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2005-06-01
2005-04-05
2004-03-22With great actors as Jackie Coogan (you can tell he must be the bad guy with a huge mole on his face), Allan Nixon, Tandra Quinn and Delores Fuller, You know it can not go wrong. Yeah, sure.
The dialog gets a little boring and some of the screen play (by Herbert Tevos) is a little disoriented. I suspect that much was cut out for brevity; so we must make great leaps and assume we just missed something.
There is a great dance scene by Tarantella (Tandra Quinn) that would subdue Captain Kirk had he been there.
Do not worry though we have wonderful background music by Hoyt Curtin that consists of an off key flamingo guitar and a spinet that won't spin; I think they are trying to sound Spanish; you get to hear it during the beginning credits; You get to hear it during the narration (by Lyle Talbot); you get to hear it every time a suspenseful scene appears; You get to hear it every time one does not; you still hear it when the DVD is safely packed away.
Back and Forth, Back and Forth 2003-05-12
Oh, this is so bad. The second half of the movie should have just been left on the cutting room floor. The first half is interesting and looks like it will build up to a pretty good story. A mad scientist experiments on humans and insects. Since the female is superior in the insect world, his women are super strong babes. The men in his experiments are evil little dwarfs. So by injecting human female growth enzymes into spiders, we have giant tarantulas.
No doubt you've heard of the seductive and ultra sexy dance performed in the bar by Tandra Quinn . It is not over-exaggerated. For it's time it's probably the hottest bit of celluloid from that era. Clearly it is the high point of the movie.
Well, that's about it. A plane and its party are hi-jacked and are forced to land on the mesa top of the evil scientist's lab. From here on out it's a waste of time. The director was not trying to build suspense, he was trying to eat up film and time so this would be a movie and not a half hour Twilight Zone episode. The back and forth begins across the set begins!
The `nurse' decides to explore in the dark by himself and is killed by a spider and screams.
After much ballyhoo and useless dialog, everyone decides to investigate. They walk across the set to the dead nurse. Then they head back.
The girl lost her hair band, bracelet, or whatever the heck it was, and the `Man Friday' is sent to look for it. Of course he is working for the mad scientist and gets killed by him when he descends into the lab.
Now there is more walking around the set (Meanwhile we have a romance building up between the girl and the pilot). The girl's fiancée get's killed by a spider's stomach, and finally they make it down to the lab. OK let's see, the super strong female (who is immune to bullets by the way) is held easily by an ordinary girl. They escape and wrap up the film conveniently with an explosion (what else)? The film ends with a super girl on the side of the cliff, watching and waiting.
The worst part of the movie by far is the music (yes, it's worse than the not-so-special effects). It's this piano/guitar thing that just plays over and over and over and over.
Watch with caution, but don't expect much. When you say you'd rather watch Cat Women on the Moon instead of this, that's really saying something.
Mesa Of Uncle Fester 
2003-05-11
Mesa Of Lost Women is one of my favorite hunks of cheese! Jackie Coogan (yep, uncle Fester) is a mad scientist, working with petuitary gland transplants. He's successfully transplanted tarantula glands into human women (it doesn't work on men, only turns them into evil dwarves), turning them into mute amazons with extremely tacky wigs. Another scientist visits Dr. Fester and sees the horrible experiments. He refuses to help, so the head spider-woman "Taran-Tella" (Tandra Quinn) injects him with a serum that seems to make him bonkers. The good doctor ends up in the nuthouse, only to escape out a window. Anyway, he seeks revenge on Taran-Tella and shoots her (after she is allowed to dance in a saloon, causing hearts to race). The vengeful, nutty doctor then forces a pilot (Allan Nixon) to take him back to the mesa. Lots of spider-women and dwarves roam around aimlessly. A giant, stuffed tarantula flops onto a hapless victim or two, and fun is had by all. The ending is no surprise, but I'll not spoil it here. The soundtrack is hideous!! A flamenco guitar twangs along, accompanied by piano work best described as being played by a hammer-handed baboon on acid! Highly recommended...
My Review Of Mesa Of Lost Women 
2007-09-03
Mesa of Lost Women is about a mad scientist who creates a race of beautiful but lethal master-women who kills men by kissing them. some of the film's best moments are the sultry dance sequence by one the killer women and the giant spider puppet, that was a real laugh riot. All in all, this film is one of the great B-movies of the early 1950's.
Fear The Spider-Women!! 2006-06-24
Jackie Coogan stars as Dr. Arana who is a crazed scientest who is breeding giant arachnids and dwarves in his hidden laboratory located in the Zapra Mesa in Mexico. His diabolical scheme is to form an army of superwomen by taking them and genetically altering them with spider venom making them into Spider-Women. Also a group of people on a plane crash land (not on an island with Polar Bears and mysteries Hatches) in the Zapra Mesa. Soon they try to stay alive as things lurk in the dark jungle trying to get to them and they try to survive the on coming dangers ahead. Like a Giant Spider which I think was wearing a diaper I dont remember. Tandra Quinn as Tarantella boosted this up to a two star rating with her sexy dance. Damnit that damn guitar music! It never went away and it was in every scene. The Dwarves were funny when they rean away. I was expecting one of them to have a pick axe. Campy fun all around. Also starring a cool Samuel Wu as well Wu and get this the only movie he did was, well...this.
A true classic! 2006-05-10
Let me begin by stating the complaints about the soundtrack are so far off base, they're practically in the stands with the overweight Yankees fans gorging on hot dogs. The atmosphere of surreality is practically *created* by the flamenco music, Why, MOLW wouldn't be nearly as askew, or as fun to watch, without it. This is, in fact, the 50's version of a David Lynch film. And what's not to love, huh? We've got giant tarantulas, beautiful women (especially the morena with the restaurant dance...ouch!), ~MIDGETS~, a mad scientist, a bible-quoting madman with a gun. See the ensemble of the redneck riviera without the plane fare or the crocodiles! Bad taste is indeed timeless. Lester Bangs, call your office.
Tarantula Women! 2006-01-30
There is one thing about this movie that stands out in my mind. The music is awful; really awful. The music is so awful that even if the movie content had been five stars, the music would have knocked it back to two stars. The combination of repetitive, annoying guitar and a spinet or piano that appear to be out of tune, poorly played, or just bad music, is terrible on the ears. By the time the movie reaches its final seconds you are thankful for the end.
The whole movie is a flashback of a guy brought out of the desert who wants to go burn something. This fellow's ravings are so intense that you think this movie has promise. Now we go to a flashback.
We meet Dr. Leland Masterson (Harmon Stevens) who willingly goes to Zarpa Mesa to see Dr. Aranya's efforts. Dr. Aranya is played by Jackie Coogan, a long-time veteran of television and movies who many may remember best as the original Uncle Fester on "The Addam's Family." Dr. Masterson sees how horrible Dr. Aranya's experiments are, and he refuses to help, and then goes bonkers, turning into some sort of weird ultra-goodie for much of the rest of the movie. Dr. Masterson shoots a woman who we know is one of the super spider women, and then climbs on board a plane to head somewhere. The engine conks and the passengers land by happy coincidence (can you see this one coming?) on Zarpa Mesa.
Evening falls and passengers are picked off one-by-one with weird puncture marks. Finally, the few remaining passengers are taken to Dr. Aranya's laboratory, where a big fight ensues, there are flames and an explosion and we are returned to the present. Wow. Such excitement. Such danger. What an awesome movie.
This movie is so bad that it is bad. There is minimal charm to the movie. I like Jackie Coogan, but his role could have been played by anyone. The music was awful. The best part of the whole movie was the plane crash, which I thought was reasonably realistic. With movies like these I try to either be at least a little frightened, or amused. I was neither with this movie. I wish there was some way to put this movie into perspective so that you have an idea of whether you should buy it. Since I cannot, I will say that if you like a movie that is about tarantula women, with minimal appearances of any real tarantulas, and you can handle the awful music, then by golly, this could be just the movie for you. However, I will note that this movie is worse than anything comparable by Ed Wood, so you can go from there.
Giant Tarantula Puppets And Unceasing Flamenco Guitar 2005-12-07
This movie is relentless. I am a huge fan of grade-Z cinema, but this is sub-Ed Wood in quality (in fact many of the people involved in bringing this travesty to life were friends and associates of Wood), and commits the unforgivable bad movie sin of being boring.
As you might expect, the plot is a bit difficult to follow in places, but essentially deals with Jackie Coogan as the evil Dr. Arana (also spelled Aranya in some versions), which, cleverly, is Spanish for "spider." Given that piece of foreshadowing it's pretty much inevitable that he will create huge, chemically mutated leaping spiders, dancing spider women, as well as a bunch of dwarf men in accordance with his understanding of the arachnid world. There are subplots about a plane crash, murder, and romance, but honestly, the whole thing is so tepid that I just ended up screaming "End!" at the television for the last twenty minutes of the film or so. The dancing scenes are particularly un-erotic, despite the reaction shots of the men in the audience, while the portrayal of "Pepe," the standard-issue cartoonishly superstitious Mexican national definitely dates this turkey.
I was feeling generous and gave this film two stars on the basis of the hilarious spider puppets and the endless droning flamenco guitar soundtrack, which is ever present and wildly inappropriate. Don't get me wrong, the soundtrack is awful, it just gets a bonus star for the comic juxtaposition against otherwise odorous background action. The "double narration" technique is also quite annoying, as there are several places where there is not one, but two narrators explaining what's going on. On balance, though, it's good that someone is explaining it, or I might have to watch it again to try and figure it out for myself.
This one is for Jackie Coogan completists (if there is such a thing) only. As an alternative, you can give it as a gift to someone you want to subtly torture while remaining within Geneva Convention guidelines.
