FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Best Part of ‘The Wasp Woman’ Are Behind the Mask
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you can’t blame a girl for trying…
The Wasp Woman (1959)
(Dist.: The Filmgroup; Dir.: Roger Corman)
While much has been made of Corman’s work for American-International Pictures, there was also for a time his side project, the Filmgroup. Wanting more control over his output, wanting to take chances that might not otherwise be taken by “the mother ship,” all of the same reasons that gave us the Jerry Garcia Band, Tom Tom Club, and the Fireman, led Roger and his brother Gene to form their company in 1959.
In many ways, the projects were not so much competing with but complementing the A-I output. Many productions under Corman’s individualized shingles, such as The Terror and A Bucket of Blood (under a separate entity, Alta Vista Productions) made the circuit through American-International’s distribution arm, often with A-I just claiming it as one of their own.
By the time the last Filmgroup production was released, Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, there was little reason from a business standpoint to keep the two entities apart, and Filmgroup folded into A-I based solely on a product management decision.
Speaking of doing things that are good for the business, let’s take a look at the first Filmgroup release…
The film focuses on Janet Starling (Susan Cabot), a model turned businesswoman who used her stunning good looks as the axis around which to advertise her line of cosmetics. Janet’s been having issues as of late; having turned 40 and aging out of her clients’ demographic, sales have been down, enough that the company’s solvency is threatened.
Despite the support of her wonderful staff, such as her secretary Mary (Barboura Morris), her advertising manager Bill (Anthony “Fred” Eisley), and her receptionist Maureen (Lynn Cartwright), who are all willing to stand by her to the bitter end, there’s not a lot of options available to Janet.
Until she gets a letter from a Doctor Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark) who promises to share the results of his research in exchange for further funding on the restorative powers of royal wasp jelly. (No, not all wasps are solitary, and some have queens and hives like bees; I had to look that up, too).
Desperate, Janet sets up Zinthrop’s lab in her building, on condition that she herself be a test subject, and the results are spectacular; her looks restored, she gets ready to oversee a major product launch, right up until some of the nasty side effects come to light.
What’s of particular interest here is how the tragedy unfolds in Leo Gordon’s screenplay. When confronted with a problem, in this case trying to keep a company afloat under difficult circumstances or continuing interrupted research, the characters all have sensible reasons that they talk themselves into calmly, with the best of intentions.
And everyone keeps their head about them as they look for guidance from people around them, considering their needs as well as their own wants; even Janet’s later choices as she pursues her goals under the influence of the wasp jelly are framed in such a way that the average viewer might sign on to do the same thing.
(This is especially striking when one looks at the film’s closest contemporary, The Leech Woman, where everyone is petty and a complete bastard, making that film an unwatchable parade of boors).
In fact, it’s one of the better scripts Corman had to work with, and was probably a great bargain when one considers that the entire budget of the film was only $50,000. The director also got a lot for his money with the cast; Cabot’s Janet is an incredibly sympathetic character who makes the viewer sorry for her as she engages in a cascade of bad mistakes (which made it a fitting final performance for Cabot, who left films after the production was done, pursuing her personal life which included a romance with King Hussein of Jordan), and Cartwright’s Maureen nearly steals the film as “the Duchess of Flatbush,” the switchboard person with sharp insight and tongue who draws you into her world away from the film as she gabs about life outside the office with co-workers.
Yes, the film accomplished quite a bit with a limited budget, blessed with a good script and a skilled cast. And then they blew it all on that damned wasp mask.
After a great build up with characters we could relate to, doing reasonable things that don’t work the way they should, we see the culmination of these steps leading to a reveal of one of the worst monster make-up jobs ever put to film.
One could argue that had what happened to Janet stayed off-screen and left unseen, we might have had a tighter film, something that the business end of the production felt their audience could not accept. (Indeed, it was consideration of the business side that led to an extended version of the film; in 1964, Jack Hill directed a prequel sequence where Zinthrop gets fired from his past position as an apiarist, leading into the rest of the film, in order that the movie be the right length for television syndication for fitting in commercial breaks.)
It’s easy to feel betrayed by a bad mask in a film where the script and acting are so much better than the shocking centerpiece that fails to deliver. It’s one of the more interesting B-films ever made (no pun intended), with a better foundation in terms of its story and acting than one expects a film like this should have. It’s easy to look at this as an unfulfilled promise that leaves you disappointed as you consider what you could have had instead.
But then, you have to remind yourself: It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.
NEXT TIME: When F. Scott Fitzgerald offered to show you a tragedy if you showed him a hero, he could have been talking about Hammer Films…
