The Schlocky Horror Picture Show

The Wasp Woman (1959) (4x11)

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Filmed in just five days, The Wasp Woman stars the lovely Susan Cabot as proto-yuppie Janice Starling, CEO and the public face of a large cosmetics company she herself has built up from nothing. The Wasp Woman may be read as Roger Corman's sincerely-felt protest at how society undervalues women over the age of forty, then as now. Others have seen The Wasp Woman as evidence of Roger Corman's sincerely held belief that a shameless rip-off of The Fly, a big money-earner for 20th Century Fox the previous year, would earn similar profits for him. Either or both are possible. Roger was known to have a social conscience and, although he didn't work for major Hollywood studios, he was also known to fully endorse their core motto: If It Sells, Copy It.