A 1959 film from director Roger Corman, I decided to look at this as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ following a conversation with Simon Bacon who said “It’s very much in the mold of Leech Woman… so a woman obsessed about staying young to the point where she kills others.” He did recognise that the consumption we see in this film is less obviously tied into her quest for youth (as we’ll see) and also managed to find a paper that ties the two films together.
So the logical connection between the two has been stablished elsewhere and the Leech Woman is a vampire film, or at least I think so (albeit she drinks hormones and not blood). That said, whilst there are violent attacks and victim consumption within this it is not the source of the youthfulness – hence the ‘Vamp or Not?’
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| Michael Mark as Zinthrop |
The film starts with one Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark) approaching a tree, with the sound of buzzing, wearing beekeeping gear and carrying a smoker – as an aside, I did a very miniscule amount of research on this and it is unlikely that the smoker would have worked on wasps as it would on bees. Bees communicate through pheromones and the smoker blocks these and causes them to not be able to swarm, when isolated they become docile. Wasps do not become docile when isolated from the swarm but the smoker might work by suffocating the wasps – not the result Zinthrop wants as he is relocating the nest to where he works.
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| Susan Cabot as Starlin |
Zinthrop is employed to research royal jelly on a honey farm. He has turned his attention to wasp royal jelly. Unfortunately his employer does not agree with his research direction and sacks him – despite him showing them a pair of dogs, one older but the other a puppy though they are apparently the same age. Elsewhere at Starlin Cosmetics, boss Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) is asking her executive team why sales are dropping. Only Bill Lane (Anthony Eisley, Dracula vs Frankenstein) has the hutzpah to tell her – she was the face of the company but is no longer, retiring from modelling as she gets older. Unfortunately, their customers trust her rather than the brand.
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| hmmm.... |
Zinthrop has arranged a meeting with Starlin, though she suspects he is a crackpot. He shows her the use of the enzyme he has extracted from the wasp’s royal jelly – injecting a Guinea Pig, which grows younger in front of them… Now, gentle reader, park your disbelief a good distance away as the Guinea Pig actually turns into a rat but no-one notices that! She gives him all the resources he needs to continue his experiments but he must do human testing on her. Eventually he does, giving her a weak version of the enzyme, which has a very slow effect.
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| changes |
She is impatient though and decides to break into his lab and inject the more powerful version (that he has suggested for external use only) – the results are much more marked. However, a cat he had reverted to kitten has suddenly mutated and become aggressive and then he is run over and ends up a John Doe in hospital, in a coma. Starlin does hire a PI to find him but also continues to use the material and starts to mutate into an angry insect hybrid (at night it seems, and note she is the exact opposite of the creature on the movie poster) and also suffering debilitating headaches when human. So the enzyme makes her younger and also an insect creature – is it vamp?
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| neck wound |
After off-screen attacks (and the victims going missing) we see her attack a nurse she hired to look after the rediscovered Zinthrop. She pierces the victim’s neck and then we see her move to drink from the wound. Zinthrop suggests that, like a queen wasp, she would devour her victims (so it isn’t just blood drinking). We can note that the film doesn’t suggest that this human diet is the source of her stolen youth – that is from the royal jelly. It is, however, a symptom developed through the process.
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| precursor |
This is one where I can certainly see the connection between the films mentioned and, as Simon pointed out, the fact that it would seem to precursor films such as the Blood Beast Terror and she certainly becomes a blood drinker (and flesh eater) as part of the age defying process (though as stated, it is symptomatic). If this isn’t Vamp, it is certainly of genre interest and the outcome, I guess, depends on how liberal you are with the vampire label. There is a colourised version of this on Amazon Prime.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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