Actually, it's an interesting take on a familiar idea - that women should not try to hold on to youth, that they should grow up and age gracefully. And yet everything in our culture has always told us that path leads to invisibility, loss of affection, and in cosmetics queen Janice Starlin's (Susan Cabot) case, loss of revenue. At age 40, Janice Starlin's cosmetic company is losing ground, and her board tells her that is because she has always been the face of her products, but putting the faces of other models on those products instead has caused women to lose confidence in her products. She replies that her now 40 year old face will not sell products either.
She is then visited by scientist Eric Zinthrop who tells her he believes he has invented a serum from wasps that can rejuvenate the old. He wants only a small percentage of any sales she might make and full credit for the discovery. Starlin in return demands to be the first human that his serum is tested on.
When testing begins on Janice she does begin to lose years - she now looks 35 instead of 40. But she wants the transformation to occur faster. Without Zinthrop's knowledge she takes extra injections, and she now looks 22 years old. But there is an unknown side effect. The cat that Zinthrop was testing has become deranged and attacks him. Before he can tell anyone, he wanders into traffic, is injured badly in an accident, and is transported to a hospital with possible brain damage.
Meanwhile Janice is acting antsy, hearing wasps buzzing in her head, and frantically looking for Zinthrop because she thinks her problem is that she will soon be out of serum when her fate is far worse.
You can tell this is purely poverty row, because every shot is a close up so the art direction can be kept to a minimum. And for Starlin's company to be so big and busy I count about half a dozen people who work at the firm, including two secretaries who seem to constantly be loafing. If not for the really laughable and very cheap special effects, this might have been better. Like other 50s sci-fi horror films it distills horror down to a basic fact - that humans are afraid of their bodies getting out of control either by the aging process or by disease. It is the reason cancer is so scary. I'd mildly recommend this one.
She is then visited by scientist Eric Zinthrop who tells her he believes he has invented a serum from wasps that can rejuvenate the old. He wants only a small percentage of any sales she might make and full credit for the discovery. Starlin in return demands to be the first human that his serum is tested on.
When testing begins on Janice she does begin to lose years - she now looks 35 instead of 40. But she wants the transformation to occur faster. Without Zinthrop's knowledge she takes extra injections, and she now looks 22 years old. But there is an unknown side effect. The cat that Zinthrop was testing has become deranged and attacks him. Before he can tell anyone, he wanders into traffic, is injured badly in an accident, and is transported to a hospital with possible brain damage.
Meanwhile Janice is acting antsy, hearing wasps buzzing in her head, and frantically looking for Zinthrop because she thinks her problem is that she will soon be out of serum when her fate is far worse.
You can tell this is purely poverty row, because every shot is a close up so the art direction can be kept to a minimum. And for Starlin's company to be so big and busy I count about half a dozen people who work at the firm, including two secretaries who seem to constantly be loafing. If not for the really laughable and very cheap special effects, this might have been better. Like other 50s sci-fi horror films it distills horror down to a basic fact - that humans are afraid of their bodies getting out of control either by the aging process or by disease. It is the reason cancer is so scary. I'd mildly recommend this one.