Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

'The Wasp Woman' is another Roger Corman's talky monster movie on low budget and with lousy special effects and lots of (pseudo)scientific talk, but with some good ideas and meaning. The film stars Susan Cabot (in her last film role) as Janice Starlin, a founder and a head of cosmetics company, in search of eternal youth. When a mad scientist Dr. Zinthrop (Michael Mark) contacts with Starlin to introduce her his new scientific breakthrough - a miracle cure against aging. The research reaches to the point where Starlin herself become human guinea pig and tries the new medicine. Results are amazing - Janice Starling starts to look younger. But search for eternal youth always end up with devilish results with Janice turning into bloodsucking wasp (from human guinea pig).The film, although quite fun for all the obvious reasons, is pretty terrible besides acting. The writing is tedious and first part of the film is quite boring actually. Susan Cabot seems too classy and too good of an actress to run around in ludicrous wasp costume that bears no similarities with wasps. Not even with the one portrayed on the poster.

Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) is the owner of a cosmetics company whose prices are falling. Executive Bill Lane (Fred Eisley) tells her this is because of her aging looks...because that's how you get a bonus at Christmas, right? Anyhow, at the same time this is going on a scientist named Dr. Eric Zinthrop has been working on a serum which reverses the aging process. Might this be the ideal solution? Janice helps fund Zinthrop's efforts to perfect his work, then uses herself as a human test subject. It works, and she easily sheds 20 years. Unfortunately it has a side effect. It turns her into a woman with a wasp's head...exactly twice. Then she dies after falling out a window. Ironically The Wasp Woman has little or no wasp woman it. This might be excused if the characters or story were interesting, but most of the movie is just executives talking about things that we don't really care about. I don't really recommend it because it's pretty boring and doesn't even get the benefit of enjoyably bad.

Long before Olivia de Havilland warned us that a swarm of killer bees were coming our way, and a few years after the public at large fled from "The Deadly Mantis", the staff of a beauty supply company must deal with "The Wasp Woman", unknowingly their big boss, who has been surprising them recently with her sudden youth-creating beauty. Actress Susan Cabot is made to look "old" (sans make-up and with large framed glasses) as the creator of a line of beauty products which no longer work for her. She decides to be the human experiment of a scientist obsessed with wasp jelly which makes an old lab mouse young and turns an old cat back into a kitten. Unfortuanately, thanks to the sudden attack of the no longer friendly kitty, the scientist learns that his wasp jelly has serious side effects, turning the creature who takes it into a wasp-like creature, attacking the nearest victim and literally eating them from inside out. But before he can warn Cabot, he is hit by a car, and pretty soon, she is having flashes of the demon inside her, all the while desperate to take more youth-creating jelly in order to remain youthful.A combination of genuine horror and camp, this is also a very moralistic tale of how the obsession with youth can literally destroy one's soul. Cabot's loveliness in real life isn't hidden by the dowdy way she is clothed and made up in the open scenes (it's funny how lack of make-up and ugly glasses are always used in movies and on T.V. to indicate plainness), and she is publicly humiliated in a meeting with fellow executives and her secretary of how by remaining cover girl for her own product, she has caused the sales of the product to go down. It doesn't help that she's surrounded by younger secretaries and clerks who are quite voluptuous and often comment behind her back (which she somehow manages to overhear) on her looks.While it is insinuated by the bee keepers in the very first scene that scientist Michael Mark is quite mad, he never really shows serious signs of that, although his obsession with angry wasps over the usually man friendly bees is quite odd. His performance is basically very subtle, especially in the scenes following his accident. Other good performances come from William Roerick as one of Cabot's executives, Anthony Eisley as another employee and Barboura Morris as Cabot's devoted secretary. The film really doesn't explode into horror until the final quarter, but it is still interesting to see how it develops.

Kooky Dr. Zinthrop (Michael Mark) has created a formula that will reverse the effects of aging using wasp enzymes. Middle-aged cosmetics company owner Janice Starling (Susan Cabot) is anxious to try it and insists on being Zinthrop's first human test subject. Well, it works fine and Janice looks younger but then there's that pesky side effect of turning her into a blood-sucking wasp woman! One of the better low-budget horror flicks Roger Corman made during the era before he struck pay dirt with his Poe movies at AIP. Yes, it's cheesy and campy. Yes, the wasp woman costume is a joke. But it's also a very fun movie. Susan Cabot, in her final and most memorable film role, is excellent. Michael Mark plays the "not quite mad" scientist very well. Anthony (Fred) Eisley and pretty Barboura Morris make rather unlikable protagonists. Particularly Eisley. There are also a couple of cuties playing secretaries who have a funny scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.