"The Wasp Woman", a routine low-budget horror outing by Roger Corman, finds aging makeup mogul Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) experimenting with wasp royal-jelly as a rejuvenating agent. Unfortunately, the potion does not turn her into a giant wasp with a woman's head hovering over a pile of skulls (as promised by the poster), but rather a woman with a vaguely insectoid mask wearing claw-like oven mitts. Various secondary characters are dispatched before the mad boffin who provided her with the elixir, realizing the evil that he has unleashed, throws acid into her face causing the wasp woman to fall to her death (a fate she would have avoided if she had the wasp-wings promised by the poster). The film includes an unconvincing attack by a psychotic cat and lots of stock footage of bees while wasps are being discussed, but very little of the 'lust' promised in the poster. Standard Corman shtick - not great by any stretch of the imagination, but short and entertaining enough to watch 60 years later (and to make some quick cash for the auteur and his crew at the time of production).
Review of The Wasp Woman
