MESA OF THE LOST WOMEN (1953)

MESA OF THE LOST WOMEN (1953)

Tagline: Today - Someplace - Somewhere... A Mad Scientist is Set to Terrorize the World!

(Sci-Fi, Horror, Annoying Guitar, Bass, and Piano)[PG]

Note: the MPAA did not give this movie a rating. It would likely have been a PG. This movie was also known as ATTACK OF THE SPIDER WOMEN which was a much more catchy title.

You would drag me to this dive, this upholstered sewer. 

In this one, a mad scientist named Dr. Aranya is just randomly finding women that he would like to turn into spiders. Don’t even worry about it. Hidden away in his lab in Mexico, Aranya’s plan is to create a race of shape-shifting women that are indestructible. He’s mad so he doesn’t really need a good reason. That is the whole benefit of being nuts. Meanwhile, a wealthy financier, Jan Van Croft, and his fiancé Doreen Culbertson, crash in a plane on the mesa on their wedding day and get sucked into Dr. Aranya’s evil plans. Will Jan Van Croft, Doreen, and their pilot Grant escape seductive spider women and find their way through a treacherous desert to safety?

First off, the most horrible acting in this movie is done by Harmon Stevens who plays Masterson. He seems to be in some sort of weird trance the entire movie, but Masterson did have something done to him by Dr. Aranya, so maybe this was all on purpose. It’s just hard to watch his performance. There are some other spots of bad acting, but this dude tops the cake. 

Outside of that, the acting is okay. This is by far Tandra Quinn’s most famous role, but she was also in THE NEANDERTHAL MAN. She doesn’t have any speaking parts but is prominent in all the promotional material. The best actor is by far Robert Knapp as Grant Phillips. Knapp would go on to be in the TV shows “Dragnet” and “Perry Mason” among others. Paula Hill is okay as Doreen in this. She’s not nervous she’s just thinking. I really don’t have any complaints about her taking the leading lady role in this. She was also in the sci-fi classic THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. We also get a few lines from Jackie Coogan who plays Dr. Aranya. Coogan does a pretty good job in this and was probably best known for THE SPACE CHILDREN. 

Where this movie just falls off the freakin cliff is the opening 5 minutes. The entire middle and every minute there is a score involved. I spent most of this movie praying for someone to burn the score to this thing. It’s a really unpleasing blend of guitar, piano, and bass. Just that alone makes most of this movie almost unwatchable. A lot of this thing is shot with lame camera angles and terrible lighting. That is par for the course in a lot of 50’s b-movies. There are also parts of this script that just don’t make any damn sense. In one scene Wu goes to look for a comb and he and Masterson are just spewing out stuff that doesn’t fit the scene at all. I guess when Dr. Aranya starts messing with your mind you become super philosophical all of a sudden. There is another scene where Jan Van Croft gets accused of murdering someone just because he mentioned that Doreen’s comb was an heirloom? What the cow?

I also can’t stand the narration. It’s almost as if they were trying to make a long comedy episode of “The Twilight Zone” or something. 

With all the complaints I have, this movie isn’t all terrible. I actually liked the interaction between Doreen and Grant. It does feel like some stuff must have been edited out because the dialog is choppy, but you get the gist. I thought the fact that the movie touched on Doreen’s true motives for wanting to marry Jan Van Croft because it brought out some challenges of the time socially. The giant spider shots are few and far between but the gloriously goofy-looking Halloween decoration spider design is wonderful. 

This film is a weird eclectic bit of cinema that I did not hate as much as a lot of reviewers out there. I would actually watch this thing again as flawed as it is. This is a 3 out of 7. It doesn't seem to go anywhere in spite of having a decent premise. I can’t say it’s “solid” though. I would be kidding myself. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF RON ORMOND PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

Please check out the link below by clicking on the picture. Because no one should die buttonless.