The Wasp Woman

Actors: Susan Cabot, Fred Eisley, Barboura Morris, William Roerick, Michael Mark, Frank Gerstle

Rating: 2 out of 10 The next in my exploration of Bad Cinema and not breathtakingly bad as some of its predecessors. A scientist fired from his job at a honey farm for experimenting with wasps. We next see him in NYC attached to the owner of a large cosmetics company whose firm's sales o drop after it becomes apparent to her customers that she is aging. The scientist uses enzymes from the royal jelly of the queen wasp that can reverse the aging process. The boss decides to use the jelly ahead of schedule and sheds 20 years in a single weekend. Of course she also occasionally turns into a murderous, wasp-like creature with the attendant hijinks. This as a Roger Corman delivery so there was lots of dialogue and the campy bad special effects he is justifiably famous for. The special effects consisted of a cheap Halloween mask but the acting was amazingly superior to the material.

MVP: Susan Cabot as Janice Starlin the wasp woman herself

Horrors of Spider Island

Actors: Alexander D'Arcy, Rainer Brandt, Walter Faber, Helga Franck, Harald Maresch, Helga Neuner, Dorothee Parker, Gerry Sammer,  Eva Schauland, Helma Vandenberg, Barbara Valentin, Elfie Wagner

 Rating: 1 out of 10, The next in my exploration of Bad Cinema and my first ever exposure to what passed as West German soft core porn in 1960. There was no nudity, just a lot of nubile young ladies running around a supposedly tropical island pursued by a “spider-man”. A troop of dancing girls is assembled in New York for a trip to Singapore only to crash in the Pacific and end up on the aforementioned island. The lone male is attacked by a giant spider (because you know uranium was around) and turns into a peeping tom half spider. Most of the movie has the gals either running around the island or dancing. Easy to see how the West Germans survived the cold war with this type response to danger.

MVP: Helga Franck as Georgia, the lone brain cell amongst the troop

The Atomic Brain

Actors: Marjorie Eaton, Frank Gerstle, Frank Fowler, Erika Peters, Judy Bamber,  Lisa Lang Rating: 1 out of 10, The next in my exploration of Bad Cinema and a return to truly terrible writing, acting and staging. An unintentional comedy content through the roof as a mad scientist working for an aging lady is charged with transferring her brain into the bodies of one of three foreign maids imported for that purpose. There’s also wolf/dogman haunting the presence as well as a zombie like nubile failure of earlier experiments. Cats brains into humans, vice versa and the insanity just keeps coming. The failed attempt as a British accent by one of the gals had me laughing out loud. Also released titled as Monstrosity which is a much more apt description of this gloriously bad film.

MVP: Erika Peters as Nina the lone survivor

The Amazing Transparent Man

Actors: Marguerite Chapman, Douglas Kennedy, James Griffith, Ivan Triesault, Boyd 'Red' Morgan

Rating: 3 out of 10, The next in my exploration of Bad Cinema made in that up and coming rival to Hollywood – Dallas, Texas. This one actually wasn’t over the top terrible which is saying something considering the company it keeps in the collection I found it in. The big difference here are the actors, all of which were pretty good despite the ludicrous plot and chintzy sets/effects. A stalwart anti-war and anti-nuclear missive this involves an escaped convict used by an evil ex-Army major as the test subject for an invisibility ray. What could go wrong? Predictably everything.

MVP: Douglas Kennedy as Joey Faust, the semi-invisible man

She Gods of Shark Reef

Actors: Bill Cord, Don Durant, Lisa Montell, Jeanne Gerson, Carol Lindsay

Rating: 2 out of 10, The next in my exploration of Bad Cinema. I didn’t realize until this was over that B-Master guru Roger Corman directed. I’m still trying to figure out why thus was included in a sci fi movie collection. Two well-built young men are marooned on a late 1950’s Polynesian island inhabited by only women pearl divers and hungry sharks. You would think – SCORE (well except for the sharks), but they spend the mercifully short movie prancing around in Hawaiian loin clothes trying to escape. There is no understanding the 1950s. Truly bad and very un-Corman like in that there’s more beefcake for the ladies than vice versa.

MVP: Lisa Montell as Mahia, a Polish actress as the Polynesian love interest

Moon of the Wolf.

Actors: David Janssen, Barbara Rush, Geoffrey Lewis, Bradford Dillman,

Rating: 2 out of 10, The next in my exploration of Bad Cinema. This one features the ex-fugitive as the town sheriff of a sleepy Louisiana bayou town suddenly attacked by a werewolf. After they eventually figure out that’s what a demented old Cajon had been trying to warn them about in increasingly frustrating fashion. The sheriff has to track down the wolf even though he’s being distracted by the grown up version of his junior high crush. She of course has to be connected to the wolf. This was obviously a made for TV movie and the best that can be said is its not beyond horrible.

MVP: Janssen still had presence as Sherriff Whitaker

Queen of the Amazons

Actors: Patricia Morison, Robert Lowery, Bruce Edwards, John Miljan, Keith Richards, Wilson Benge, J. Edward Bromberg, Amira Moustafa

Rating: 1 out of 10, The next in my exploration of just how bad B-movies can sink to. A lady is determined to find her fiancé who went on a safari only to disappear. She assembles a group of guys to track him through India but a soon to be assassinated informant sends them on to Africa. While on the track of her missing beau she falls for the woman hating safari guide. That turns out to be a good thing because the long missing fiancé is found in the arms of the Amazon queen, fully coiffed and presiding over a barnyard in the jungle. I guess animal attacks were high theater in the late 1940s because there were some well-fed lions and tigers, no bears though. Bad cinema – but laugh out loud unintentional comedy

MVP: Morrison as the very focused fiancé