Janice Starlin is the aging cover girl and president of a cosmetics company who illustrates the extent some gals will go for vanity. Susan Cabot plays Starlin who enlists the aid of a mad scientist who promises to make a miracle age-reversing salve out of insect squeezings. The actress wears glasses and bad makeup to make herself appear shabby, and as she begins taking the quack’s experimental injections, off come the glasses and the supporting cast can’t believe her transformation. Such monkeying with nature must not go unpunished, and doesn’t. Yet not before Starlin transmutates into a bug-eyed beast and starts gnawing on the hired help.
B-legend Roger Corman made Wasp Woman in his typically speedy and miserly fashion — less than two weeks and $50,000.
Notables: No breasts. Six corpses. Gratuitous montage sequences. Cat attack. Bitch slapping. Bee husbandry. Hit-and-run accident. Pipe smoking.
Quotables: Just in case the audience doesn’t know, this helpful fella warns, "Wasps?! Better be careful, they can sting a man to death!" Sexist mover hits on a member of the secretarial pool, "Hi, pretty puss." There’s apparent need for panic, "The enzymes! The enzymes have gone CRAZY!!!"
Time codes: Guinea pig miraculously turned into rat (18:30). First injection of bug juice (35:00). Attack of Wasp Woman (52:08).