CT: The Wasp Woman

Damn you Roger Corman and all who sail on you! Thanks to a love of the various riffing projects of these guys I've ended up seeing more of Corman's stinkers than anyone, Roger himself, should ever have to suffer. His approach to low-budget exploitation films fills me with bile. And yet, when something like The Wasp Woman comes along you feel cheated when very little happens. I mean if you know Corman, you know that this'll be the case thanks to lack of budget and a shooting schedule that's barely longer than it takes Paris Hilton to get done up in the morning. As Josh quips at one point of stunning penny-pinching; "You won't believe you're eyes. You won't get the chance to." But a film like this has the potential to be cheesy, goofy fun. What you get instead are some characters you can't give a damn about, because the script won't let you, talking for an hour before one becomes a ridiculous creature and starts the killing. But even that's kind of rubbish.

Okay, Corman rant over, but what I'm highlighting is Cinematic Titanic's third outing's biggest flaw; they're riffing on a dull Roger Corman movie. It's just not quite goofy enough for it to become one of those magical riffing experiences where you enjoy the entire thing. But this isn't necessarily the fault of the CT team, who go at this one no matter how many dialogue driven scenes there are. In fact for the most part the riffing on Wasp Woman is the strongest CT has done so far. What's great about it is that it's that Season 2 through 4 of MST3K style, kind of lucid and goofy. They don't tear the movie apart so much as gently prod it until its cheese squirts out. But added into that is a whole darker element, thanks to the many, many heroin references in this one. I suppose they had to with the amount of shooting up shown, it rivals Trainspotting in the 'see a needle, down a shot' drinking game stakes. From Joel's "kissing God" reference to the Belushi dosage, there's some incredible material here.

As for some of the quibbles with the first two, some of the line readings are still a little flat at times, with Frank's A.D.R. lines being particularly bad. Not only is the sound different but he just seems to read them, like he can't get into the moment or something. It's a shame because Frank actually does a great job in this one besides those and along with Mary Jo have shown some great improvement as riffers in the very short time where they've had to perform as well as write. The sketches vary, the openings are fun but brilliantly don't really explain too much about the premise in the way people hoped for after first outing The Oozing Skull featuring nothing at the start. The board room sketch is cute but doesn't quite go anywhere. Frank bringing back Buddy Rich for another in what I'm presuming to be a series of dead jazzist related sketches is very funny, Rich's dialogue and the performance are fantastic, and again play into the slightly darker tone of this episode.

In many ways then Wasp Woman is Cinematic Titanic's best effort yet. The riffing's great, the sketches are fun and the movie does have its moments of goofiness. In tackling a Roger Corman clunker they've made their most MST3K-like one yet. But like those episodes of that show where the movie was slow and boring it takes some of the shine off of what they get right, and that's a shame as it is so right! And that, Mr. Corman, is why I cursed you.

You can get Wasp Women directly from the people who made it here. You can also get the first two DVDs, Doomsday Machine and Oozing Skull, which has now been made available Worldwide so please don't give those twats on ebay hunners of money for one of these. Buying it directly from Cinematic Titanic means the money goes straight back in to making more in the future. Here's the link for their store.

Thanks for listening.