azathothpwiggins
Opening w/ the music that blares throughout the film, MESA OF LOST WOMEN unfolds. Said music sounds as if a guitar-playing Sasquatch and a piano-pounding, hammer-handed baboon formed a band. The nonsensical narration is provided by Lyle Talbot (PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE). It seems that mad scientist, Dr. Aranya (Jackie "Uncle Fester" Coogan) is performing unnatural experiments in his hidden laboratory. He's discovered the need for human females to be... improved. Aranya is creating an army of super-women, by merging them w/ spiders! Witness Tarantella (Tandra Quinn), Aranya's mute assistant. Indeed, her arachnid ways aid in her performing the beguiling Tarantella dance! In fact, her writhing -accompanied by the Sasquatch / baboon combo, w/ added bongo drums!- is the best part of this glorious masterpiece! The rest is mostly about a group of people trying to find Aranya's hideout. Far too little spider-women action makes for one talky adventure. All while that impossible music plays on, having nothing to do w/ anything on the screen! Thank god, there's a giant, stuffed spider that bobbles along! In the Limburger-laden annals of hyper-schlock, THIS! IS! LEGEND!... EXTRA POINTS: For Dr. Fester's deadpan delivery!...
Chase_Witherspoon
An unfinished film has been re-imagined with Coogan's ostensibly unrelated scenes clumsily grafted into the tale of a plane crash atop an unforgiving mesa inhabited by a giant spider. Faithful servant Wu (Samuel Wu) spouts prophecies like "there's a time to be born and a time to die", while Doreen (Hill) and All-American pilot Phillips (Knapp) trade provocative glances, struggling to keep their animal attraction at bay. Somewhere amid the plane wreck, a giant spider hunts the survivors, while mad scientist Dr Aranya (Coogan) creates spider-women in bizarre experiments in the caverns below.Knapp is essentially the leading man doing an earnest job with inane material, George Barrows as the stocky male nurse trying to re-capture escaped nutter Dr Masterson (Stevens), and sultry Tandra Quinn dancing up a storm in a revealing negligee. A little person and some scantily clad "lost" women bearing no relation to the plot, appear in meaningless cutaways, among them familiar names, Margia Dean, Katherine Victor and Mona McKinnon.An incoherent muddle consisting of a bland, repetitive Latin-guitar inspired soundtrack, pages of dumb dialogue and a totally inept climax that ruins any chance of cult cred. Devoted performances from a capable cast, but otherwise, this is premium grade trash video, courtesy of Joy N.Houck whose progeny Joy N.Houck Jnr gave us "The Brain Machine" and "Night of Bloody Horror".
MarplotRedux
Thanks to IMDb's kindness, I watched this for free. Thank you, IMDb!!! I watched it after spending most of a day doing family bookkeeping on my laptop. This may have left me in an especially appropriate mood. I'm 80 years old. Truly inept, minimal-budget movies are a new experience for me, and I love them. I sit back speculating how they could have built their sets and animated their monsters at the least possible expense.Despite what other reviewers have written, the actor who portrays the visiting scientist and who is transformed into a ... well, to avoid any spoiler, make it "a different sort of person" does a lovely job. I mean that seriously. The brunette who dances seductively does so well --- though even in my long-vanished youth she'd have terrified me, and the (admittedly repetitive)loud guitar music is generally superior to the dialog. The blonde who serves as Heroine is perhaps the nastiest person in the film, though this doesn't seem to be intentional. And actually the admittedly inexpensive monster was pretty good in its brief, brief appearances. So, in their brief appearances, were the dwarfs, midgets and poor scantily-attired young ladies.Logic? Sensible behavior in dangerous situations? Competent acting by all but one of the cast? Of course not: that's part of the fun.
oscar-35
*Spoiler/plot- 1953, The Mesa of Lost Women, Dr Aranya is a crazed scientist with his lab located on the top of a Mexican mesa. He has developed a serum which will transform humans using spider's hormones. The females human injected with the serum turn into beautiful women. And the male test subjects into hideous dwarfs. A group of travelers are taken to the secret doctor's lair by his hypnotized erotic lab assistant. The travelers end up discovering his terrible outlaw experiments. They escape the clutches of their evil host and his human spiders. *Special stars- Jackie Coogan.*Theme- Nature cannot be conquered even when a male scientist wishes to conquer the world. *Based on- Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde *Trivia/location/goofs- Coogan, a huge and talented movie star on bad times. Maybe he did the movie just for the cash & keeping the union health insurance up that year. Very sad. He could do more than this. Ageism at work in Hollywood ? Watch out for the special 'tarantella' dance scene. *Emotion- A potty mad scientist movie that can leave you wanting to turn-it off. Child star of the silent days "The Champ" or TV's 'Addam's Family" Uncle Fester lends his many years acting to this terrible predictable monster film.
AD
