Weirdhouse Cinema: The Wasp Woman (1959)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Roger Corman’s 1959 mad science rejuvenation film “The Wasp Woman,” starring Susan Cabot.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we're going to be talking about the nineteen fifty nine
drive in sci fi horror movie The Wasp Woman, starring
Susan Cabot, directed by Roger Corman. It is a tale
of beauty, vanity, mortal anxiety, and science gone wrong. Shot
in two weeks for under fifty thousand dollars. And this

(00:39):
one is classic late fifties Corman. It is lean, mean, funny, weird,
stupid and smart at the same time. It's barely over
seventy minutes runtime in the longest cut. I think there
are shorter cuts that are sub seventy. I don't know
which one you watch.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I watched the theatrical cut, which is the shorter. I
believe we'll get into this later, but I think you
watched the TV cut.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Okay, So I got some stuff you didn't see, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Right, right, namely the intro. Okay, So we'll get into
some of those differences as we perceive.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, I think it's funny that, like some of these
late fifties Corman movies, it is extremely short and quite
brisk in the storytelling, and yet still feels like it
has significant padding, like all of the bee keeping footage
at the beginning that feels like they're padding that thing out.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Well, yeah, I mean it literally was, yeah, because it's
not President the theatrical.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
And then there are also several subplots in the In
the like middle to late stretch of the movie, there's
one part where they hire a private detective to determine
the fate of a character whose fate we already know,
and there's not really any suspense there. We've just got
like a montage of a PI running around town asking
people questions.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Oh, I don't know, I kind of like that one.
I liked how kind of helped build up the setting. Yeah,
I'm to understand some folks find this movie a bit
of a bore just looking around at reviews online, but
I think I really liked it overall. You know, obviously,
the budget is stretched thin, the monster is not well realized,
as we'll discuss, but I found it it's synthetic Golden

(02:20):
Age mad Men era New York City rather convincing and attractive.
I thought the plot, while build on the bones of
a you know, classic mad science and tropes, felt a
lot more nuanced, and all of the actors do a
solid job. More to the point, I liked how this
is not a villain picture. You know, we definitely descend

(02:41):
into a world of monstrosity and horror, but it's a
tragic trajectory taken by characters who were just trying to
advance in their careers and, in the case of our
main character, hold on to their youth, both extremely relatable
motivations that are encouraged by nearly every aspect of American
culture back and today as well.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
You're correct that the movie really doesn't have a villain,
even the mad scientist character, and it is not especially mad.
I mean, he's doing things that are dangerous, but part
of the danger comes from collaborating with someone who is
not heeding the levels of caution that he himself advises.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
That's right, Yeah too, it's the massic Yeah tag toxic
duo for sure. That's a great way of.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Putting Yeah, but I like this movie also. I think
in order to appreciate it, yeah, you have to understand
what you're getting with a movie like this. Like these
late fifties Corman films we've talked about several on the
show before, they are not highly polished works of art
to compare them to other sci fi and horror films

(03:47):
of the time. They are certainly not deeply thoughtful tales
like The Incredible Shrinking Man, which we've done on the show,
or like Godzilla, the original Godzilla. They are also not
finally tuned through machines like The Thing from Another World.
You know that is like, maybe not as thoughtful as
a movie like The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it is

(04:08):
just it is a machine. You know, it works. The
Corman movies of this era are also not even like
the later Corman movies we've done, like his Edgar Allan
Poe films, which had more time and money to invest
and Corman could focus on making a more refined and
finished product. These late fifties Corman movies to me, feel

(04:30):
more like a kind of exciting and curious exercise. It's
like you're getting to watch the result of teams of clever,
creative people with a good collective sense of humor about
what they're doing, racing through weird, little timed puzzles with
imperfect but interesting results. It's all you know, Like, how

(04:52):
fast can you write a script about psychic crabs? How
fast can you come together with an idea about bees
and fear of aging? How fast can you shoot it?
What kinds of off label solutions for special effects are
you going to come up with? And then even just
in terms of the characters, Like a lot of times
these movies feel like they have significantly improvised character moments.

(05:14):
Can we think up something funny for the secretaries to
be talking about before the next wasp kill scene?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, like everybody, everybody's really working to deliver this thing
on time and under already limited budget, but they're still
doing their best. Like nobody's just trying to create slop
here it's and you get that energy watching the picture.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
It's not slop. It is not in a way I
would say it is. We've talked before on the show
about the sensibility of Stanley Kubrick that the perfectionist approach
to making films where you have a very locked in
creative vision and you might even go to excessive lengths

(05:58):
to achieve exactly your vision to make it perfect. Corman,
I think has the exact opposite sensibility about filmmaking. In
these early movies, He's gonna make a movie and it's
not gonna be incompetent. It will be a smart, competently
executed project, but he's just gonna cut a lot of
corners to make it come together fast, and it will

(06:19):
be in the end interesting and amusing to see how
they get there. And so as a result you get
these movies that, at least when I watch them, one
of the things I like the most about them is
how you can just feel them bristling with this sense
of improvisation and craftiness, Like there's a strong first draft

(06:40):
feeling to everything. You can notice lots of little mistakes,
like sometimes the windows are made out of paper, and
so there's just this how are they gonna pull this off?
Kind of feeling That makes movies like The Wasp Woman
and movies like Not of This Earth, which we've also
done on the show interesting and appealing to me.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
The first draft of observation is definitely apt for a
film like this too. Were one of the I think
the main things that we're going to complain about with it,
or point out that is less well formed is the
way that the monster looks, and this is just not
the sort of picture where they were ever going to
come back and say everything's working really well except the monster.
We're going to reshoot those things now, that's not going

(07:22):
to happen. They had like one shot at making the
effect look as good as possible and then shooting it
as well as possible, and you know, given the limitations,
it's fine. It just we watch it now and we realize,
oh man, it could have been better.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
You know, it's funny. It just came up recently on
the show. Even Albert Pune was sometimes subject to reshoots,
demand for reshoots, but I just don't think there's a
lot of that going on with the Wasp on. So
the basic structure of the plot will not hold any
surprises because it is a very familiar type of story.
There are tons of movies that have basically this premise,

(08:00):
and we'll get into more examples and other parallels as
we go on, but the general plot outline goes like this.
The actress Susan Cabot plays a character named Janis Starlin
who is the founder and chief executive of a successful,
multimillion dollar cosmetics company. She is not only in charge
of the business. She is I think like a former

(08:23):
beauty queen herself, or she's some kind of glamorous. She's
glamorous looking. So she is also the face of the company,
appearing in all of their advertisements.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah. I don't know if there's really a parallel for this,
except for maybe the MyPillow guy. Right, it's the only
thing that comes to me now.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
I was trying to think of people companies today where
the CEO is like the celebrity who represents the brand. Also,
and there are examples, but they're more kind of disgusting.
Cultural celebrity is not like beauty.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
I actually I don't know that much about beauty products.
Maybe there are companies like this, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
I mean, certainly, I guess they are example. Well, I
don't even know how those were. I was going to
say they are examples. Were like, you'll have a celebrity
that is pushing a product that is maybe somehow tied
up in ownership, But I don't know if you can
really compare them to a CEO.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah. So, anyway, so she runs the company. She founded
the company, and she is the face on all of
the billboards. But after many years of success, sales have
begun to decline, and Starlin has become self conscious about
her appearance. And there are actually some interesting wrinkles to
how this is presented in the plot that we'll talk
about later. But she is now feeling self conscious about

(09:35):
the fact that she is around forty years old, and
she is afraid she has lost her youth and her beauty.
She desperately wishes she could be young again. Inter another
character are mad scientists are actually not all that mad?
Are half mad? Scientist? He does talk to wasps I
guess doctor Xenthrop. He is an eccentric scientist, if not mad,

(09:56):
who has spent decades studying bees and wasps, and he
tells Starlin that he has an enzyme extracted from wasp
queens that cannot only stop the aging process, it can
actually reverse it, restoring lost youth. And then, unable to
wait for all of the safety tests to finish, Staralin
jumps the line and uses the serum on herself, and

(10:18):
at first the effects are wildly successful, as she appears
twenty years younger, but whoops. The treatment has some negative
side effects and it occasionally turns you into a bloodsucking
wear wasp.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah. So it's kind of your standard tragedy horror monster
trajectory here.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, one thing I wanted to note, there's a line
from the trailer that says, a queen of beauty by
the day a lusting queen wasp by night. It's totally wrong.
I don't a lusting queen wasp. I don't think there
are any elements at all of lust in the behavior
of Staralin. Even when she's in wasp mode. She's not

(11:01):
going after men who she desires in any way, and
she doesn't even lure or seduce her victims in a
sexually explicit way at all to kill them. She she
just runs at them with wasp face and then bites
their necks.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Right, And the monster is not even know sexy in appearance,
so there's there's no way to even project that on
the monster here.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
No, it's a strictly haphazard, violent form of attack that
has no elements of sexual attraction or enjoyment on either
party's behalf.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
And she's not even really she's not a queen of beauty,
but I guess she's she's not a beauty queen by day.
I guess she is a queen of beauty. And that
she's the CEO of a cosmetics company. But still they're
pushing it.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Here with that Part's right, she is the executive of
a cosmetics company, and she uses her own face in
the advertising. I think that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
But would she call herself a queen of beauty? I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
I don't know, but yeah, So I thought this was
kind of interesting that there there is an anxiety there
in the marketing and almost makes it feel like somebody
thought after the fact. I wonder if this movie should
have had something about sex in it, like it should
have been sexy in some way or been about sexual attraction,
and it's really not. Though beauty is a major theme.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well when the first time, it wouldn't be the last
time that promoss decided to change that on the Fly
after the fact with the poster and the promotion.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, let's pretend there's some sex in here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
I had to see what Michael Weldon had to say
about this movie and the psychotronic film Guides, and one
of the main things he points out is that this
comes out a year after the success of The Fly,
so there's a certain amount of Okay, quick, pick another
insect and let's put a feminine twist on it.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
There you go more after the races. Yeah, I think
there's a lot to that. This would be the Fly
with Vincent Price. I didn't realize that was just the
year before. So yeah, a different insect movie, kind of
like ooh, Halloween was just a big hit. Let's do
Friday the thirteenth.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and all the other holidays. So which
works of which to Another interesting thing to point point
out about this film is that it is I think
at some point in its development it was going to
be about a bee woman and then they changed it
and said, actually, wasp, it sounds more aggressive. We like,
this sounds more evil, less nurturing somehow, you know, no

(13:20):
connection to honey. But still there's a whole lot in
the plot where you can you can clearly see that, Okay,
this was about bees, including yeah, yeah, including the whole
business with beginning and ending the film with bees. So
if you were I urge viewers of this film try
not to be too much of a stickler regarding just

(13:40):
basic biology, like the difference between one animal and the next.
It's not going to hold up. You're gonna have to
let that go to enjoy this movie.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
It is totally hopeless. In fact, there are even parts
where the character is looking at wasps and then the
camera shows you their point of view and it's just bees.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yeah. Now, this film certainly became a favorite for a
lot of folks, and you know, Develt quite a following,
and has also been remade at least at least twice
and possibly a third time. I'm very excited about that.
But first, so this came out in fifty nine, as

(14:16):
we've been discussing, in nineteen eighty eight there was what
is largely considered, if not a remake, then something was
heavily based on The Lost Woman and clearly inspired by it.
And that's nineteen eighty eight's Rejuvenatrix, a film by Brian
Thompson Jones, and it also features euro horror actress Jessica Dublin.

(14:38):
And I've not seen it, but I've been familiar with
it for a while. I've seen, you know, images from
it and some clips. I think the vibe is roughly
sort of Trouma adjacent New Jersey body horror, which maybe
shades of eighty five's Reanimator. I think the title alone
is kind of a reference to that. Brian Thompson. Joan

(15:00):
had worked on TV's Tales from the Dark Side, and
you'd go on to work on another anthology series, Monsters.
It has really grotesque makeup effects from Ed French, Dan
Frye and Bruce Spaulding Fuller, all mainstays of the industry.
But yeah, basically similar, similar situation, but with really gross
monster effects. I would argue, argue, maybe they're two gross.

(15:22):
Then in ninety five you had just a straight up remake,
The Wasp Woman, produced by Corman, directed by Chopping Miles
Jim Wnarsky, starring Jennifer Rubin and with both Garrett Graham
and fred Olin Ray in the cast. So you know
this one's classy. I include I love both those guys,

(15:43):
but if they're involved, you can you have some suspicions.
And I included an image for you here, Joe of
the monster. A lot more work went into this monster,
but I think you might note the busky corset. Look
for the creature's exoskeleton.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Here a wasp with cleavage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah, So I also haven't seen this one, but yeah,
I doubt that it's going to be as thoughtful as
the original.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
I've watched part of this because I just found it online.
I was like, well, what is this like? I mean,
my eyes could not take it. It has that I'm sorry,
Jim Winorsky. I mean, I've liked some of your work,
but it has that hideous nineties made for TV look.
That's just like everything is gleaming in a way that's
very unpleasant, and the colors feel desaturated and nasty. It's

(16:34):
got a cellophane kind of look. I couldn't deal with it.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
It's a rough era for film, for sure. Yeah, but hey,
I have my hopes so because as you and I
were discussing just the other day, this is something. The
news about this came out in December, but I somehow
missed it initially. But there is a new remake in
pre production. Level of pre production, and this was reported
in Variety. It is set to is a remake of

(17:01):
The Washwoman, set to star Amy Sidaris and her longtime
collaborator Paul Denello. He's going to write and direct it.
They of course both worked on Exit fifty seven, Strangers
with Candy and At Home with Amy Sedaris. I'm really
excited for this one and hope that it comes to
fruition because watching the original film the original Wasp Woman.

(17:22):
I just kept noticing all the different ways that it
really fits their comedic styling.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Oh yeah, what do you mean?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Well for starters, Amy Sidaris has of course obviously a
knack for playing you can really go broad with the
portrayal of characters that I don't know if she's ever
played a monster before, but she's playing a lot of
grotesque or at least mildly grotesque characters before, so I
really want to see what she's like in full monster mode.

(17:49):
But then also there are a lot of great moments
on at home with Amy Sidaris while she's kind of
playing up this at least mildly toxic or messy boss character,
which I think is also that also really would there's
a lot to play with in this scenario, because that's
there to a certain extent in the original script here.
But I mean, I'm presuming that they are going to

(18:12):
position this as a comedy, though who knows, they could
go entirely different direction. But I assume it's going to
be a comedy, and I think the bones there are
there for some tremendous comedic styling.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
I think there is great comedy potential, especially in letting
the main character be less tragic and sympathetic and more buffoonish,
and like, in this movie you really feel bad for
Janis Starlin. But yeah, I can imagine now her being
like a toxic CEO who's doing the same kinds of
things that.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, yeah, so I suspect that might be where they're
going to lean into and anyway, fingers crossed that this
one comes together. I should also point out that I'm
not the only or the first person to mention this,
but twenty twenty four is the Substance also strikes a
similar note, deals with some similar themes of oh, struggles

(19:02):
between you know, regarding aging, you know, the female body,
and so forth. And so I think there are a
lot of films that you can lump into this kind
of like larger sub genre. You can also throw in
films like nineteen sixties of the Leech Woman, for example,
as being a great example of this.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Also about a rejuvenation serum or science fiction treatment for
regaining lost youth and lost beauty that results in disaster. Yeah, yeah,
tons of stories like this. Actually, I was trying to
figure out, like how far back does this go, because
I was thinking many other examples. I was even thinking,
isn't there a version. I know there are a lot

(19:42):
of different stories of this character, but the Batman villain
Clay Face I was remembering from when I was a kid.
I think there's one version of that character who's like
an actor who has lost his looks in some way
and he takes an experimental treatment in order to get
his face back, to get his looks back, but it
turns out that he causes more problems than it solved.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Oh yeah, I mean that was I never read the comics,
the Batman comics, but that storyline was done fantastically well
in the old Batman animated series.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
That's what I'm thinking of. I was watching the Batman
animated series on TV when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah,
so good, but so An early version of the Wasp
Woman type tragic rejuvenation storyline can actually be found in
the American author Nathaniel Hawthorn's eighteen thirty seven short story
Doctor Heidegger's Experiment. Have you ever read this?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Oh? No, I don't know. The story.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
So it goes like this. Four aging friends are invited
to the home of an old scientist named doctor Heidegger,
and their host informs them that he has secured quantities
of miracle water from the Fountain of Youth, which can
restore those in old age to the prime of their lives,
and he demonstrates on a withered rose restoring it to

(21:02):
full bloom, and then the guests drink the water and
they discover it does work. They are given back their
youth and their vigor. But there's a twist. People always think,
if I could go back and live my life again
with the wisdom that I have now. People even talk
about that in The Wasp Woman. They say the same things,

(21:24):
if I could go back and do it over again,
now I would know now, I would know what to do.
But Heidegger's friends in this story, as soon as they
are once again young in the flesh, they start to
behave in the same old, foolish ways that they once did,
and they act out the same sins and character flaws

(21:45):
that they each displayed when they were originally young. So
in the story there are also hints. For example, there's
like a glimpse in a mirror where the characters actually
still look old. There are hints that somehow the restoration
of youth is some kind of illusion, But they eventually
end up accidentally smashing the jar of miracle water, and

(22:07):
then doctor Heideger declares that even if he could drink it,
he wouldn't after seeing what had happened to them. So
a little bit different here because there's no transformation into
a monster. It's not like the substance or the wasp woman,
where you take it and it gives you the youth back,
but you also have, you know, some kind of monstrous
altered form. There is still a grim twist, and I

(22:30):
like the suggestion that maybe the wisdom that comes with
old age is not actually wisdom that you could take
with you back into a young and beautiful body. Maybe
some of the things that we think of as wisdom
and experience and temperance, the ideas of wisdom and you know,

(22:52):
cognitive qualities we associate with the loss of youth and vigor,
maybe some of those things actually depend on on the
aging and enfeeblement of the body. So it's not just
a cruel irony of I wish I knew then what
I know now. It's like, what if if you could
be young and strong and beautiful like you were, then

(23:15):
you would actually stop knowing what you know now. I'm
not sure I agree with that, but I think that's
a very interesting idea.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Interesting. Yeah, one of the things that I really liked
about The Substance is this idea about there being this
kind of this connection between your past self and your
current self, like your young self and your old self,
and how they have to be in balance with each other,
and how all the horror in this particular movie the

(23:43):
Substance occurs out of imbalance between the two, and about
that these two forces being not connected but in opposition
to each other. Yeah, so I really liked overall, I
like The Substance a lot. I keep having conversations with
people about whether the movie should have ended before all
the really extreme body heart happened. I don't know. I mean,

(24:04):
I love body hearror sometimes, but I've heard some I've
heard some strong arguments on both sides regarding that film.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Yeah, I don't I also don't know exactly what I
think about the climax. I guess I had mixed feelings
about it, But overall, I really liked that movie. And
speaking of you know, another movie that has this kind
of quality of rejuvenation with a monstrous twist is a
movie many people compared the substance too, which is death
becomes her.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Oh yeah, that's a good one. I've long time seen.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
That one, but more of a comedy, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
And now a musical. I believe there's some Broadway treatment
of it. I'm not sure if it's Broadway or off Broadway,
but it exists.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
So yeah, very very common type of story we're dealing
with here, and something that was by no means knew
when The Wasp Woman was written. You know, there have
been many versions of this before and many after. It's
a type of story we do not get tired of,
probably just because it's the sort of thing that is
truly on people's minds all the time. I mean we always,

(25:04):
I'm sure probably more than half of people pretty frequently
find themselves, you know, after a certain age at least
thinking like, man, if only I could be younger again,
I could do I would do things differently.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, and if you're not thinking of it already, don't worry.
Somebody will advertise a product to you that will make
you think that at.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Least you can pretend to be young again.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
All right, some quick stats about this movie and past
weird house cinema selections. Just because I always find this fun.
This is our twenty fourth film from the nineteen fifties.
It is our sixth film directed by Roger Korman, seventh
if you count any direction he did on nineteen eighty's
Battle Beyond the Stars, and overall it is our two
hundred and forty third film selection for Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Were we just talking about feeling old?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Just think of how many movies there there we haven't watched.
So it's just just a drop in the pond here.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Well, no, actually, I'm like Captain Kirk at the end
of Wrath of Kahan, I feel young.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Okay, all right, elevator pitch for this one. I did
come up with one that I liked. It's are you
over positive? You want to be young again? Ah? Yes?

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Positive?

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Nice? So yeah, I don't know if you have any okay, uncle? Yeah?
All right? Well, if you would like to watch The
Wasp Woman before proceeding, this is an easy one to find.
I ran across multiple streams of it. Shout Factory put
out a blu ray of the film. I streamed it

(26:42):
through the shout Factory channel on one of the apps,
but I did see multiple versions. The original shot in
black and white. There is a colorized version out there also,
as we'll be discussing. There's the shorter theatrical cut, and
then there's the slightly longer cut that was made for television,
and that has some additional scenes that were directed by

(27:03):
Jack Hill, who we haven't really talked about in the
show before. He's the guy who directed Spider Baby, that's
probably the most well known film. But the director of
this film is of course Roger Corman, director and producer
of nineteen twenty six through twenty twenty four. We've covered
the King of Coult plenty of times before, so let's
just situate this particular film within his filmography. This one

(27:25):
came out in fifty nine. Depending on how you're counting
his pictures, this would be I think roughly Corman's twenty
second directorial credit.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Was it the year nineteen fifty seven that we had
previously called his Annis Mirabolos, that's the one where he
did like eight movies and points.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
So yeah, and again this is all this is the
young years, this early Corman. Yeah, the previous the year
prior to this film coming out, fifty eight, he did
four pictures, He directed four pictures. Wore The Satellites, Machine Gun,
Kelly Teenage cave Man, and She Gods of Shark Reef.

(28:04):
In fifty nine, The Wasp Woman was one of three
that he did sandwich between the crime drama I Mobster
and the horror comedy Bucket of Blood, previously covered on
Weird House Cinema. The following year, nineteen sixty would see
the release of Corman's Ski Troop Attack, Little Shop of Hers,
House of Usher previously covered on Weird House Cinema, and

(28:26):
Last Woman on Earth.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Wow, only one year between Wasp Woman and House of Usher.
That's kind of hard to believe it because House of
Usher really does feel like a different era.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I guess that's the thing, is,
like we're about to transition into a new decade of
film and into kind of a new era of Roger
Corman's filmography. So Roger and his brother Jean founded the
production and distribution company The Film Group in fifty nine,
and Wasp Woman was Corman's first directorial effort for that.

(28:56):
This company ran until I think around nineteen sixty eight,
but generally ran out of steam when Jeane left for
twentieth Century Fox in sixty three. Yeah, let's say we
should mention there is a director's cameo that I missed
when I actually watched the film. But if he missed
it too, didn't see it. Yeah Corman shows up as
a doctor at the hospital. But yeah, if I watch

(29:16):
it again, I'll look out for it.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
So I wanted to add some notes from a book
entry I was reading on Wasp Woman from a book
by Brian Sin called Twice the Thrills, Twice the Chills
Horror and science fiction double Features nineteen fifty five to
nineteen seventy four. This book was published by McFarlane twenty nineteen.
Like a lot of the Corman movies from this era,

(29:39):
the Wasp Woman played as part of a double feature,
in this case with a movie called Beast from Haunted Cave,
a film that was produced by sort of belonged to
Roger Corman's brother Jean. This one was about a bunch
of bank robbers who are attacked by a giant spider
like thing kind of a she lob in a cave

(29:59):
in South Dakota. Sounds interesting. I haven't seen this one,
but this one, actually, I should note, was written by
Charles B. Griffith, who wrote a lot of the great
Corman scripts from this era wrote like, you know, an
attack of the crab monsters and not of this earth
and stuff, And some people say that this is a
better written film than some of the other Corman movies

(30:20):
from this era.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
I love the poster for this one. The poster is
almost scandalous, with this big squid spider monster and a lady.
This is you know, like, this is not a photo,
it's art of a lady with her shirt almost off,
and then it says screaming young girl sucked into a
labyrinth of horror by a blood starve ghoul from hell.

(30:44):
Could this film possibly deliver on all of that?

Speaker 3 (30:47):
No, in fact, I've read it conspicuously does not. It
is not what is advertised. And the monster in the
movie does not really look like the monster on the poster. Instead,
it's just sort of a mass covered in cobwebs.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Okay, loo's pretty creepy in the image you provided here,
but yeah, it's not the monster from that scandalous poster.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah. But so context on what was happening in the
Corman business world at this time, you mentioned the founding
of this new distribution group. So in nineteen fifty nine,
Roger Corman and his brother Jean, they founded their own
distribution company called Film Group. I think they were up.

(31:28):
They were unhappy with some of their financial relationships with
other distributors like American International Pictures. And that book by
Brian Sen that I mentioned quotes an interview with Gene
Corman where he talks about the logic behind this move.
Gene says, quote, Roger and I made so many films
and the distributor's religion. If they stayed in business, there

(31:50):
was always a question of creative bookkeeping. If they didn't
stay in business, there was the problem of trying to
find out where the bank accounts were. Necessity was the
mother of invention. We decided, if we were unhappy with
the distributors that it was a logical thing. If we
had the product, why not have the distribution. Then we
would know where the money was because we would be

(32:11):
the bookkeepers. So we did this. At that time, I
knew a lot of the heads of theater chains, so
I could pick up a telephone book. So the Coorman
machine is becoming ever more powerful. It's like they've been
making the movies and now they're like, Okay, we know
who these theater owners are, we can contact them directly,
we can form the distribution network. So early films distributed

(32:32):
by their new company were a double feature of movies
in the juvenile delinquent genre called High School Big Shot
and t Bird Gang.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
I think I've seen High School Shot.

Speaker 3 (32:43):
Okay, I haven't seen either one. Is it delinquent? Is
it positively delinquent? Yeah? Then there were some horror double features.
We had Last Women on Earth and Little Shop of Horrors.
Those are Corman directed movies. Roger directed movies The Devil's
Partner and Treacher from the Haunted Sea, and then also
The Wasp Woman and Beast from Haunted Cave. So we

(33:06):
get this venomous double bill distributed by the filmmakers themselves,
one directed by Roger and the other directed by a
guy named Monty Hellman but produced by Gene all.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Right, all right, so double feature here? Did The Wasp
Woman air first? That was the first one.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Oh, I don't actually know, I don't recall.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, yeah, sometimes we've discussed these double hitters. We'll to
switch them around for one reason or the other. But yeah,
all right. The screenplay for this film for The Wasp
Woman was written by Leo Gordon, who lived nineteen twenty
two through two thousand American character actor and screenwriter who
in front of the camera often played burly, tough guys
and appeared in such films as Sixty Threes, The Haunted Palace.

(33:49):
His writing credits include the Corman film's Attack of the
Giant Leeches from fifty nine, Tower of London from sixty two,
and The Terror from sixty three.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
My understanding is Leo Gordon in a lot of cowboy movies.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was looking through his filmography and
there's a lot of cowboy stuff in there, a lot
of stuff that is, you know, until we get a
big cowboy resurgence, is you know, maybe a little bit lost,
all right now. He wrote the screenplay, but it's from
a story by Kinta Zertucci born nineteen thirty one, and

(34:24):
she worked in various capacities on Corman pictures, including location supervisor,
background actor, producer's assistant, production secretary, and script supervisor. She
also served as EP on the non Corman nineteen sixty
film The Wild Ride, which starred Jack Nicholson. At the
time of The Wass Woman, she was married to Daniel Holler,

(34:46):
who also worked as an art director on this film,
for example, and production designer for Corman, and he would
go on to direct the notable early Lovecraft film adaptations
Die Monster, Die in sixty five and The Dunwich Horror
in nineteen seventy, which we've previously discussed on.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
The show Oh Yeah with Dean Stockwell.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I really love that one. Groovy,
groovy Lovecrafting horror. Good stuff, all right. Now, getting into
the cast, we've mentioned already the character Janis Starlin, and
we've mentioned that she's played by Susan Cappott, who lived
nineteen twenty seven through nineteen eighty six American actress, musician,
and at one point children's book illustrator, with film credits

(35:30):
going back to forty seven. So her career saw a
long stretch of Westerns and Arabian night movies for Universal,
and then she ends up leaving Universal and Corman is
able to hire for the rock and roll nightclub film
Carnival Rock in fifty seven. At this point, she appears
in Let's See Corman's Sorority Girl, The Saga of the

(35:52):
Viking Women and their Voyage to the Waters of the
Great Sea Serpent movie with the longest title I think
of any of the Corman films that from the same year.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
It feels like a marketing experiment. Yes, like we're trying,
well people go to a movie because it as a
longer title.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yeah, kind of like the Outrageous what is the incredibly
strange Creatures stopped living and became mixed up zombies exactly. Yeah,
I remember it because it's long.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Oh, that movie's got some of the best mystery science
theater riffs.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
It was a good riff of it.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
But knife delivery.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Did you say Reagan's in it?

Speaker 3 (36:27):
No, Ray Dennis decklo Oh, Ray, I'm sorry, Ray Dennis, Ray,
Dennis Reagan is it?

Speaker 2 (36:34):
And I was like, well, I don't know, maybe he
isn't it.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
That would be funny. Yeah, shortly before his presidency.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah, let's see. Anyway, back to Susan Cabot. She was
in Machine Gun Kelly in fifty eight alongside Charles Bronson,
and she did some westerns during her Corman years, but
Wass was her last film for Corman, and it's sometimes
cited as her final film role after fifty nine, and
she only ever acted I think one more time for

(37:02):
screen or TV in the nineteen seventy TV series Brackens World.
She also apparently continued to do a little off Broadway
theater during the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
I had read clearly that it was her last film role.
Is there another movie you were thinking of?

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Or Well, it just depends on how you're ranking them
and listing them. For instance, on IMDb, the nineteen fifty
nine movie Surrender Hell is listed after Wasp Woman. So
I say, sometimes it depends on how you're exactly stacking them.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
Okay, okay, yeah, but it is commonly, like in her biographies,
people often cite Wasp Woman as her last film appearance.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, I mean certainly the last film that she was
in that had any kind of sticking power. Yeah, So
I would I have to say, I think she's great
in this. I think she delivers, really delivers on the
key central performance that the whole picture depends on, Like
if this if the actor playing this role doesn't bring it,
and you know, nothing else really count. And again, she's

(38:01):
not a clearcut villain. This film doesn't really have a
villain typical villain character. She's not depicted early on, certainly
as any kind of like ruthless CEO or Anything's just
she just unwittingly crosses a line that takes her on
this increasingly dark and destructive path, and I think Cabot
plays that really well.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Yeah, her behavior becomes sort of unhinged later in the film,
but that is shown as being out of desperation, not
because there's like something wrong with her personality or character.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, now it is interesting. You have some great notes
in her outline about this. Certainly her transformation into monster
is not great, but she also has to do some
other sorts of transformations because she's initially depicted as being
a woman in her like late thirties or around forty
early forty somewhere in there. But then she is going

(38:51):
to transform into a woman in her twenties, and she
was I believe thirty two years old at the time
of this movie's filming.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
That's right. So yeah, so she's playing a character who's
supposed to look at various times ten years older or
ten years younger than the actress actually was. So they
Cabot used a number of tactics. I think some of
it she came up with herself to try to accomplish this,
Like in the earlier scenes in the movie where she's
supposed to look older. One thing, one thing that I

(39:22):
appreciate about it is they did use some makeup, but
not a lot, so it's not like they're doing obvious, overwhelming,
make me look older make up, like fake wrinkles or anything.
We don't have any of that. There are some kind
of dark circles under her eyes, just making her look weary.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
There's also the classic I take my classes off, and
yes there are.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
In the early film, she wears these odd rectangular glasses
that just I don't know if they make her look older.
They just make her look very strange.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
And yeah, I mean, I guess it was kind of
a it's just a way to differentiate.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, but she also it was mentioned in one of
the books that I was reading that she styled her
hair in a way that she thought would read as older.
Like in the early scenes, she's got a very tight,
very tight, almost puritan looking haircut or not haircut hair
style where it's very like pinned up tightly, and she

(40:16):
wore high collars thinking that would make her look older.
It does kind of at least make her look more
old fashioned. But then once she takes the wasp juice,
she lets her hair down a little bit. It's still up,
but not as tight as it was, and she dresses
very differently, takes the glasses off, takes off the tired
looking makeup, but it's also very much there in the performance.

(40:38):
Cabot says that in the scenes where she's supposed to
look older, she would move more slowly and deliberately, and
then after she takes the wasp juice, she starts to
move more quickly and appears full of joy.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah. Yeah, so I really love this. I just again,
I kind of wish they'd taken this approach to the
monster transformation as well. Done something that was made be
a little bit more minimal and lean more heavily on
her performance and her you know, her facial expression, maybe
with some sort of minimal like Google makeup or something.
You know.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
I feel like the dynamic is between us is more
often the other way. I feel kind of soft on
this monster design. It's not like it's very elaborate. It
is basically just some it's some weird eyes and some
weird teeth, but at least in the black and white,
I can see it not working very well in color,
and I didn't try to watch the colorized version of

(41:32):
this movie, But in the original black and white, I
kind of appreciated the Wasp design. It's one of those
that works kind of well in the dark, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
It's, yeah, they realized they knew what they had here
or what they didn't have, and so they Yeah, they
do a pretty good job for most of the film
when the monster's on screen, just showing very little of
it and making sure the light the lighting is giving
it as much assistance as possible.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
But there is some of the perform men's aspect in
the Wasp transformation scenes. Also, like in that book by
Brianson that I was reading, it quotes an interview with
Cabot where she's explaining her performance in the monster scenes,
and she talks about how she had to think through
this because she's like, I'm five foot two, and I
have to be attacking people who are like more than

(42:19):
a foot taller than me in a convincing way. And
so she says, quote, the only way I felt I
could convincingly down a bigger person was through swiftness, by
coming at them fast, like a bolt of lightning and
staying right on target. It worked, And I think she's
sort of right. I've read some contemporary reviews of the

(42:40):
film that say, it looks comical when she is attacking
the people who are bigger than her. But I don't
know that it always looks comical.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
I like, I didn't really get that at all. Yeah,
I think maybe the speed worked essentially the Peter Lourie approach.
I think back to the face behind the mask. He
has to like rough up a dude that's like feels
like three feet taller than him. And I was like,
how's he going to pull this off? How's he going
to make this look believable? And he like basically like
speed and viciousness, and you buy it.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah, And she, of course in these scenes, she she
that's her. That's Susan Cabot in the Wasp makeup, doing
the attacks and to quote the Brian sin Book quote,
doing all of her stunts quote including spitting out chocolate
syrup upon the necks of her victims as she pretended
to bite them. Yes, I love that. So they like,
I guess, squirt the chocolate syrup in the mouth before

(43:33):
the take and she runs in nibble nibble classic the book.
Also that Brian sin Book quotes a publicity article about
Wasp Woman at the time of its release, which begins
with the words beautiful and noted. Susan Cabot, What does
that mean? Noted?

Speaker 2 (43:54):
It seems like a word's missing there.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Noted. You know, like you've heard of her. Maybe that's
what it means. Beautiful and noted. Susan Cabot, frequently seen
in the company of King Hussein in Hollywood and New York,
is one of the most popular and lovely of the
young leading women. Formerly under contract to Universal International, where
she played opposite such stars as Rock Hudson, Jeff Chandler,

(44:17):
Tony Curtis, and Joel McCrae, Susan is making her debut
in the independent production as star of The Wasp Woman,
so at least a good bit of the film's marketing
was very Susan Cabot forward. It's not just this is
a killer insect movie. It's this is a Susan Cabot movie,
and I think there's some wasp stuff in there somewhere.

(44:39):
As you said earlier, this is usually credited as her
final film. When asked later about, you know, her retirement
from acting after having done a bunch of movies with
Roger Corman. At this point, I mean she again, she
was in War of the Satellites and the Viking Women
in the Sea Serpent movie and all that. She replied,
I mean, how many wasp a wasp woman's.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Can you do? I mean, clearly at least two in counting. Yeah,
that's what the answer seems to be. So yeah, I
absolutely agree. This is very much her picture. But we
have some other interesting actors in the show as well,
playing some necessary side characters that are a lot of fun.

(45:22):
So starting with Billy Lane. The character Billy Lane here
this is a member of her team. All the most
of the major characters are people who worn't for her corporation,
and so Billy is played by Anthony Eisley, who lived
nineteen twenty five through two thousand and three. Actor of stage, screen,
and TV, who was a regular on the TV series

(45:43):
Hawaiian I from fifty nine through sixty two and appeared
in Samuel Fuller's The Naked Kiss in sixty four. But
he also has just a lot of low budget genre
cinema titles in his filmography, like The Mighty Gorga, The
Witch Maker, The Mummy, and the Curse of the Jackals.
All these were like sixty nine then Al Adams Adamson's

(46:05):
Dracula Versus Frankenstein in seventy one and Monstroyd in nineteen eighty.
Outside of monster movies and low budget sci fi fair
he was also in the nineteen sixty six Elvis picture
Frankie and Johnny.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
You didn't even mention the Navy versus the Night Monsters,
the one where the Navy has to fight killer trees.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Ooh yeah, yeah, sign me up.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
So I was reading about Eisley's performance in The Wasp
Woman in a different book than the one. I was
just talking about a book by the horror historian Tom Weaver,
who has come up on the Ond House a lot.
He does a lot of great interviews with actors from
old B movies and stuff. This book is called Return
of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes, the mutant

(46:50):
melding of two volumes of classic interviews. This book came
out in two thousand and so. This book has an
extensive interview with Anthony Eisley about being in a lot
of these movies. But one thing that's talked about in
this book is Isley says he ended up taking drama
courses in college, not because he really loved the stage
or had aspirations to be a great actor, but because

(47:12):
he thought they would be easy, as he's like, that's
how I can get through college. But he stuck with it,
and then sometime later he was the star of hawaiian
I TV's hawaiian I. Some reviews at the star I
actually had different reactions to this character on my two viewings.
I found myself really disliking this character on first viewing

(47:34):
and then being a little softer on him second viewing.
But some reviews at the time singled out Anthony Eisley
and his character in The Wasp Woman for praise, saying like, now,
this is a really likable leading man. And I did
not exactly understand this because he's not exactly a leading man.
He's kind of a secondary character, though he fills the role.

(47:54):
He's like the main man in the movie that does
anything good. And this is no offense to Eisley as
an actor, but I found the character to be a
little bit skeazy and grading. But I thought maybe he
was support sort of supposed to be, Like, I don't
think you're supposed to hate him, and he's certainly not
positioned as a villain. But he just reads as a

(48:17):
kind of undependable. Ally to who I thought was actually
the most sympathetic character, the secretary Mary played by Barbara Morris.
Billy Lane comes off as like he's basically a good guy,
but he's a libidinous and sort of insincere business creature.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
And when when he is needed most he comes through,
but his attempts to help are sometimes kind of half hearted.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah. And when we're first introduced to him, as we'll discuss,
I felt I didn't know how he was exactly being positioned.
I was like, is this guy? Is this guy being
a creep? Is he is he like trying doing a
power play here in the meeting? Like what's going on? Yeah?
So yeah, I agree, I didn't. I did feel like
he was the likable heart of the movie, even if

(49:03):
he is the character that is most like a leading
man and an action oriented leading man character.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yeah. So, anyway, more from this interview with Tom Weaver
about working with Roger Corman on this movie, Isley says, quote,
this reveals some lack of depth in me, I suppose,
But I thought it was fun, a hell of a
lot of fun because he worked like a house of
fire and I like to work fast on the stage.
I had spent eight years playing four parts. I'd had

(49:30):
a great deal of luck in being in hit plays
that consumed a lot of time. But after that period
was over, I found it much more enjoyable to learn something,
do it, forget it, and go on. So he says
he really enjoyed like whipping through this picture with Corman
at this incredible rate, and he talks about crazy filmmaking
tricks that Corman used on set, stuff that Eisley had

(49:53):
never seen before in like his television work or on
other movies. One example is that Corman would you'd we
have a bunch of different scenes in the movie that
were not consecutive to each other, but they would be
shot in the same location, and Corman would like set
up a camera angle on that location, and then they

(50:14):
do every scene in the movie that used that location
all in a row, and have the actors changing costumes
in between the takes. So it's like here's this scene, okay,
change okay, now we're shooting the other one and all that.
Then set up another camera angle. Okay, now we're going
to do every scene in the movie that happens in
this room all back to back.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, this is like in our episode on the Last
Temptation of Christ where we mentioned Martin Scorsese like pointing
out the Corman way of filming being highly useful when
you're dealing with budgetary constraints or other limitations on a production.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
So Isley says that his memory of working with Susan
Cabot was that he thought she was not very happy
about the movie and that she seemed irritated with Corman
during I don't know. I mean, she'd made a bunch
of movies with him at this point. Maybe there's only
so much Roger you can take. But at the same time,
Cabot had positive things to say about working on this

(51:10):
movie after the fact, like the other interview I was
talking about, and she says she, you know, sort of
says she was proud of the movie and enjoyed working
on it. So I don't know. But also Eisley says
he was personally very gung ho on set, and he's
trying to be game for everything, you know, yes, ending
with Roger and offering to do semi dangerous, semi stunts,

(51:32):
including one story where he's he's supposed to break through
glass to get through a door to get into a room.
You might remember this at the very toward the end
of the movie. Yes, Yeah, they didn't have a budget
for candy glass, so there was real glass there and
he's like, what the hell, I'll do it, So he
kicked through actual glass. But then after they shot that scene,

(51:55):
they had to shoot more scenes in that room with
the door there, and the glass was broken and they
couldn't afford to or didn't have time or money to
get it fixed, so they just put paper over the
part of the door where the glass was. And he
talks about how when people would open and close the
door and the scenes, you can see the glass which
is actually just paper like ballooning back and forth. Yeah,

(52:18):
he compares it to the jib on a sailboat.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Well, I'm glad nobody was hurt, because I've heard horror
stories about people like punching through or kicking through glass,
or they hit the wrong glass instead of getting the
gimmick glass, they hit real glass and they're cut to ribbons,
or they break something. Lady Terminator's example of that where
you know their star was sidelined for a while because

(52:43):
they did a stunt with real glass.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
I want to say to filmmakers out there who may
be listening, this story is fun. But I don't say
this to glamorize the style of filmmaking where you know,
you have actors doing stuff like this. You know, I
appreciate the zeal to make a movie, but it's not
worth it. I mean, there's no reason people need to
get injured on set just to make a shot work like.

(53:06):
You can figure out a way to do it without people,
you know, getting hurt.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
That's what the CGI is for. All right, Let's move
on to some of the other cast members we mentioned.
Mary already played by Barbara Morris. She lived nineteen thirty
two through nineteen seventy five. She appeared in several Corman films,

(53:32):
beginning in fifty seven with a trio that included Rock
All Night. She's also in fifty eight Teenage Caveman Finfty
nine Bucket of Blood, in which she plays Carla, the
only beat nick who's nice to Dick Miller's character, who
of course turns out to be a murder. It's a comedy.
It's super fun if anyone out there hasn't seen it.
Later on, she'd appear in Corman's nineteen sixty seven LSD

(53:54):
movie The Trip and nineteen seventies The Dunwich are one
of her final roles.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
I found her character very likable here. I think if
this movie were made today, I think most filmmakers would
want to make this character more assertive. She really does
get just kind of moved around like a game piece
by the mostly male bosses, including her boyfriend Billy Lane.
But Barbara Morris brings just a very sympathetic quality to

(54:21):
the character. She's hard not to like. In a lot
of scenes. She uses this very slowly developing hesitant smile
that shows off nervousness and friendliness at the same time
as just a very endearing trade and you do not
want the Wasp woman to drink her blood.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Also a great scream. She really gets to build out
a nice monster scream in this film. Yeah, all right.
There's an older silver hair gentleman that's a member of
her corporate inner circle named Arthur Cooper, and he's played
by William Rorik, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen ninety five,

(54:59):
primarily as stage actor appearing on Broadway, but here. In
the nineteen ninety one Daytime Emmy nomination for his work
on Guiding Light. He hit a very long TV career
and he pops up in such films as seventy three
Is the Day of the Dolphin and seventy six As
God Told Me To But oh, and he was also
in Corman's Not of This Earth fifty seven, and he's

(55:21):
come up on the show before just in passing because
he was longtime partners with Thomas Coley, who was in
nineteen forties Doctor Cyclops. Oh, a movie that is name
dropped in this movie.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yes mentioned in the film that in a way, kind
of the soul of this movie is contained in the
scenes of the office secretaries like trash talking each other
or trash talking their boyfriends, which those scenes can be
pretty fun. And one of them is this character named
Marie and talking about how you know, she can't stand

(55:56):
her boyfriend, her husband, Irving, who just wants to watch
TV all the time, And she gets a phone call
from Irving and tells him to drop dead. The other
secretary is like, what happened? What did he say? And
she says, he told me that Doctor Cyclops is on
TV again tonight, Channel nine. He's seen it three times.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Nice. Yeah, I love all those things with the secretaries
and just in general, like I says, it's the mad
Men era, and you have this mad Men office space
here in this Golden age New York, and yeah, I
found it rather charming. And this particular actor playing Arthur,
I think he charmed up, classed up, and he's scene
he's in very much.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
I do think it's kind of weird reading reviews that
mentioned the Billy Laine character as likable, because I feel
like Arthur is a lot more likable.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he tries to save the day.
He's actively trying to do right by our main character.
She's making suspicious choices for the business. Yeah, and of
course he pays a price for that. Yeah, all right.
We mention Eric Zinthrop already. This is our zinthorpe zen

(57:04):
Throp sin zen Throp. He's played by Michael Mark lived
eighteen eighty six through nineteen seventy five. Bell, Russian born actor,
often appearing in small roles from I Believe like nineteen
twenty eight through nineteen sixty nine. I mean he pops
up at least in small background roles in the likes
of thirty one's Frankenstein, thirty five's Mad Love Son of Frankenstein.

(57:28):
The Mummy's hand goes to Frankenstein House of Frankenstein. Fifty
eighth Attack of the Puppet People, which we've talked about
on the show, and fifty nine's Return of the Fly.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Is he the mad Scientist and Attack of the Puppet People?

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Who? You know? That is a good question.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
He might be. That sounds familiar. I was wondering where
i'd heard his voice before giving these mad science kind
of lectures. Sorry, we just had to look up who
Michael Mark was an Attack of the Puppet People, because
I thought maybe he had been the villain like the
mad scientists in it, But no, he played that character's
mentor or friend who like visits the laboratory. And this

(58:07):
creates problems of the I think that the mad scientist
having to try to hide his work from this guy.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, this in this picture though, again
it's not really a villain character. He's not really a
mad scientist. He's he's got this amazing breakthrough. He wants
to partner with somebody in order to like fully realize
it and you know, make money off of it, and
that's what he's trying to do. So and in fact,

(58:33):
when he realizes things are not going as planned and
taking a darker turn. You know it severely affects him.
Let's see just a couple of other folks to miss it.
Mentioned in Passing, Frank Gersel shows up in this It
plays Less Hellman. He lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen seventy.
Other credits include fifty threes, The Neander tall Man, fifty threes,

(58:56):
The Magnetic Monster, and fifty nine's The four Skull of
Jonathan Drake. Oh, one of our secretary gals is the
character Maureen. She's I think the switchboard operator, one of
the Brooklyn accent.

Speaker 3 (59:11):
She's the one who's mad at Irving about doctor Cyclops. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Yeah. She is played by Lynn Cartwright, who lived nineteen
twenty seven through two thousand and four. She previously had
a supporting role in fifty eight's Queen of Outer Space,
which of course starred ja Ja Gabor. Late in her career,
she played the older version of Gena Davis's character in
the nineteen ninety two film A League of their Own.
She was also in eighty seven's The Garbage Pail Kids Movie,

(59:36):
but she was married to screenwriter Leo Gordon.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
Oh that's funny, so the screenwriter gave her a lot
of the funniest dialogue.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Yeah, tub that way. Also, I'll mention again just in
passing first delivery man, I didn't even really clock him.
But it's Frank Wolfe, who lived nineteen twenty eight through
nineteen seventy one. Got his starred in Corman pictures, but
then when go on to work a great deal in
European f films, particularly spaghetti westerns and thrillers, including seventy
one's Death Walks on High Heels and sixty eight's Once

(01:00:07):
Upon a Time in the West.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
This is the guy who hits on Maureen. I think
they're delivering a hospital bed so that the scientist can
recover in the office. Yes, everybody's dream. If you're horribly injured,
you just want to be at work while you're recovering. Yeah,
so you can recover in the office.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
You're too valuable. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
And when they're like delivering the bed, he yeah, he
makes a pass at Maureen and she I think she
also tells him to drop dead if.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
All right? And then finally, the music is by Fred Katz,
who with nineteen nineteen through twenty thirteen American cellist and
composer who is quite successful outside of film and was
responsible for the jazzy score for A Bucket of Blood,
and the score for The Wasp Woman uses the same
music as do I'm to understand something like five of
five other Corman films from this era.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Okay, uh, yeah, Sometimes the music in the movie feels
a little random, yeah, but other things are very on point.
I mean, obviously there's a lot of buzzing sounds in it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah yeah, but yeah, on the whole, like, the music
is exactly what you'd expect from a movie from this era.
But it's good. It does its job. Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Okay, ready to talk about the plot.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Let's let's get those bees on the screen.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Yes, yes, So the opening credits, of course play over
footage of bees, bees buzzing. So this is the movie
The Wasp Woman. The words appear and it's bees.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yeah. And then we get a scene that only you saw.
I didn't actually see this one, So tell me what
happens in the extended cut, so.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
I'll summarize pretty quickly. Tell me when we get to
the part you have seen. So we see an older man,
doctor's nthrope going out into the country in a bee
keeper suit to harvest a wasp's nest, which he puts
inside a locked suitcase and carries back to his lab.
This is the lab where he conducts his mysterious experiment.

(01:02:00):
And then later the boss of the apary shows up
and he's dressed funny. He's wearing a business suit but
a mesh mask and a veil over his head, walking
around among the bee colonies. And there's one guy they
show in here who's working on the bee colonies without
any gloves, and that made me think, Oh, I bet
that guy's not an actor. This is probably just an

(01:02:21):
apiary worker that they used in the movie. He's got
like one quick line and he doesn't sound like an actor.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Oh you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
But the boss here asks a worker at the main
harvesting area about doctor Zenthrop. And apparently the honey company
that owns the apary pays doctor z Enthrop to do
experiments on bees and honey production. But Zenthrop has been
hugely overcharging his company account and hasn't filed a progress

(01:02:49):
report in months, So what's he doing up there? And
then the worker guy, they got this very folksy guy.
He says, oh shucks, that Zenthrop be's a nut him
and his bees. Guys, they're all out there with bees.
But he says, you know, one of these days, I
wouldn't be surprised to see him flap his arms and
take off after some queen bee like the rest of

(01:03:09):
the drones. This guy also tells the boss that he
likes to be like the bees, busy, busy, busy. So
this guy, he's sucking up to the boss. So the
Boss goes to check out Zinthrop's lab and he finds
that Xenthrop has strayed way off mission. Instead of what
he's supposed to be doing with the bees, he has
been running experiments on queen wasp royal jelly. Zinthrop claims

(01:03:33):
he has discovered it has incredible powers of rejuvenation. He
shows the Boss an adult dog and a puppy and
then he says they're actually the same age. The puppy,
which he says is named Greta, received an injection of
his wasp rejuvenation treatment, and the Boss is like, look,
here's Nthrop. I understand about science and progress and all,

(01:03:54):
but you're fired and Xthrops he's a little bit heartbroken.
The boss says, you just don't seem to be one
of the team. You understand, you'll fit in somewhere else.
And Zenthrop sits down and he talks to his wasps.
He reassures them that they will find they will find
a new home, everything will be all right. And then

(01:04:14):
he says, now, how would you like a nice juicy caterpillar?
And he tosses a caterpillar into the suitcase and then
slams it shut like he's running his Zone caterpillar boo box.
So you didn't see any of this so far?

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
No, none of that the cut I watched the theatrical cut.
Once the credits are down, we go straight to the
board meeting.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
Interesting because I would say that the version of the
movie you got has an even less mad scientist than
the version I saw, because the maddest we ever sees
Enthrop really is in this opening scene where he's talking
to the wasps and feeding them caterpillars and stuff. So yeah,
now we go to the board meeting at Jenis Starlin Enterprises.

(01:04:59):
Jennis Starlin, the founder and CEO of this world class
cosmetics company is. It's headquartered in New York. She is
holding a board meeting to discuss recent a recent decline
in sales from the last quarter, and she grills the executives,
demanding they give an explanation for the poor performance. Nobody
will speak up. One of the boss is, when put

(01:05:21):
on the spot, makes the excuse that he is not
feeling well. So they are they are afraid. They don't
want to say what they're thinking. Eventually, only one of
them has the guts to speak up, and it is
this guy named Billy Lane.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
And he is really I mean, nobody's eager to speak.
But when he decides to speak, there's a certain swagger
to him that initially I was like, Oh, this guy's
trouble about. He's about to make a power play or something.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
Yeah, I thought the exact same thing when I first
saw it. Yeah, so he says, if you look, sales
begin to fall off exactly the month that the company
made one change. It was the month that they first
took Janis Starlind's fate off of the company's advertising. See
she built the company from the ground up, using her

(01:06:05):
face in all of the company's imagery, and her face
has been the only face associated with Starlin Cosmetics since
the beginning until a few months ago, when for the
first time, she went off the ads and they started
using new models, and Lane says, look, people associate your
face with the brand. They trust you, and after so long,

(01:06:27):
taking your face off the brand causes distrust. So his
suggestion is, let's just put your face back in the ads,
and everybody agrees with him. There is applause from the board,
but Starlin is not impressed. She says, I think I've
had enough flattery for one morning, gentleman. And then later
she says, you know, that might have been impressive analysis,

(01:06:48):
but one small fact you have overlooked. Not even Janis
Starlin can remain a glamour girl forever, and then she
dismisses them. So I thought it's interesting that they didn't
go with the more cruel version of this premise, which
would have been that the public stopped buying the product
because they thought she didn't look young and beautiful enough anymore. Instead,

(01:07:14):
it's framed more as a matter of Starlin's internal anxiety
and lack of self confidence about her appearance as she's aging.
It's that she decided to take her face off the
product because she feels insecure about looking older, and then
the market did not respond well to the change that
her face isn't on there anymore. For all we know,

(01:07:36):
the cosmetics consumer in the world of this movie would
still be happy with how she looks, but we know
that she is not happy. I thought that's kind of interesting.
You would think maybe that the easier place to go
with the story would be the former.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Yeah, yeah, that is a good point, and you to
come back to the Amy Sedaris version that I hope
we get to see one day. I wonder which version
how they might tweak it for comedic value, because the
crueler version could be more funny and more humorous if
you tweaked it just right.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Yeah. I wonder about a version of the story where
the CEO is not feeling insecure about her looks, or
maybe more realistically, especially if you're going for like a
comedy skewering of this character where they are feeling insecure
but they're not willing to admit it for you know,
in front of others. Yeah. Yeah, I also think an

(01:08:28):
interesting thing could be approaching this from a gender flipped way,
you know, you know, like gender expectations about beauty and
aging are like a huge thing that affects how the
story is perceived. Though you know, you could imagine like
a kind of like male beauty wellness thing. I mean,
there are tons of products out there like that now,
with like guys who associate themselves with the product they're

(01:08:49):
selling in a certain kind of male appearance of youth
and masculinity and virility and all that. And yeah, I
could imagine the story being taken interesting ways with that
as well. Yeah, anyway, bringing it back to this board meetings.
So yeah, Starlin, she does not take kindly to the
idea that she's going to go back on the ads,

(01:09:11):
and she just seems generally like weary and unhappy at
the beginning of the story. But then a phone call
comes in Starlin's secretary, Mary informs her that a doctor's
xnthrope is waiting in the office to see her. So
here we go. I think you can almost guess what's
going to happen at this point.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Well I could. I mean I could because I know
what the premise of the film was. But for me,
this is a much more mysterious character. He just comes
out of nowhere, almost like a like a mysterious stranger,
bringing some sort of a promise.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
This movie is probably better without the intro with all
the bees. I think, yeah, now that I think about it,
and that also even keeps it tighter. I mean, go
ahead and make these movies short.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
People.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
You do not have to pad a film out just
even seventy minutes, certainly not to ninety minutes and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
A half hours.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
Six A sixty three minute movie is okay. I give
it seal of approval if that's If that's what the
movie needs to be, that's what you should do. But
before the meeting with Zinthrop, she pulls aside Arthur Cooper,
the man of chemistry on the board. He's because he's
a guy, you know, the science representative, often smoking a pipe,

(01:10:22):
and she asks him, you've done work on Queen Bee
royal jelly and it's supposed restorative properties, as she wants
to know, is there really any therapeutic value in it.
He's a bit equivocal. He says, there's probably some value,
but it's not proven yet. We don't really know, and
it will if there is value, it will depend on
individual reactions.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
One man's meat is another man's poison, she asks, supposing
a more powerful version of royal jelly could be obtained
from the Queen Wasp for example, and he frowns almost like,
oh not this clap trap again. And because I was wondering, like,
why would you assume a queen wasp roil jelly would

(01:11:04):
be more powerful? It's like a wasp is bigger than
a bee.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Yeah, yeah, it looks meaner, less cute.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Uh, Cooper says, I wrote this quote down. I'd stay
away from wasps if I were you, Miss Darlin. Socially,
the queen wasp is on the level with the black
widow spider. They're both carnivorous. They paralyze their victims and
then take their time devouring them alive, and they kill
their mates in the same way too. Strictly a one

(01:11:33):
sided romance. But I mean if that were true, if
that is, I don't I didn't look at this up.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
No comment on the science here. I'm not going to
tarnish this discussion with any actual wasp signs.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
Oh but well, yeah, never mind. Just drawing conclusions from
insect mating behavior is funny, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
Anyway, I don't want to associate with this as a
source because it could tarnish our corporate brand because the
insects murder each other.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
Yeah, I don't know, so he advises her to forget
about it, and she says okay, and then he leaves.
She calls in doctor's Enthrope and Starlin says, I'm afraid
I can't give you much time today, mister Enthrope. And
he says, but it is I who will give you time,
Miss Starlin, ten maybe fifteen years. I can give you.
So's that's a good pitch. So she's like, go on, okay,

(01:12:24):
good reversal. She says, she demands absolute proof of what
he claimed in his letter, and so, okay, off to
the laboratory. It's time to see the proof right now.
So this is the scene where Zenthrop demonstrates that his
enzyme from Queen Wasp royal jelly can reverse the aging process.
Though what's actually shown on screen, and I had to

(01:12:45):
rewind it the first time. I was like, did I
see this right? What he does is he injects a
guinea pig with this stuff and that turns the guinea
pig into a rat.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Yes, that is absolutely what is depicted here. I don't
know if they were rigal going to do rats into
mice as if that would be more realistic, but what
they had was guinea pigs into rats, and so that's
what we're going with.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
I think it's supposed to be it turns the guinea
pig into a younger guinea pig, but they couldn't. Maybe
they didn't think a younger guinea pig would register.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
Were you not aware that guinea pigs are just old rats.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
Once they go through the metamorphosis, a rat goes into
its creasalis and it So she says, okay, I'm convinced
that rat that I love this rat. You did a
great job. So she gives in through a p laboratory.
She sets him to work, though she says one caveat. No,

(01:13:40):
the caveat is not from her, it's from him. He says,
you know, I know my formula works on animals, but
it may not be safe for human beings. I haven't
tested it yet, so human deployment that's going to have
to wait on results for more safety tests. But she
doesn't want to wait. She says, you will test it
on me, and he tries to argue with her, Oh no, no, no,
we're not going to do that, and she insists. So

(01:14:03):
he gets to work creating doses for human consumption.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
All right, So we get some more tests here. I
don't know if we want to mention the full progression.
I don't know if they plan this out, but they're like, Okay,
we're gonna turn pigs, we turn rats into guinea pigs,
the other way around. Yeah, guinea pigs into rats. Then
we're going to turn cats into kittens. Makes sense, and
then basically time for human testing. Right after that, just

(01:14:38):
three steps.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
We get a montage here where we start seeing mostly
repeated footage we've already seen so laboratory bees, rats, guinea pigs, rats, executives,
and I think it's just stuff is happening.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Yeah, rat race too, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:55):
It kind of works, yeah, And then after the montage
there is a scene where Billy Lane and and Mary
are talking while Mary transcribes a document on the typewriter.
We get the idea in the scene that they are
romantically involved. They've been dating, and Billy says he does
not trust this new guy at the company Zenthrop quote.
He must be the granddaddy of all confidence men to

(01:15:16):
get Starlin to fall for his tricks. Why doesn't somebody
whise her up? Mary says, somebody like you, for instance,
But she wants to know why does he think that
Zinthrop is a fraud? And Lane says, oh, you're as
bad as she is. Oh women. Then Mary says men,
so reversal on the women. Men. Every time you're stuck

(01:15:38):
for an answer, you always come up with women. You're
not getting out of this one so easily. I'd like
to know why you think Zenthrop really hasn't got something.
And then Billy says, well, you can call it male
intuition if you like, except there's something about this whole
business that doesn't smell right. A private laboratory, a secret experiment,

(01:15:59):
zen Thrope himself. The only thing missing is a genie
with a lamp. And then Mary says, you better leave
the intuition to me, and they discuss going out to dinner.
Apparently they keep flipping a coin to see who pays
for the check when they go out, but Billy always wins,
so Mary wants a different arrangement, and he suggests that

(01:16:21):
he will buy her dinner if she starts spying on
Xenthrop and Starlin for him. So they're oh. And then
also this is the part where they get interrupted by Cooper,
who comes in and he's also suspicious of Zenthrop, and
this is the scene where they discuss the difference between
a quack and a con man. I know you thought
you liked this one.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
I really like this. Yeah, I thought this was a
nice back and forth where I'm read the dialogue here
where Billy Lane says, I've been trying to tell bright
Eyes here that I think Zenthrop is a phony and
a confidence man, and Arthur says, if I were sure
of that, I wouldn't be worried. I think he's a
lot more dangerous a quack. And then Billy Lane's says, well,

(01:17:00):
I don't follow you, Coop, And then Arthur continues and
he says, well, a confidence man would just be interested
in your money. The only damage they can do is
to your pocket book. A quack can be fatal. So
so yeah, I like the way they're positioning that, you know, like, like,
what is the true threat here? Is the threat that
he's you know, he's just you know, trying to make
some money off of it, or is the threat that

(01:17:22):
he's he's offering something that's not real at all? Of course,
we know at this point, he pointed out, like we
are we the viewer know that he can already turn
guinea pigs into rats, like whatever, he's already doing something,
or if he's it seems like it's legit. But you
know this is from their point of view, and they're
trying to figure out exactly what the threat is.

Speaker 3 (01:17:45):
Well, I think Cooper's correct in the sense in that
if he were a con man, I think what he's
saying is he would just be taking the money. But
as a quack, even though his serum does work in
a sense to reverse the aging, he is he together
with Starlin or playing off each other in a way
where they were moving to human testing before it is safe. Yeah,

(01:18:07):
so it works, but it's not safe.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Yeah, and in this it could be fatal in the
business sense or certainly, as we'll see, in the human
sense as well.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
Yeah. Also, this is the part where we get some
color in these scenes with the secretaries gossiping and like
talking trash about their boyfriends. This is the scene of
Maureen with the put on Brooklyn accent saying, so, I
says to him, I says, listen, Irving, I'm getting sick
of this TV every night. And so she wants Irving

(01:18:39):
to take her out to a night club. And yeah, oh,
this is also the scene with the doctor Cyclops. But yeah, anyway,
did you notice how this was the first scene I
noticed it that there's supposed to be an elevator that
opens directly into the office, so not into a hallway,

(01:19:00):
just the elevator doors slide apart and you go straight
into the room with all the secretaries.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Oh yeah, you know. I mean there's at least one
maybe older office building in the Atlanta area that does
that that I can think of. And I've heard of
cases where you have like really fancy, like New York
apartments where the elevator goes directly to the floor. So
I guess it exists and certainly existed.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
Well, obviously this is not a real elevator door. This
is just boards that people are manually sliding open and
closed on either side of the doorway.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
Yeah, So anyway, time to test on humans. Zinthrop shows
Starlin a kitten and says, yesterday this was a cat.
She is overjoyed. She says, you're a kitten. You've got
your whole life to live over again, and Zenthrop swabs
Stalin's arm with alcohol and then gives her her first injection.
So here we go then we cut to three weeks

(01:19:57):
three weeks later, and Starlin is working in her office.
She looks in a compact mirror and she's not satisfied.
She is not improving fast enough. Zinthrop encourages patience. He says,
there's more to you than a little kitten and a
difference in metabolism. But we can see that Starlin is
not happy. She wants more drastic results, faster, and Zinthrop

(01:20:21):
just mentions offhand in the scene, he's like, ah, you know,
I've been working on a much more powerful, more concentrated
version of the enzyme, possibly for use highly deluded, of course,
in lotions in the future. But of course it's not
safe yet. Wink wink. It is over there in the refrigerator, though,
And that was my implication I was putting on it. Zenthrop.

(01:20:42):
Once again, he's not suggesting that she take it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
But she sees the opening. She's like, oh, well, I'll
just that's strong enough. I'll just use that. I won't
delude it. I'll just directly into my veins. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
So there is a there's a sequence in here where
Mary steals the letter from from Zenthrop out of Starlin's
desk and then takes it to Lane and Cooper at
lunch and they sit around looking at it, and Cooper
concludes that Zenthrop is a very capable confidence man. In fact,
quote he claims he can stimulate the processes of rejuvenation

(01:21:15):
and stimulate the processes of rejuvenation through the use of
enzymes extracted from wasps. And so the three of them
are trying to figure out a way to get to
get through to Starlin and expose Zenthrop for the fraud
that he is. Though once again we know the seerum
already works, it just might not be safe. And then

(01:21:35):
later that night, alone in her office, Janis Starlin is
she's sad, tired, anxious, something is getting to her, and
she sneaks down into Zynthrop's laboratory, breaks into the refrigerator,
takes out the extra powerful wasp juice and she injects
herself and then so it seems like, well, maybe she's
gonna maybe it's gonna work out great. But while she's

(01:21:57):
sneaking out of the office, out of the last we
get a glimpse of the cage where Xenthrop was keeping
the kitten, the cat he had transformed back into a
kitten ain't a kitten anymore. Now it is a cat,
a sort of angry, greasy looking cat.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
But only like it just looks like somebody rubbed grease
on a cat. And now the cat's a little perturbed.
But the scene still kind of hits, and it stirred
something in my memory and I realized this is and
I don't think this is actually patterned after it, but
in twenty twenty four is alien romulus. There is a
scene where a character takes samples of an injectable serum
in a mad science lab, runs off with it, and

(01:22:37):
then we pan over to the horrifying results of experimentation
on rats with that same ingredient to drive home up.
This is not going to work out well for anyone.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
So the next scene there is a revelation. Finally we
get the altered form of Susan Cabbot as the much
rejuvenated Starlin. She comes into the office looking twenty years younger,
and then the secretary, Mareene sees her and she's just stunned,
jaw hanging open. She's like, is that really you, miss Starlin?
And Staralin kind of is like, finish your nails, Mareene

(01:23:11):
they're a little bit they're a little bit mean to
each other. Here there are tinges of jealousy from Marine
and gloating from Starlin. And now everybody sees she looks
twenty years younger, and she makes a pitch to the board.
She gathers the board for a meeting, and she says,
our new company slogan will be returned to youth with
Janis Starlin. We are now no longer just a cosmetics company.

(01:23:33):
We are a rejuvenation company.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
Yeah. And this is this is where everyone starts quite
like bringing up some very good points, like we can't
just suddenly become a rejuvenation company, like like you're talking about,
we're no longer a cosmetic company, We're like a medical company.

Speaker 3 (01:23:49):
Yes. And this is actually not in this scene. It's
in the later board scene when she's pressing them to
go forward with the rejuvenation slogan. In that later scene,
one one of the executives, a minor character, says, I
think we should be a little more conservative with our messaging.
Cosmetics are one thing, medicine is another. Very sound yeah, true.

(01:24:11):
But at the same time, Mary here seems genuinely happy
for Starlin. She confesses how they had been plotting to
rescue her from a doctor's nthrop but now it all
seems so silly because obviously he's not he's not a
con man. His stuff really works, and Starlin is just overjoyed.
She's asking Mary over and over how old do I look?

(01:24:33):
How old do I look? And she talks about how
she now looks exactly like she did when she started
the company eighteen years ago, so she can start all over,
she can do it all over again. It's like a dream.
But good dreams come to an end because the next
scene is a cat attack as Zinthrop goes into his lab.
Remember that greasy cat was a cat, then it was

(01:24:55):
a kitten, then it was a greasy angry cat.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
It's essentially a mutant wasp cat. I think that's what
they're going for here.

Speaker 3 (01:25:02):
Yeah, mutant wasp, greasy angry cat. Now it attacks his nthrop.
It jumps and like grapples his neck and he has
to break the cat in half essentially, And then we
see him, now quite depressed, cramming the dead cat into
an incinerator, and then he wanders outside and steps in
front of a bus.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Yeah, he's like time to just walk into traffic. So
again he's not a mad scientist, but because realizing what
he's done is destructive, he's like, he clearly has a
lot of regrets.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
Yes, he's deeply, deeply upset, and we see him knock
to the pavement and the scene. One scene that I
do think is unintentionally comical is this scene where he
gets hit by a car because it's just kind of
a bam and then he just like falls down.

Speaker 2 (01:25:48):
Yeah, and we don't actually see it. It's just step
out horns, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:25:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
Meanwhile, there's a scene out at a restaurant where we
have Lane, Mary and Cooper conspiring once again, and Cooper
is expressing doubts. You know. It seems that Mary is thinking, wow,
so he's not a con man.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
After all.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
The stuff really works. But Cooper is like, you know,
I'm reminded of another doctor who is implanting monkey glands
into people a few years ago. Seemed to work for
a while, then the deterioration set in and he says,
if only I could get a look at his lab
see what he's using. Actually, before we started recording, we

(01:26:34):
were looking up who this because this is at least
one actual case in history of a quack surgeon who
was implanting monkey glands and people as a you know,
panas over all different kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
Yeah, and it inspired the Sherlock Holme Store The Adventure
of the Creeping Man from nineteen twenty three.

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):
Yes, so that is real medical pseudoscience history. People were
and it was not even the only case in medical
fraud history of zeno transplantation. That's what they call it,
you know, putting organs from one animal into a human
to do something, you know, and also there you know,
you can say that in real medicine there are some

(01:27:14):
cases of xeno transplantation that have been shown to work,
but a lot of these early things that it was
just quackery.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
I think we've talked about some of these on the
show before, like some of the skin transplants where you know,
trying out transplanting stuff like frog skin, and you know,
at times in the short term it seemed to work
because you know, for a variety of reasons that had
nothing to do with with the flesh actually like growing
and adapting, but just like maybe it was like helping

(01:27:41):
to cover up the the damage tissue for a little bit.
Things like that. So at times. Yeah, some of these
experiments seem to work, and that was part of the
danger of them.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
Yeah, and we were talking about how I'm sure we
didn't check, but I'm sure there are some wellness influencers
out there today who are like, yeah, what you need
is monkey clans.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Yeah, he's got some monkey glands out there trying to
sell them, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
So Cooper sneaks into Zenthrop's lab to solve the rejuvenation mystery,
like is it monkey glands? What's going on? And he
finds evidence of wasp related funny business. There's a plot
section where Starlin desperately hires a private investigator to find Zenthrop.
She needs him to come back and make more waspin

(01:28:24):
Zion post taste Where could he be? And also in
this part of the movie, we see that Starlin is
starting to get headaches, some kind of attacks or periodically
coming over her the PI man hunt. I thought this
part felt kind of like padding, but Robison, you said
you liked it more.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
Yeah, I mean this is one of those things where
again first draft scenario where you could imagine a down
river version of this script where they maybe play because
played up the sort of uncertainty about everything, because it
does kind of tease with this idea, Like he's asked
the PI is asking her like a, you know, don't
this guy works for you? Don't you know anything about him?
And she's like, well, he wasn't really a traditional employee,

(01:29:05):
so yeah, I don't know his home address or and
I don't have his phone number and all this where
you're really beginning you can, or at least I was
kind of imagining it from her point of view, like
she's maybe realizing, oh, yeah, I really didn't research this guy.
We just we just really jumped into this very quickly.
So I kind of liked it, But again, part of

(01:29:26):
that is in imagining where it could have gone if
this had been developed more.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
Yeah, I can see that. So eventually they find he's
in the hospital. He's not dead, but he's in a coma.
At this point, I think, and Starlin says that she
will pay anything to fund his recovery. The best doctors
around the clock care everything, but he must be able
to get back to work.

Speaker 2 (01:29:47):
She needs more wasps, and as we already discussed, is
in let's get a hospital bed in the office.

Speaker 3 (01:29:54):
Yes, we're going to get him in there exactly. We
also see her secretly sneaking off to give herself more injections,
but I think the serum is running low, so she's
got to get him to make more soon. And then
one night we see Cooper, the distinguished you know, the
scientist guy, sneak into his anthrops lab to get more
information about his research. He wants to understand what's going on.

(01:30:15):
And here we get Now we're nearing the end of
the movie, and we get our first Wasp woman attack
because Starlin has been in there injecting herself and the
Cooper hears some kind of buzzing sound and then sees
a horrible creature that rushes toward him and bites his
neck and spits chocolate syrup on his throat.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
Yeah, a furry b woman with things. Yeah. Again, I
don't think it's I don't think anybody was happy with
how it's turned out. But at least, like we said,
they try to keep it in the shadows. It's shot
pretty well so it doesn't look completely crappy on the screen.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Oh, I didn't you know what, I just thought of it.
So she's got the in wasp mode. She has kind
of big hair, but they could have embraced it and
given her a full beehive hairdo what do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
Oh yeah, I mean why not?

Speaker 3 (01:31:07):
Why not like B fifty two's Yeah yeah, notes for
Amy Sidaris and co you know, think about it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:15):
Yeah, I am very very interested to see what they
do with the full monster mode in that. But I imagine
they'll do something where, again, Amy Sidarius is such a
great physical performer, they'll come up with something that plays
to her strengths and maybe won't be as as much
coverage as this particular get up is.

Speaker 3 (01:31:35):
Now. There are more boardroom scenes in the movie where
Starlin insists on using the return to youth line even
though her people are against it, and then somewhere in
there there's another catty secretary scene that's pretty great. Maureen
is talking to the other secretary and she's like, if
that stuff takes fifteen years off Starlin, I'm sure it
could take ten off you. And then she says, oh, yeah, Well,

(01:31:57):
if I were you, I'd take a double dose, and
then maybe I wouldn't watch television so much. And I
love how there is barely any discussion of the disappearance
of Cooper.

Speaker 2 (01:32:07):
Yeah, just the yeah, they're just like, you know, he's conscientious.
Then you know, I'm sure he's just sick or something.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
Yeah, but here's the part we were talking about where
they move Zinthrop in the hospital bed into the office.
While they're moving in in, he's trying to remember he
had something important to tell Starlin, but he can't quite
get it out, and then he falls unconscious. There's one
scene in here that's funny where now Billy Lane is
ogling Starlin. He's got the hots for the boss, I guess,

(01:32:36):
and Mary is like, hey, Bill, don't don't go getting
any ideas. And Bill's like, oh, you know me, I'm
just trying to be a good employee. Do you think
Zenthrop could get you any of those treatments. There's also
there are a bunch of scenes throughout here with the
night Watchman. There's just a just a guy who loves

(01:32:56):
his radio programs.

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):
Yeah, basically listening to podcast and he gets his own
goofy music walking around.

Speaker 3 (01:33:03):
But unfortunately he's you know, he's going around listening to
his programs and he suddenly he hears buzzing inside the laboratory. Oh,
so he draws his revolver out of his belt and
he wanders in, and that's the last we see of
the night Watchman. Now, eventually Lane and Mary do start
to get worried because why has Cooper been missing so long?

(01:33:24):
And they go looking around and in the office somewhere
they find his pipe. He never goes anywhere without it.
And I was just thinking, after Godzilla versus Meca Godzilla,
this is our second movie two weeks in a row
that has a very important pipe discovered late in the film.
And while this is happening, Starlin is down at Xenthrop's
bedside begging him for help. She's like, you got to

(01:33:47):
get me more of the enzyme, but he's like, no, no,
you can't take any more. And then we get another
Wasp Woman a tack scene because the nurse comes into
the room just when Starlin is transformed into the Wasp
Woman yet again. She attacks her and the chocolate's her
up on the throat yet again. And then she goes
up to the laboratory and looks at bees. They're bees. Okay, Well,

(01:34:11):
finally we're at the climax. So Xenthrop starts to come
to his senses while Mary and Lane are in his
room trying to figure out what's going on, and he
explains Starlin is in danger. She cannot take any more
of the injections. Quote the enzymes, the enzymes, they're going
crazy for some reason. Mary runs up to talk to

(01:34:31):
Starlin and then Billy Lane is left down there with
Zenthrop by himself, and Zenthrop says, Miss Starlin is not
a human being any longer. The enzymes have changed her.
She will destroy the girl as an evil Wasp would
destroy her enemies then devour the remains. Oh, so she's
been eating everybody. We didn't realize that, Hooper.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
I guess, yeah, I guess that's where they went.

Speaker 3 (01:34:55):
Yeah. So this builds to a climax where Wasp Woman
attacks Mary, Zinthrop and Billy Lane have to run up
to the rescue. This is the scene where Billy kicks
through the glass door and I guess it's real. So
how is the Wasp Woman going to be defeated? It's
kind of anti climactic. They just Zinthrop grabs a jar
that's standing on the table that's clearly labeled acid. It's

(01:35:18):
carbolic acid. He throws it at the Wasp Woman. Smoke
starts coming off of her, and then she crashes through
a window and falls falls down to the street below,
still smoking, and then we fade to bees and that's
the end.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
Wow. I was wondering, you know, when I knew that
you'd watched the extended cut, I was like, maybe there's
a little extra at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:35:37):
Yeah, but he's gonna say something about what happened.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
Nope, but it's off in the case with some of
these fifties films where the ending comes and it's it.
They're done, They're like, go on, go home. There are a.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
Few different abrupt ways they end at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:35:52):
Often the monster dies and as soon as the monsters down,
we're fading to the credits. That's it. No commentary on
what happened. Other times we get a little bit of commentary,
like in Bride of the Monster with he Tampered in
God's Domain. I feel like the.

Speaker 2 (01:36:08):
Bride of Frankenstein, wasn't it to go back to an
earlier decade We're dead? Yeah? But was that the one
where we get kind of the joyous or am I
thinking about the original Frankenstein. There's one of the one
of the older Frankenstein films that it has like this
really weird upbeat ending like with laughter and Champagne, where
they're like, why why did we do this? What was
wrong with the ending on the scene beforehand.

Speaker 3 (01:36:29):
I don't remember which one you're talking about. That sounds
kind of familiar my memory. I remember at the ending
of Bride as we Belong Dead.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
But yeah, and that's that's that's a great place to end.
But sometimes so you know, there's this feeling like, well,
we need to send them, send everybody home happy, or
we need to send everybody just send him home because
we've got to get the next next film going here.

Speaker 3 (01:36:50):
It's a double feature. After all, he tampered in WASP domain. Okay,
so that's Wasp Woman there. I think it's a lot
of fun. I'm going to say, I actually, even though
I haven't seen it, I recommend the shorter one.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
I think, yeah, I have I'm the opposite, and that
I haven't seen the longer version. But I'm still going
to say, yeah, go with the shorter version. I don't
think you really gained anything by attacking on an extra
ten minutes, but I you know you're not going to
suffer too much by watching the other version. So whichever
one you can get hold of. Yeah, the Wasp Woman.

(01:37:25):
I thought it was a lot of fun, and yeah,
I'm eager to see what happens with the potential remas
in the future.

Speaker 3 (01:37:32):
Yes, certainly.

Speaker 2 (01:37:33):
Yeah, So we'd love to hear from everyone out there
if you have thoughts about The Wasp Woman, or or
if you've seen any of these other films about rejuvenation
that are connected to it. Right in, we would love
to hear from you. Just a reminder to everyone out
there that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

(01:37:56):
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns just
talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
You can follow the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
on a number of different social platforms, but if you
use Letterboxed the film website, you can find us there
as well as Weird House and that's just dedicated to
Weird House Cinema. We have a nice list there of

(01:38:17):
all the movies we've covered over the years, and sometimes
a peek ahead of what comes up next.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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