Janice Starlin, the aging owner of a troubled cosmetics manufacturing company, feels that her beauty is fading with age. She blames her aged appearance for her companies financial problems, and seeks out a solution.
Soon she is taken in by the promises of Eric Zinthrop, a self-styled scientist who claims to have developed an amazing age-reversing serum derived from wasp enzymes. Zinthrop's initial tests on animals appear to show positive results, so Starlin volunteers to be the first human to test the serum.
While the serum seems to work, her employees note that her demeanor is becoming increasingly unpleasant; not that she was particularly pleasant to start with. Despite this, she is happy with her youthful, vibrant appearance.
But the the eccentric pseudo-scientist, Zinthrop, get's hit by a car. Without regular injections of the serum Janice starts to undergo so unexpected side-effects, namely turning into a giant wasp!
The Wasp Woman has widely been interpreted as a social-commentary on the dangers and negativity of modern capitalist societies obsession with appearing youthful and stereotypically "beautiful". While Janice thinks her downfall will be aging, her real downfall is her lack of self esteem. Her willingness to subject herself to a potentially dangerous product in her desperate, but impossible, search for the fountain of youth, ends up turning her into a hideous killing machine. Kind of makes you think about all the carcinogens, chemicals, and dangerous UV rays that many people subject themselves to daily without a clue, or a care, in search of beauty.
Unfortunately, The Wasp Woman doesn't end up looking like she does on the cover of the movie, instead she is completely reversed with a wasp head and human body rather than the other way around. She ends up looking like a lower budget version of The Fly. Furthermore we don't really get to see her till fairly late in the movie. In other words, there is an awful lot of slow lead up before the "horror" begins.
Still, unimpressive costume and slow start aside, The Wasp Woman isn't completely terrible as far as cheesy, low budget B-movies go. The potential for a killer re-make is abundant here. As it turns out, a remake was made in 1995. Watch for a review of that in the future.
2.5 pipe-cleaner antennae out of 5
Rated PG for frightening scenes.
Watch The Wasp Woman trailer.
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