Art, Media, Movies

Wasp Woman

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There are lots of retro tv stations these days and they do seem to occasionally be scraping the bottom of the barrel to fill their programming slots.  Yesterday afternoon I found an old movie that I had never heard of – The Wasp Woman.  And now I know why.  It was truly dreadful – a poor premise, scenes that didn’t connect to each other, sad special effects and outrageously bad acting.  It was one of those movies that is so bad that you can’t look away.

The head of a cosmetics company finds a bizarre scientist who is using wasp royal jelly to create a fountain of youth.  After testing it for just a few days on one cat, they start testing it on the company head. She also secretly injects herself with more serum late at night.  Of course, the cat turns into a wasp and then the woman intermittently turns into a waspish creature, but only at night.  She doesn’t remember these episodes (although you’d think she’s be tipped off by the blood that ought to be all over her clothing) and is eventually killed by being shoved off the balcony of the tall cosmetics company building.

I’m still not sure why I kept watching, perhaps a fascination with the reality that something so terrible actually made its way onto film.

If you turned into an animal/human hybrid at night, what animal would you be?  Or what is the worst movie you’ve ever seen?

29 thoughts on “Wasp Woman”

    1. I figured the combination of baboons not being serious TV watchers, and the fact that I’ve never seen it before so who knows if it’ll ever come around again, and the fact that it was so awful meant that a spoiler probably wouldn’t have a serious effect on anyone.

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  2. abbott and costello meet the wolfman was right up there.
    whos on first was good stuff but to take that and turn it into a formula ws only a little effective for a little while and themovies studios kept doing it.
    shenp or curley or the other one in the three stooges (never moe or larry) martin and lewis i liked satch on the bowry boys and stan laurel on the laurel and hardy front but the poor gus who got hung as dorks for life. gotta feel for them (what was buddys last name?

    what animal at night/human hybred? always wolfman!! i have an identity sync with lon chaney

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    1. MST3K was a Minnesota phenomenon. I spent my son’s adolescent watching that with him. My favorite was the one “set” in Norway, complete with a Viking in horned headgear.

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        1. Sorry, voice recognition. Then I got distracted here at work before I realized it was wonky.

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  4. The granddaddy of films about humans morphing into insects was the 1958 (original) version of The Fly. It starred Vincent Price, whom I always found spooky even when he was trying to act normal. This film is a classic of its type.

    Price is a mad scientist who has invented a machine to transport living creatures. Of course, he gets it a little wrong. To test his machine he puts the family cat in it and hits the switch. The cat dematerializes but then fails to reappear. Price has trouble explaining this to his wife.

    Wife: Well where did she go?
    VP: Into space . . . a stream of cat atoms . . . (long sigh)
    Wife: It’d be funny if life wasn’t so sacred.

    I saw a film last week that is my new candidate for the worst film ever made. I could barely contain my disgust. I fear my opinion will offend some Baboons. The film was Gone With the Wind. Of course I’ve seen it before. But these days I’m obsessed with issues of truth and falsehood and basic ethics. (Guess why!) I was outraged by the sexism, racism and historical dishonesty of GWTW. I’d like to stick that film in Vincent Price’s machine, hit the switch and turn it into a stream of cat atoms in space.

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    1. Many older media are true of that. Old episodes of Bonanza, which I find entertaining for all the wrong reasons, are goldmines of all you mention. I like to watch the episodes to count sexist and racist attitudes and the number of “true loves” of the “boys” who are always doomed to death since the producers could not conceive of allowing a permanent female costar on the set. White actors who are painted brown to impersonate “Indians” are incredibly obvious now. The actors who allow themselves to be painted brown are astonishing to me—Marlo Thomas appears in stereotypical glory in such a state.

      It was the world we lived in.

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  5. RIse and Shine Baboons,

    I would want to be some combination of an owl. It is my favorite nocturnal animal. I will need to dream a combo of some kind. This is all very Dr. Larry Kyle-like.

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    1. i love the superpower of not being heard when you fly as owl woman. the total absence of sound as the owl flies by in the dark has freaked me out totally the three or fout times i have witnessed it waking through or near the woods at night

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  6. The Happening starring Mark Walberg. Trees spreading a virus that makes people commit suicide. Walberg as a high school science teacher is horribly miscast. His acting is mostly wrinkling his brow in worry. Zooey Dashenal’s blue eyes are the only redeeming feature of the film.

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  7. I’d be a sloth. Last month, one of my grand kids was retrieving a toy under a living room chair. “EWWWW, Noni, don’t you ever clean?” A week ago, as we went upstairs to scope out the possibility of converting the second floor into a rental suite, my daughter said, “Look at those spider webs, Mom – it’s disgusting”. Three days ago, my son’s best friend who’s become part of our family, noticed that all four of my tires were low on air. He insisted on driving it to a local gas station to fill them. He’s far too polite, unlike my kids, to say anything to me, but he made a comment to my son, who of course told me later; “Jeff couldn’t believe how filthy your car is inside”.

    The final straw came last night. His girlfriend, Lani, offered to come out and help me dust!! He then said that he’d pay for a cleaning lady. I later texted him that I’d like to take him up on his offer.

    I have only two defenses for being slothy. I keep the cottage picked up at all times. No dishes in the sink; no clothes on the floor, no papers strewn around. Only when company is coming do I wash floors and vacuum. The bed’s always made because I sleep on top of the bedspread with an afghan. My second excuse is that I’m under 5′ tall and don’t see above my eye level. This means that only the lower 5′ of the house gets cleaned.

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  8. I did not see the 1958 version of “The Fly”, but the other one with Jeff Goldblum was pretty disgusting. Once in a great while, I will find some old martial arts movie to watch for fun. Actually, the Bruce Lee movies are fairly decent for what they are. I’ve also watched the “Ip Man” trilogy now which are fairly decent as well. The fight choreography and combat special effects are great.

    And then there were the two Kingsman movies with Colin Firth, Samuel Jackson and Julianne Moore that were absurd and borderline farce — but sort of fun to watch. I didn’t expect Colin Firth to be an action hero type.

    I don’t generally watch really bad movies unless there’s a biting commentary poking fun to accompany it.

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    1. I only saw the second Kingsman movie… it needed to be MORE farcical to get me past the awful violence. Awful.

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  9. I’d kind of like to be a bat. (Not the Vampire kind.) All that flying, ridding the world of mosquitoes, and I’d like to try out that sonar thing.

    There have been several movies we’ve picked up at the library, just curious I guess, that IF I make it to the end, I hear myself thinking “That was TWO HOURS out of my life!” Of course, the only one I can recall at present was, I think, The Black Dahlia.

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  12. I know I’ve seen some pretty awful movies in my time, but like everything else, I’ve completely forgotten them. which brings to mind this:

    Forgetfulness
    by Billie Collins

    The name of the author is the first to go
    followed obediently by the title, the plot,
    the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
    which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
    never even heard of,

    as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
    decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
    to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

    Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
    and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
    and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

    something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
    the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

    Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
    it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
    not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

    It has floated away down a dark mythological river
    whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
    well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
    who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

    No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
    to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
    No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
    out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

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