Rating: 
Summary: OF MICE, SPIDERS AND FREAKS
Review: A difficult and preachy film that falls into that slender catagory of 1950's sci-fi/horror set outside the United States and in Mexico - South of the Border chillers (KRONOS is another) - where the labor was cheap, the deserts always dry and the talent always in a sweat. The story behind MESA is simple enough - a mad doctor has crossed the power of a spider with the sexual wiles of the female form - creating a labor force of immortal, super strong and mute women who do his every bidding, biting and killing for... reasons unknown. Like all mad scientists he simply does what he does because he can... no reason needed. While MESA comes up short in many ways (is it a cautionary tale? Is it an environmental feature?), it does have it's moments - the best being found in Harmon Stevens performance as Dr. Leland Masterson - a man turned mad by the experiments of Dr. Arana (our evil villian) - whose performance is a near exact copy of Lon Chaney Jr. as "Lenny" in OF MICE AND MEN (in fact, Leland has escaped from a mental hospital in this film and is being hunted down by a man named "George") - very uncanny. This film also features THE SPIDER - perhaps one of the most often used monster props in fast and cheap sci-fi movies in the 1950's (you can also see it in MISSLE TO THE MOON), plus there is a cameo of Dolores Fuller (GLEN OR GLENDA) - the one time love and leading lady of Ed Wood. While this kind of movie is not for everyone - collectors will want this film - it crosses so many lines (there are moments in this film which have a Todd Browning FREAKS feel to it which is too exact to be anything but direct theft), it has one good performance, one famous name (Coogan) - and one awful leading lady, Mary Hill - whose line delivery is so emotionless that you can see the punctuation at the end of every sentence - awful - but fun. As for the casual viewer - I do recommend MESA OF LOST WOMEN as it is a true conversation piece, and despite how bad it is - you will watch it straight through, not understand one moment of it - and then find yourself wanting to watch it again just to see if it was really that bad.
Rating: 
Summary: a cool, interesting B-movie
Review: First of all, I feel I should state that I am a huge fan of B-movies, cult movies, bad cheesy old horror/sci-fi movies, anything weird etc, and if you are not into this kind of thing, this movie probably isn't even worth one star to you. That being said, I highly recommend this movie to anyone who can relate to my obsession.
Mesa of Lost Women is often compared to the movies of director Ed Wood, and is considered by some to be the "worst movie of all time," but I don't think that analysis of the film is entirely fair or accurate. Don't get me wrong, I think Ed Wood was a genius when it comes to schlock, and comparing any B-movie to one of Wood's films should be considered the highest possible compliment, but this movie differs from Wood's movies and just about any other grade Z film I can think of, and is certainly not the worst movie ever. (It sure as hell beats watching Gone With the Wind!)
First of all, as soon as this film begins, it is plain to see that this is movie is not meant to be taken as a serious straightforward attempt at horror/sci-fi. The bizarreness of this movie is deliberate, effective and very unusual for its time. If this film was made by David Lynch or John Waters, people would be calling it the eccentric work of a genius, but since it was made in 1952 when people just didn't make those kind of movies, most people mistake it for an inept attempt at making a "normal" monster movie. In fact Mesa of Lost Women resembles the work of Lynch at least as much if not more than it does the movies of Ed Wood, and although Mesa of Lost Women has been accused of "making no sense," It actually makes a hell of a lot more sense than Mulholland Drive, and is just as understandable and enjoyable as Eraserhead which, in my opinion, is Lynch's best movie.
The soundtrack of the movie also deserves to be mentioned (way cool and also very unusual for its time.) Jackie Coogan is great as a deadpan mad scientist and Harmon Stevens is excellent as the crazy Dr. Masterson. Watch for his odd frozen facial expressions. This is a must-have for b-movie fans or anyone who appreciates weirdness on film.
Rating:
Summary: Average DVD of legendary Z-chiller
Review: I would have to include Mesa of Lost Women in that unique subgenre of "is it spellbindingly awful or just awful?" (members of which include The Creeping Terror, Beast of Yucca Flats, They Saved Hitler's Brain, Teenage Devil Dolls, Battlefield Earth, etc.). Bad movie fans may find this a scream, or merely dull depending on their taste and mind-set at the time of viewing (and how many Carl Dreyer films they've made it through). No rants please, I love Carl Dreyer movies. It is fairly slow-moving, even for a poverty-stricken 50s thriller, and that guitar-and-piano score has the potential to put the most stable person in the rubber room. That said, the plot, dialogue, characterizations, etc. are so loony that there is much to marvel at for those tough enough to stick it out: Jackie (Uncle Fester) Coogan as a demented scientist, Spider-Babe Tandra Quinn's bizarre dance stylings, mutant midgets, florid narration, etc. And this is mandatory viewing for fans of that giant spider prop (you know the one).
The DVD itself is not terrific, but serviceable. The brightness, contrast, and tonal values are quite adequate, although the sharpness is a bit soft, and the print suffers from relatively low-level but fairly constant speckling, dirt spots, and sporadic vertical and horizontal scratches. Some stretches of the film are pretty clean, some aren't, although overall it is still an improvement over the VHS copy I taped off PBS [!!] several years back. Interestingly, the TV print shows vertical scratching at the same points in the film and in the same locations in the frame as the DVD; perhaps these flaws derive from the master elements. In other details, the prints were not identical. There appear to be no missing shots/scenes other than the 15-second "prologue" tacked on to the TV print before the opening titles (was this part of the original theatrical release?). The DVD actually runs just slightly longer than my tape. Extras include the Mesa trailer (also a little dirty), chapter stops, and five more trailers advertising other Image discs. Not as impressive as other Image releases (e.g., Missile to the Moon), but given the history of this movie, it's possible that no better print of the film was available. Once again, Z-movie completists will probably be pleased with the disc, if not overly excited; anyone not into this stuff already, run for your life!
Rating:
Summary: Average DVD of legendary Z-chiller
Review: I would have to include Mesa of Lost Women in that unique subgenre of "is it spellbindingly awful or just awful?" (members of which include The Creeping Terror, Beast of Yucca Flats, They Saved Hitler's Brain, Teenage Devil Dolls, Battlefield Earth, etc.). Bad movie fans may find this a scream, or merely dull depending on their taste and mind-set at the time of viewing (and how many Carl Dreyer films they've made it through). No rants please, I love Carl Dreyer movies. It is fairly slow-moving, even for a poverty-stricken 50s thriller, and that guitar-and-piano score has the potential to put the most stable person in the rubber room. That said, the plot, dialogue, characterizations, etc. are so loony that there is much to marvel at for those tough enough to stick it out: Jackie (Uncle Fester) Coogan as a demented scientist, Spider-Babe Tandra Quinn's bizarre dance stylings, mutant midgets, florid narration, etc. And this is mandatory viewing for fans of that giant spider prop (you know the one).
The DVD itself is not terrific, but serviceable. The brightness, contrast, and tonal values are quite adequate, although the sharpness is a bit soft, and the print suffers from relatively low-level but fairly constant speckling, dirt spots, and sporadic vertical and horizontal scratches. Some stretches of the film are pretty clean, some aren't, although overall it is still an improvement over the VHS copy I taped off PBS [!!] several years back. Interestingly, the TV print shows vertical scratching at the same points in the film and in the same locations in the frame as the DVD; perhaps these flaws derive from the master elements. In other details, the prints were not identical. There appear to be no missing shots/scenes other than the 15-second "prologue" tacked on to the TV print before the opening titles (was this part of the original theatrical release?). The DVD actually runs just slightly longer than my tape. Extras include the Mesa trailer (also a little dirty), chapter stops, and five more trailers advertising other Image discs. Not as impressive as other Image releases (e.g., Missile to the Moon), but given the history of this movie, it's possible that no better print of the film was available. Once again, Z-movie completists will probably be pleased with the disc, if not overly excited; anyone not into this stuff already, run for your life!
Rating: 
Summary: Proto-Lynch
Review: I'm too amazed. I watched this for the first time last night, or at least most of it before I fell asleep, and I'm thinking, jeez is this where David Lynch came from? (though I'm laughing as I think this), and then I read the review before me, and this other person had the same idea. It's dialectics, with a vengeance. The super self-conscious hip on the one extreme and the scrapings from the cutting room floor on the other turn out to be the same thing...the wierd dance of the lost hot babe in the cantina is the clear proto of Dennis Hopper doing Roy Orbison...etc etc. Too much...
Rating: 
Summary: Too boring to be good.
Review: Maybe you guessed this is a bad movie and want to find out whether it's silly and fun enough to be entertaining and worth buying. I'd say no. I wanted to like it when I saw it, but it was too boring to be entertaining. There are some unintended laughs, but not many enough. The best thing about it is the music. It's quite cool. Trivia: The narrator is Lyle Talbot, who was in some serious movies in the 30's, 40's and 50's but later appeared in Edward D. Wood Jr.'s (Ed Wood) "Glen or Glenda" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space". Don't waste your money on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Mesa Of Uncle Fester
Review: Mesa Of Lost Women is one of my favorite hunks of cheese! Jackie Coogan (yep, uncle Fester) is a mad scientist, working with petuitary gland transplants. He's successfully transplanted tarantula glands into human women (it doesn't work on men, only turns them into evil dwarves), turning them into mute amazons with extremely tacky wigs. Another scientist visits Dr. Fester and sees the horrible experiments. He refuses to help, so the head spider-woman "Taran-Tella" (Tandra Quinn) injects him with a serum that seems to make him bonkers. The good doctor ends up in the nuthouse, only to escape out a window. Anyway, he seeks revenge on Taran-Tella and shoots her (after she is allowed to dance in a saloon, causing hearts to race). The vengeful, nutty doctor then forces a pilot (Allan Nixon) to take him back to the mesa. Lots of spider-women and dwarves roam around aimlessly. A giant, stuffed tarantula flops onto a hapless victim or two, and fun is had by all. The ending is no surprise, but I'll not spoil it here. The soundtrack is hideous!! A flamenco guitar twangs along, accompanied by piano work best described as being played by a hammer-handed baboon on acid! Highly recommended...
Rating: 
Summary: Back and Forth, Back and Forth
Review: Oh, this is so bad. The second half of the movie should have just been left on the cutting room floor. The first half is interesting and looks like it will build up to a pretty good story. A mad scientist experiments on humans and insects. Since the female is superior in the insect world, his women are super strong babes. The men in his experiments are evil little dwarfs. So by injecting human female growth enzymes into spiders, we have giant tarantulas. No doubt you've heard of the seductive and ultra sexy dance performed in the bar by Tandra Quinn . It is not over-exaggerated. For it's time it's probably the hottest bit of celluloid from that era. Clearly it is the high point of the movie. Well, that's about it. A plane and its party are hi-jacked and are forced to land on the mesa top of the evil scientist's lab. From here on out it's a waste of time. The director was not trying to build suspense, he was trying to eat up film and time so this would be a movie and not a half hour Twilight Zone episode. The back and forth begins across the set begins! The 'nurse' decides to explore in the dark by himself and is killed by a spider and screams. After much ballyhoo and useless dialog, everyone decides to investigate. They walk across the set to the dead nurse. Then they head back. The girl lost her hair band, bracelet, or whatever the heck it was, and the 'Man Friday' is sent to look for it. Of course he is working for the mad scientist and gets killed by him when he descends into the lab. Now there is more walking around the set (Meanwhile we have a romance building up between the girl and the pilot). The girl's fiancée get's killed by a spider's stomach, and finally they make it down to the lab. OK let's see, the super strong female (who is immune to bullets by the way) is held easily by an ordinary girl. They escape and wrap up the film conveniently with an explosion (what else)? The film ends with a super girl on the side of the cliff, watching and waiting. The worst part of the movie by far is the music (yes, it's worse than the not-so-special effects). It's this piano/guitar thing that just plays over and over and over and over. Watch with caution, but don't expect much. When you say you'd rather watch Cat Women on the Moon instead of this, that's really saying something.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best of the Worsts
Review: Ormond once produced and directed the Lash LaRue fims and then struck off on his own making some awful films like
this one and Monster and the Stripper. This one belongs right next to Phil Tucker's Robot Monster and Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster as one of the worst. It's even got a really annoying psuedo flamenco guitar soundtrack that Ormond let Wood borrow for some his films. What makes this film go truly off the charts into classic awfuldom is the fact the story is told via a flashback WITHIN another flashback from a character that was not involved in the story at all so couldn't possibly have a flashback involving the story in the first place. Utterly cheesy effects, horrible dialogue, a couple of performance so awful you won't believe it. The project began as a different film called Tarantula and Ormond came in, took some of the shot footage, added new stuff and created this one of kind
film for bad movie afficianados. Yes, Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) from the classic 60s version of the Addams Family is in the film.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best of the Worsts
Review: Ormond once produced and directed the Lash LaRue fims and then struck off on his own making some awful films like
this one and Monster and the Stripper. This one belongs right next to Phil Tucker's Robot Monster and Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster as one of the worst. It's even got a really annoying psuedo flamenco guitar soundtrack that Ormond let Wood borrow for some his films. What makes this film go truly off the charts into classic awfuldom is the fact the story is told via a flashback WITHIN another flashback from a character that was not involved in the story at all so couldn't possibly have a flashback involving the story in the first place. Utterly cheesy effects, horrible dialogue, a couple of performance so awful you won't believe it. The project began as a different film called Tarantula and Ormond came in, took some of the shot footage, added new stuff and created this one of kind
film for bad movie afficianados. Yes, Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) from the classic 60s version of the Addams Family is in the film.
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