The Wasp Woman (1959)

The Wasp Woman - Growing old is a pain and some people will do anything to fight it. That is the central premise of <em>The Wasp Woman</em>, in which the aging head of a cosmetics company takes an experimental drug made from wasp queen royal jelly enzymes. While she does look younger, there is a side effect – she becomes a wasp headed killer.

Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) is the founder and owner of a successful cosmetics company. For years, she was the face of her products. However, now that she is being subjected the ravages of middle age (which appears to be limited to wearing glasses, darker foundation and having her hair up – Cabot was only 32). She is approached by Dr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark), an entomologist who has a revolutionary formula using wasp queen enzymes to reverse the aging process. He demonstrates it to her and she is suitably impressed. She also insists on being the first human subject. After more testing (Zinthrop is not presented as a movie “mad scientist” but as a methodical – if unorthodox – researcher) the enzyme is ready. It begins to work, but the progress is too slow for Janice. She injects herself with a concentrated version of the drug, hoping to speed up the effects. It works – at first. Janice stops wearing glasses, lets her hair down and changes to a lighter foundation;i.e., she becomes younger. While she experiences the success of Zinthrop’s work, three of her confidants – Arthur (William Roerick), her lead scientist, Mary (Barboura Morris), her personal secretary and Bill (Fred Eisely), one of her ad men – believe Zinthrop is a con man and look for evidence to prove it.

While Janice is experimenting on herself, Zinthrop discovers a side effect – that after prolonged usage, the enzyme causes mutations and violent behavior. Before he can warn Janice, he is hit by a car and left in a coma. Janice  periodically turns into a monster, a killer with the head and hands of a wasp and a taste for blood. She kills some of her employees, before finally falling out a window to her death.

The Wasp Woman manages an impressive feat: being both ahead of its time thematically, while feeling padded and boring in execution. The movie is an early example of what would latter be know as body horror. Body horror is “a horror film genre in which the main feature is the graphically depicted destruction or degeneration of a human body or bodies” (Collins English Dictionary). The most obvious examples are the early works of David Cronenberg. In films like Shivers, Rabid, and Videodrome, the human body becomes the enemy, changing into new configurations that terrify (and, at times, elate) the victim. In all of these films, the catalyst for the change is an attempt to fix or address a problem. Organ replacement, disfigurement, a new mode of looking at the world – the roots of Cronenberg’s horror comes from a desire to make the body better.

The Wasp Women prefigures this theme by almost 20 years. Janice is obsessed with growing old. Even with the limited attempt to make her look older than the actresse’s 32 years (the character is supposed to be 40), it is clear that this is foremost on her mind. It is an interesting plot point that her concern is not what one would expect – the desire to attract a man. Instead, she is worried about her business. She is the face of Starlin Cosmetics and that face can’t be anything but young and vibrant. In steps Zinthrop with a revolutionary solution. He is pushing the bounds of science, but has a laudable goal in mind;  helping people fight aging. His process is methodical and it is only a combination of Janice’s impatience and bad luck that leads to things going awry. When they inevitably do, however, is when this film moves firmly into the horror aspects of “body horror.” Janice’s face, the thing she was most concerned about, becomes inhuman. Her impulses turn from fairly benevolent – she is a canny businesswoman, but also loyal to her employees, forgiving a plot among three of them to “save her from herself”  – to homicidal. She is indiscriminate in her attacks. Her first victim is Arthur. By the time he is killed, she knows he was snooping around behind her back. The story could have gone down the route of having Janice subconsciously seeking out the people who “betrayed” her. But this is not the case. Instead, she is pure instinct, killing whoever crosses her path. This is reinforces one body horror theme: she loses all humanity, even a subconscious resentment, to the insect within.

The problem with the movie is not the theme. It is also not the acting -  the cast is uniformly fine. Susan Cabot delivers a good performance as a woman who sees her youth – and fortunes – fading and tries to salvage both, while never descending into melodrama. The cinematography is also good – Corman directs with his usual clear and competent style. The make-up, while not great, gets the point across. While The Fly (1958) sets the gold standard for human/insect hybrids of the 50s, the less accomplished wasp mask still conveys organic chaos, the root of body horror.

Unfortunately, even at only 70 minutes, The Wasp Woman feels padded. The prologue – introducing Zinthrop – is unnecessary, as he explains his work to Janice later in the film. The subplot of Janice’s employees trying to prove Zinthrop is a fraud also seems like filler. We know that he is not, as we’ve seen his formula work. And there are no consequences for the people involved. Janice doesn’t seem particularly concerned that her personal secretary and two of her senior advisors are stealing sensitive material and doubting her ability to run her company and her life. That they prove to be right doesn’t detract from the lack of consequences in the story. While the idea that her killings are not personal – a complete loss of control of her body – it would have been a stronger plot if she started hunting down her “betrayers” while in wasp form. Finally, the final confrontation between Janice, Mary and Bill is over too quickly. The confrontation should have been more violent (within the bounds of what the 50s would find acceptable) and more traumatic for Mary and Bill. They have confront and kill the woman who is not just their employer, but also there friend. The Fly (both the original and remake) demonstrate how to stage this kind of confrontation, with the loved one of the person who is changing having to make the life shattering decision to put the mutant out of its misery.

Is The Wasp Woman a good movie? Overall, the padding and final confrontation take what could have been a more emotional – and more thematically rich -- story and make it merely watchable. For Corman completists or for those who want to see a film that anticipates the more mature body horror themes of Cronenberg and those who followed him, then it is worth watching. Others, including 50s science fiction enthusiasts, will probably find it too slow  and slight to be entertaining.

Rating: 2.5/5