Amazon.com Customer Reviews
 Rated 5 out of 5!
Oh, Roger Corman, where is thy sting? Oh, here it is
I've got to hand it to Roger Corman for this one; Wasp Woman is a pretty darn good movie (albeit with vintage Corman-esque not so special effects). The film starts off with a whimper, giving us a boring look at bee farming before introducing us to Dr. Zinthrop, who is promptly fired for wasting his time experimenting with wasps. Then we are taken to the boardroom of Janice Starlin Enterprises, a cosmetics company facing lean times because the face that has always sold the product, that of Janice herself, is not as young as it used to be. Enter Dr. Zinthrop and his fantastic story of restoring youth with a wonder-working extract taken from queen wasps. After he turns two old rabbits into young bunnies before her eyes, Janice believes him and insists that she will be his first human test subject. The rest of the company bigshots are increasingly concerned by the secrecy around Zinthrop's work, but even they cannot deny the new youthful face of their leader (accomplished mainly by taking away her old maid glasses and having her smile more often). Unfortunately, Janice secretly injected herself with the experimental, much more concentrated extract in order to hasten the process, and poor Zinthrop gets run over by a car before he can warn her of its rather disturbing side effects. Thus, we are left with several Starling associates trying to find out what is really going on. They think Janice is in danger, but in fact they are the ones in danger. Janice's headaches are indicative of a much more significant problem; from time to time, she turns into a giant wasp who is less than civil to her underlings. The whole wasp woman getup is pretty ridiculous-looking, but one can look past such silly special effects and enjoy the movie for the fun, B-movie classic it is. The acting is unusually good for a Corman movie, and Susan Cabot particularly shines as Janice Starling. I've seen a number of Roger Corman movies, and this 1960 offering is by far the best of the bunch as far as I am concerned.  Rated 4 out of 5
The Leech Woman
Dear Viewer from Manhattan. "The Leech Woman" with Colleen Gray (also Grant Williams and Gloria Talbot) was the film you saw. In it she plays a woman with a wish to grow younger and finds the answer in the necks of young men! She uses a ring with a sharp point to puncture (I think) the spinal cord and drink the fluid. In "The Wasp Woman" Susan Cabot finds the answer to youth by injecting wasp enzymes into her blood stream thus making her beautiful by day and not so beautiful by night! Yikes! Some film stores say "The Wasp Woman" was released in 1960 but actually was released in 1959.I was too young to see "The Leech Woman" in 1959/'60 at the theater but I saw it on tv in the late 60s or early 70s, I think it was, and I loved it! I saw "The Wasp Woman," in the late '60s, on TV as well.
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