Mesa of Lost Women

One of the best of the so-bad-it's-beautiful movies. MESA OF LOST WOMEN tells the story of a mad scientist (Jackie Coogan with a wart the size of a Roosevelt dime!) who creates beautiful dancing girls out of spiders. (most likely to help out the struggling Rockette industry!) I absolutely loved the scene with the mad doc's victim, a scientist driven insane by a spider-woman encounter. He goes around bars, quoting something close to the Bible, in a silly Elmer Fudd voice.

What I really loved about this movie was Tandra Quinn, as Tarantella, the mad doc's best spider to mucha-cha creation. She's something like a brunette Jayne Mansfield with a little bit of Vampirella thrown in. Ms. Quinn, you made film history with your really strange spider dance.

I guess this one must be an acquired taste (judging by the other reviews). Of COURSE it's awful - that's what makes this 1953 film so good! Tandra Quinn's eerie and erotic 'Tarantula Dance' in the cantina scene alone is worth the price of admission. The voice-over narration is also great, not to mention such trenchant dialogue as "And they threw her down, and her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and he trod her underfoot"! If you enjoy the cinematic misfires of Edward D. Wood ('Plan 9 From Outer Space', etc.), you'll love this one! (trivia tidbit: Ed Wood's 'Jail Bait' uses the same soundtrack/score)

This mess is one of the worst science fiction movies of the 1950's. It makes Ed Wood's films look good. It does have its moments though.

The acting is terrible and too daft to laugh at. The guitar/piano music score, which hardly stops throughout the movie, is utter rubbish and drove me mad. The only good points about The Mesa of Lost Women are the giant spider scenes. Even the spider looks terrible.

This is grade Z rubbish. A real golden turkey.

Rating: 1 and a half stars out of 5.

I didn't recall seeing this as a kid, but finally got around to watching it the other night after several tries (falling asleep in front of the TV each time). Having endured this singularly bad film, there's not much to add to what's been written already. This is one of the most inane pieces of grade Z film making ever achieved! It truly is 'so bad it's good'. Hilarious. The worst acting, the worst giant spiders, an incredibly bad 'spider dance' by Tarantella (pronounced 'Tarantula'), and the riotous site of Harmon Stevens (as Dr. Masterson) grinning like an idiot at everyone. I could not watch him without busting out laughing. And, as others note, one of the most grating soundtracks imaginable. A Mexican guitar jangling a couple of chords interspersed with jarring, discordant piano plinking (loudly, too) made the whole thing nearly unbearable. What a mess.

It is hard to imagine a worse movie but I know of one, a Japanese superhero movie. Pretty poor company. Two people are kidnapped and brought to a mad scientist who is experimenting on women with arachnid venom. It is hard to list all the faults of this pointless cheap flick so I'll mention just a handful. The story is unbelievable and unreal as are all the characters. The acting is poor and the script is worse than Japanese dubbing. Hard to imagine, isn't it? There is no plot and it ends unexpectedly followed by a pointless anticlimactic scene. I could go on and on berating this film, but suffice it to say that it has no redeeming qualities at all. If this movie comes on, change the channel, quick!