing his concentrate. This criminal act is his last, however,
as abruptly - the Wasp Woman attacks!! This is both a good thing and a
bad thing: bad, because the "wasp" costume is nothing short
of pathetic, consisting of a black head-cover with plastic boggle eyes
and two limp antennae, and black mittens. Films of this era are
notorious for the gap between their advertising art and the finished
product, but only The Beast With A Million Eyes challenges The
Wasp Woman in terms of outright dishonesty. Be that as it may---
Janice's transformation not only livens up what has become a very
dull exercise, but - Arthur Cooper dies! YES!!
Allow me to explain. As Cooper, actor
William Roerick gives one of the most irritating performances ever
committed to film. He has a pipe, you see - because he's a scientist.
And he gestures with that pipe. He fiddles with it. He waves it around
for emphasis. He lights it. He puts it out. He puts it in his pocket.
He takes it out again. And sometimes - he does all of this within the
space of a single scene. It is unbearable! From our very first
glimpse of Cooper, smugly applauding Bill Lane's put-down of Janice at
the board meeting (pipe clenched between his teeth), I swear, you just
want him to die. Bloodily. Painfully. And - he does! (In
fact, the first time I saw The Wasp Woman - at a revival
screening, double-billed with The Fly - I spent most of the
film muttering, "God, I hope she kills him! God, I hope
she kills him!" When the moment came, I believe I cheered.) As
Cooper tries to steal Zinthrop's discovery, Janice, in full [sic.]
wasp regalia, springs from the shadows, wrestles him to the ground,
and sinks her, uh, fangs into his throat - and my, it's
satisfying! A day or so later, a night watchman (played by an unbilled
Bruno Ve Sota) is also unfortunate enough to stumble into Janice, and
he goes the way of Arthur Cooper; and when the desperate woman goes to
the bed-ridden Zinthrop for help, his nurse becomes her third victim.
All of this is entertaining, of course, but it is also ridiculous in
the extreme. For one thing, the script insists that wasps devour their
victims, and we are supposed to believe that Janice has done so, too
(hence no inconvenient bodies lying around). But of course, this would
mean that, among other things, the persistently svelte Janice has
consumed an entire Bruno Ve Sota - without putting on a single
pound. Never mind cosmetics: Janice should be in the diet
industry!
But the Wasp Woman's reign of terror
is, alas, doomed to be a brief one. Janice has continued to dose
herself with Zinthrop's extract, and is suffering severe headaches as
a consequence. (Whether Janice knows about her night-time escapades is
moot. The script is very fuzzy on that point, although the extent of
Janice's panic suggests that she does know, if not the entire truth,
then at least that something is badly wrong.) When Zinthrop
recovers sufficiently, Janice has him brought back to JSE to
convalesce - with, unfortunately for the woman in question, a nurse to
look after him. Janice's final transformation and its consequences
occur before Zinthrop's horrified gaze, and the scientist makes a
valiant effort to pull himself together, trying to convince Bill and
Mary of the truth. They, of course, react exactly as you'd expect in a
film of this sort: they separate, and Mary goes off on her own to find
"an outside line" on which to call the police. In a piece of
idiotic contrivance, the waspified Janice suddenly develops a
homicidal jealousy of Mary, and attacks her - but doesn't kill
her. Sigh. Bill and Zinthrop charge (or in the latter case, at least,
stagger) to the rescue, and Janice immediately attacks the scientist.
There's gratitude for you. Bill drives her off with a chair, and
Zinthrop, dragging himself to his feet, throws a bottle of carbolic
acid at her. Janice screams, stumbles backwards, and plunges to her
death from a window. And Zinthrop drops dead too - not for any
particular reason, except that he's a scientist (with a foreign
accent) in a science fiction film. And Bill and Mary survive and wind
up in each other's arms. All in all, a thoroughly depressing ending.
The Wasp Woman is a cheap and
sloppy little film, but that's not what truly disappoints about it.
There was a lot of potential in its story, but unfortunately no-one
connected with its production had any interest, apparently, in
bringing those things to the foreground. (Oh, sure, I found
some meaning and significance in it, but you know me: I could find a
hidden message in the instructions on the back of a tea-bag.) While
Janice Starlin's angst over the loss of status and identity that
accompanies her aging is quite well-realised, thanks almost entirely
to Susan Cabot's performance, not enough is made of this; while
nothing at all is made of the story's clear drug addiction subtext -
although perhaps, in 1960, that would have been a bit too much to
expect. On the other hand, it is unforgivable that the script never
touches upon - or even, it would seem, recognises - the story's
central irony: that as the head of a cosmetics firm, Janice has helped
shape and bolster the very physical expectations that are now
destroying her. Nor does The Wasp Woman compensate for these
various shortcomings with other qualities: interesting characters, for
example, or even a sense of humour. The film's only attempt at comedy
involves Janice's secretary, Maureen, and her complaints about her
boyfriend, Irving (whose main crime, we learn, is that he makes
Maureen stay home at night to watch films like Dr Cyclops on
TV; some girls don't know when they're well off). Maureen is notable
chiefly for her painfully nasal Noo York accent - which miraculously
transforms into tones of plummy breathiness whenever she has to answer
the phone. (If this joke sounds familiar, it's because Joe Dante
reproduced it in The Howling twenty years later.) Of the films
made by Roger Corman during this era, I think it can justly be said
that he did always try to make them good; and if he couldn't make them
good, then he tried to make them funny. The Wasp Woman is a
rare example where he largely failed at both. The undeveloped nature
of the screenplay puts The Wasp Woman into a rare category:
films that I would actually like to see re-made. And eventually, this
came to pass - with original director Roger Corman acting as producer.
Did this latter version improve upon the earlier one? Find out, by
clicking on the links below….
Footnote: I am indebted for the
following information to Video Watchdog ( http://www.videowatchdog.com
) magazine (as indeed I am for so much else):
The co-director's credit listed above
for Jack Hill is a consequence of The Wasp Woman's release to
TV in the 1960s. At a brisk 66 minutes, the film was deemed too short
for a network time slot. Hill was hired to lengthen it, which he did
by providing two new sequences. One of these opens the film: a
leisurely stroll through an apiary, the confrontation between Zinthrop
and the angry accountant, and Zinthrop's dismissal. The other consists
of a detective - played by Jack Hill! - searching for the missing
scientist after his accident. Sadly, this footage is certainly not
representative of Hill's work, and adds little to the film but running
time. However, it was this version of The Wasp Woman that I
saw, so I thought I should mention it.
Footnote: Welcome to Part Three
of "That Was Then, This Is Now". Hop on over to The Good,
The Bad, The Ugly (http://goodbadugly.coldfusionvideo.com)
to read Chad Denton's review of the Roger Corman produced, Jim
Wynorski directed, 1995 re-make of The Wasp Woman; then stick
around while Chad and I debate the merits of both versions.


|