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The Wasp Woman / Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)
Topic Started: May 19 2018, 03:20 PM (135 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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The Wasp Woman (1959) Produced & Directed by Roger Corman
Filmgroup
64 min. / B&W / 1:85:1

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) Produced by Gene Corman, Directed by Monte Hellman
Filmgroup
66 min. / B&W / 1:85:1

Blu-ray double feature: Retromedia

ITB Strange Science Cinema #166-167

Can you believe it? It's time for another voyage through the continuum to enjoy an actual double-feature from the halcyon days of the 1950s, this time with a pair of long-lived Corman Bros. productions that have been long in the public domain so what a thrill to experience them on the big, big 1959 movie screen in a real vintage movie theatre, beginning with The Wasp Woman, the victims of which I will have overwhelming empathy, since one of the little winged pricks stung me once.

Susan Cabot is the over-the-hill (she was 32) head of a makeup company and she's regretting her lost looks since she was also the only model they had. She brings in a mad scientist (the worst kind of scientist) who injects her with royal jelly from the Queen Wasp, but soon she's mainlining the stuff in the dead of night, turning into a scary monster with a great body and high heels, and murdering her underlings (hard to find good cosmetic company lower-upper management). Her pretty secretary Barboura Morris and Babs' hunky boyfriend Fred (later Anthony, co-star of Hawaiian Eye) Eisley will try to whack her with a big broom, metaphorically speaking.

I'm quite certain by now you're all cognizant that movies like this are right up my proverbial alley, and yes, this is a favorite, not least of all because the beautiful Ms. Morris (a perennial Roger Corman actress; she was married to Monte Hellman) has probably her biggest role. Although to be frank, any 1950s monster movie is swell by us. Despite the poster's depiction of a giant wasp with a woman's face, we actually have a normal-sized woman with a mask cloned from the previous year's The Fly. Michael Mark, one of those guys whose name none of us know but we've seen him in a hundred movies; he plays a random villager in nearly all the Frankenstein movies, including poor Maria's father in the 1931 original, is the scientist whose expertise in turning 32 year old models into slightly younger looking models is dwarfed, in my opinion, by his formula for injecting a white guinea pig and turning it into a white rat (while announcing that it has reverted to its younger self).

Million-dollar Dialog:
The makeup company on-staff scientist (we know he's a scientist; he smokes a pipe), poo-poohing wasp formulae: "Thirty years ago, a bunch of quacks were treating people with monkey glands. Seemed to work for a while, then deterioration set in."

Mr. Corman used the same music score he'd use for A Bucket of Blood and Little Shop of Horrors, but what th' heck. Speaking of him, you'll delight in finding him in a cameo as an emergency room doctor. Oh, and Bruno veSota has an unbilled bit as a fat night watchman.

Extremely low budget ($50,000, give or take a nickel) but as 1950s monster movies go, this is definitely in the upper echelon. Which brings us to our intermission of snack bar ads, a cartoon called Madcap Magoo with an escaped lunatic blundering into Mr. Magoo's house, and a trailer for the upcoming Cinemagic color spectacular The Angry Red Planet. WOW!

Moving right along, here comes, of all things, a bunch of skiers. Must be the start of our second big thriller, Beast from Haunted Cave, as a random assortment of neatly groomed young men and one lovely blonde invade a small South Dakota ski resort with a plan to blow up the mine outside of town to cause a distraction so that they can rob the local gold vault(!). Everything goes relatively smoothly except they've destroyed the home of the neighborhood's resident spider monster, who likes to catch humans, web 'em up, and come back later to suck out their precious bodily fluids.

Our cast, for whom the term "nondescript" seems to have been invented, includes Michael Forest, Sheila Noonan, Frank Wolff, and... Richard Sinatra(!) as Marty Jones.

Our monster is played, surprisingly not by a badly-enlarged optical effect spider, but by a guy in a spider suit(!!!) covered with webs and SAY, we sure are using a lot of "!"s in this review, but it warrants it. I remember this movie as terrible, but actually, it's not quite terrible, and it moves fast and the girls are pretty and it's nice to see a 1950s monster movie set in the snow; don't see THAT very often.

Million-dollar Dialog:
The moll in the heist group, on why she starts drinking so early in the day: "It was at exactly 10 a.m. that Mr. Martini invented the olive."

The Cormans worked out some deal with the local Chamber of Commerce and filmed this and Ski Troop Attack back-to-back with the same cast.

As 1950s double-feature monster pictures go, what th' heck, these'll do. The BIG news is the Retromedia Blu-ray is OUTSTANDING, gorgeous 1.85:1 prints of both films upgraded to HD, with commentary on both films, plus bonus footage as an extra: in 1962, Corman couldn't sell the films to TV, they were too short, so he brought back a few cast members and shot some quickie, rather dull footage to pad both films out. Wasp Woman has 10 minutes of our mad scientist collecting wasps in a field; Haunted Cave gives us six minutes of small talk about nothing in particular at the ski lodge. Corman then pulled out a sequence from each film and stuck 'em on at the beginning before the credits and there you are - 80 min. features he could sell. Bright guy; no wonder they gave him an Oscar. More Balcony discussion of Wasp Woman here.
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