The Astounding She-Monster
aka Mysterious Invader
Director Ronnie Ashcroft Writer Frank Hall
Cast Robert Clarke (Dick Cutler), Kenne Duncan (Nat Burdell), Marilyn Harvey (Margaret Chaffee), Jeanne Tatum (Esther Malone)
First up is The Astounding She-Monster, a 1957 Red Scare film where the enemy is not an alien body-snatching pod-creature in disguise - they’re indecent Americans, petty crims and would-be kidnappers who swipe a socialite heiress for ransom and drive her out to a country cabin. The inhabitant is a decent American who has a dog and questions these no-goodniks about their selfish, un-American politics. They suddenly notice a comet land, and from the cloud of cosmic dust emerges a she-bitch from outer space clad in a metallic leotard and with the most amazing gravity-defying eyebrows in show business. The two aging thugs and their gin-soaked floozy attempt to run away, but the Astounding She-Bitch dispatches her attackers one by one with an an accompaning aquarium effect that, despite its inherent cheapness, is oddly effective.
...Which could be said for the rest of the film. Its rudimentary settings and threadbare plot are padded out with entertaining tough guy theatrics, and some relentlessly surreal gumby poetry from the narrator who sounds like he swallowed an Ed Wood Jr script. It’s perfectly described by one critic as “Ten Little Indians” written by Jean-Paul Sartre instead of Agatha Christie. “Astounding” is just one word for its end results - “preposterous” is another. Whichever you choose could be equally appropriate as we discover who the real monsters are. Is it you? YOU? It’s not me, so it must be you. Oh, and The Astounding She-Monster.
The Wasp Woman
aka Insect Woman, The Bee Girl
Director Roger Corman Writers Leo Gordon, Kinta Zertuche
Cast Susan Cabot (Janice Starlin), Fred Eisley (
Next up, an early Roger Corman shocker produced for his Filmgroup company in 1959. The Wasp Woman stars Susan Cabot as Janice Starlin, the public face of a cosmetics company whose sales have plummeted since she hit her mid 40s. Just when she’s at the point of jumping out of a window in desperation, in walks the brilliant scientist Zinthrop with a possible solution to reverse the process of aging - by extracting the royal jelly from wasp queens. Breaking into the lab, she self-medicates herself and literally overnight goes from moxy to foxy, announcing to her startled board she has discovered a rejuvenation miracle.
Naturally there are side effects; like a Black Widow she kills and eats her mates. And when Zinthrop goes missing and she goes into serious withdrawls, craving the syringe full of wasp essence, it’s not hard to see what Corman is hinting at - his literate script plays with the very real fear of aging, where the quest for eternal youth is like a drug, and a tangible taste of one’s own mortality leads the human psyche to trample over conventional moral boundaries. Oh, and she becomes a wasp. Naturally.
As always, Corman manages to squeeze small miracles out of his micro-budget, like a humming string section on the film’s score that simulates the sound of a wasp hive, and a smoking she-monster that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s a great pseudo-scientific concoction, equal parts baloney and bulldust, that amazingly works like a rejuvenation tonic. I swear this film will make you feel thirty years younger - which is kind of creepy if you’re in your early twenties. Ladies and gentlemen, the buzz is back with the 1959 Roger Corman classic The Wasp Woman.
Cat-Women Of The Moon
aka Rocket To The Moon
Director Arthur Hilton Writer Roy Hamilton
Cast Sonny Tufts (Laird Grainger), Victor Jory (Kip Reissner), Marie Windsor (Helen Salinger), William Phipps (
There’s been some outrageous stories about our mysterious satellite over the years - Atlantis accolytes believe there was a second moon which crashed on Earth and caused the destruction of the ancient civilization of Lemuria. More recently conspiracy nuts suggest the Moon is actually hollow and was constructed as an alien Death Star preparing to take over Planet Earth.
But none of these stories are as outrageous as the theories Cat-Women Of The Moon suggests: that there is a hidden sorority of body-stockinged manhaters who are controlling men’s thoughts. When a spaceship full of wise-cracking astronauts crashland on the dark side of the Moon - which looks suspiciously like the set Kubrick used to fake the moon landing in 1969 - they uncover an underground city of lunar space-sisters, all named after Greek letters (Alpha, Beta, Lambda, you get the idea). At first the place feels like a beatnik coffee house and the guys think they’re going to get lucky - until the female member of their crew Helen discovers the Cat-Women are into psychic sabotage and are manipulating her mind to help them take over the world.
And good luck to them. Frankly I wouldn’t let these bozos near a dodgem track let alone a spacecraft. And I know historical accuracy shouldn’t come into a rollicking science fiction yarn, but I didn’t hear ONE ex-Nazi rocket scientist issuing orders from Earth. To the film’s credit, it was made in 1953, a full six years before NASA head Werner Von Braun unveiled the Fourth Reich’s plan to take AmeriKKK to the moon by 1969. And did they? Now THAT’s firmly in the realms of science fiction.
Back to the movie, a camp classic in its own right thanks to lines like “We have no need for MEN!”. It was released originally in 3D and it shows in the notorious fight between man and giant moon spider, which is now brought to you in glorious 2D. One particularly dim character suggests the Moon is made of green cheese, and frankly, this movie makes his claim the most plausible theory yet. Strap in, ubermentsch, for a rocket trip to way-outsville with the 1953 Cat-Women Of The Moon.
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