The wasp woman

Year of release : 1959

 

Run time : 1h13min

 

Genre : Sci Fi / Horror

 

 

A scientist working at a bee farm, is being fired as instead of doing what the company wants, he tries to discover the youth elixir.

 

Janice Starlin has been the face of her company's cosmetics line for 15 years,and sales have dropped for a few months, her employees blaming her ,as she's aged but she still promotes anti aging products.

 

The scientist who was fired comes to see her, demonstrating to her he can turn a mature animal into a baby,by using wasp ' royal jelly enzyme'. Desperate to stay young, Janice agrees to be the test subject in human trials.

 

Her employees are worried about her, and don't trust the scientist, so they start snooping around.

 

Seeing the youth serum is working very slow, Janice starts taking more of it, without the scientist's knowledge. She starts having head aches, and she turns into a wasp devouring the people in her path, just like the queen wasp does (the beginning of the movie foreshadows the events, as they talk about  how the queen wasp,just like the preying mantis, devours the male after mating,as nourishment for the pregnancy ).

 

The acting was fine.

 

The visual effects were Ok,as they tried not to show much,and when she transformed,she just wore a wasp suit. I would have preferred seeing her face change gradually,and remain like that,but I definitely didn't want to see her looking like a wasp.

The actress didn't look old to me, I kept on wondering,until they revealed her age, what old meant to them in the '50's,30 ? SPOILER the character was about 40 years old, but the actress was 32.

 

I hated the soundtrack, in scenes where it was supposed to be suspenseful, it sounded like created for a comedy.

 

You can watch the full movie here, for free : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpPAN6frZmU&ab_channel=CultCinemaClassics

 

Rating : Worth a watch !