It seems every time I turn around there's another remake or comic book movie coming out - or a remake of a comic book movie. Most people out there are sick of the lack of variation on the film market these days, and understandably so. But please, people, realize this is the way the market works. If it's not remakes and graphic novels, it's something else. Remember when teen comedies ruled the market in the 80s? Back in the 50s, sci-fi monsters were the guaranteed cash cow, whether high profile or otherwise. The more pretentious of movie goers would have been groaning every time they heard "Attack of" or "From Outerspace".
There must have been a lot of groans when The Wasp Woman was completed in 1959, especially since it followed closely on the heels of The Fly, from 1958. Some people just don't know how to enjoy a good, crappy movie. Looking back on The Wasp Woman, there is endless entertainment to be had. There's the rubber suit monster, the random science-y stuff everywhere, and the wonderfully outdated gender roles on display between characters. More than any of that, while watching The Wasp Woman I was struck by the fundamental difference between the standard cash-generating flicks made today and what Roger Corman and his team (including Jack Hill, who directed the prologue) were doing back then. Back in the day, you could make a movie with extremely low production value, and sell it based on the strength of the ideas behind it. Nowadays people throw money and flashy effects at a film to cover up the complete lack of solid ideas.
The Wasp Woman has more story to it than 90% of the films made today. Janice Starlin, an aging CEO of a cosmetics company, gets approached by a wasp-happy mad scientist. He shows Ms. Starlin his experimental serum, derived from the royal jelly of a queen wasp, that will reverse the aging process. Starlin, once the iconic face of her own company's advertising campaign, volunteers herself for human trials. Too bad she didn't wait to witness the feline test subject turn into a killer cat wasp (one of the sweetest scenes in the movie). And he gets hit by a car before she starts to manifest symptoms. Long story short, Starlin degenerates into a wasp-faced, wasp-handed killer freak. The story, and Susan Cabot's performance as Janice Starlin, actually stole focus away from the monster freak, if you can believe it. I was (somewhat) content to sit back and watch this complex character destroy her own empire through the folly of vanity. And I liked it when she got a hefty dose of Carbolic acid to the face at the end. I'm not saying that The Wasp Woman is necessarily a better movie than the low budget crap that gets spit out today. I just felt a lot less insulted by it.
