HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WASP WOMAN

Actress Susan Cabot spent her career in the 1950s playing supporting roles in Westerns, adventures and costume dramas, often as a non-white Native American or other "exotic" character. Increasingly disappointed, she ended her contract with Universal-International and returned to her former home in New York to play on the stage.

The lure of Hollywood brought her back in the mid-50s and she was cast in various films such as SORORITY GIRLS (aka THE BAD ONE), THE VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT, WAR OF THE SATELLITES, and MACHINE GUN KELLY. She finally landed her first lead role in--of all pictures--Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN in 1959. It would prove to be her last film, and after that, she retired from Hollywood and--in Norma Desmond style--moved to a secluded life in Encino, California in the San Fernando Valley.

Even though it was moderately entertaining and has an interesting premise, THE WASP WOMAN suffers from the taint of many other 50s horror/sci-fi cheapies and the wasp woman's makeup, mask and costume are over the top and downright laughable for these days. Back then, I don't think audiences cared much about any of it so long as they could spend a Friday or Saturday night at the drive-in, cozying up to their date when a scary scene came along. It was paired with BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, which made it look like CITIZEN KANE compared to that abominable waste of celluloid.

The actor who plays wasp-keeper Eric Zinthrop may look familiar to monster fans; he was Michael Mark, a character actor who was in a number of horror and sci-fi movies, including many for Universal, a bit part in CASABLANCA, and most notably, as "Little Maria's" father, Ludwig, in FRANKENSTEIN.

Despite the entomological blunder of the queen wasp making royal jelly (only honey bee queens do that), when Corman was made aware of it, in true Corman fashion he said to go with it anyway!

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VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT

"Fabulous! Spectacular! Terrifying!"

- Poster art of Viking Women and The Sea Serpent

Movies such as this epitomize the economy with which Roger Corman made his pictures. The thankfully short, 66-minute film was estimated to have had the minuscule budget of $65,000. And yes, it shows.

With the unimaginably long official title of THE SAGA OF THE VIKING WOMEN AND THEIR VOYAGE TO THE WATERS OF THE GREAT SEA SERPENT, it is generally shortened for an obvious reason. Mercifully, the titular sea serpent--who looks like it could be a cousin of Reptilicus--is only briefly seen on screen and deftly photographed as to not have the viewer dwell on the cheap-looking monster.

The plot is simple: a band of viking women set off to rescue their men who have disappeared land on an island where they encounter the evil Grimaults lead by Stark (Devon) and a hungry sea serpent before they can accomplish their task.

One thing Corman could do was hire a cast of fairly capable actors that would try their best to take the rough edges off of the usual insipid scripts and vapid stories. In this case it was the viking women (Abby Dalton, June Kenney, Betsy Jones-Moreland, Lynette Bernay, Sally Todd and Susan Cabot), leading man Bradford "Brad" Jackson and villain Richard Devon. B-movie players Jonathan "Little Shoppe of Horrors" Haze and Gary "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein" Conway also had bit parts.

Jackson had starred in IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE in 1963 and Devon in two other Corman quickies, playing Satan in THE UNDEAD (1957) and WAR OF THE SATELLITES (1958), as well as being in high demand as a TV character actor. Sally Todd lent her physical talents to numerous girlie magazines and was Playboy's Playmate of the Month for February 1957. She starred in THE UNEARTHLY (1957) and FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1958), in which makeup man Harry Thomas wanted her to play the monster, but the producers didn't think she was big enough to pull it off. Todd was often in the news, especially when she was dating Hollywood men such as Troy Donahue, Jack Webb, John Ashley and Peter Lawford. Susan Cabot went on to star as the titular character in THE WASP WOMAN in 1959. The story of a woman obsessed with an age-reversing drug, it has a bizarre correlation to events in her personal life (more on that in a later post).

While location shooting was done at several locations around town: Bronson Canyon (Griffith Park, Los Angeles), Iverson Ranch (Chatsworth, California), Cabrillo Beach (San Pedro, California), Malibu, California and Santa Monica, California, the sea-faring sequences were filmed on a sound stage at Ziv Studios in Santa Monica using a prop boat and rear projection. Stage hands added to the rough water effect by throwing water on the actors. In one scene where the boat was actually used on the ocean, the man towing it out to sea fell asleep (!) and all eleven of the viking women had to be rescued by a pair of surfers. To make matters worse, only Sally Todd and Abby Dalton knew how to swim! It was just one more example of Corman's notorious recklessness with putting his actors in the face of danger. There were numerous injuries and close calls, and a near-fatality occurred when a cameraman was nearly electrocuted while filming a water scene at Ziv Studios.

THE VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT had just a couple more things going for it besides the babes: the music by B-movie veteran Albert Glasser and the poster art was by one of the best -- Reynold Brown.

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Screen grabs:

Lynette Bernay, June Kenney, Abby Dalton, Susan Todd.

Susan Cabot.

Betsy Jones-Moreland

The terrifying titular serpent:

The article below from the Canadian film magazine, TAKE ONE #9 (1968) is an interview with actor Jay Sayer who plays Senya, the king's son in the film. Sayer provides a lengthy synopsis of the story and some behind the scenes insight. The interview was first published a year before in 20 CENTS MAGAZINE, October 1967, published by The Twenty Cents Publishing Company, London, Ontario.