MESA OF LOST WOMEN (1953)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

MESA has been a strong contender for "worst film" since the whole "so bad it's good" meme arose. It does sport a few delirious scenes mitigating a lot of tedium, so I can't say it's nearly as boring as, say, THE MARVELS. And even if there wasn't a lot of intellectual heft to the movie itself, one ought to admire all the strong detective work done by cineastes to figure out the flick's complicated genesis.

MESA began as a 1951 project for independent company Howco, helmed by one-film writer-director Herbert Tevos. This project, if it was completed, was deemed unreleasable by Howco. During 1952, the company hired Ron Ormond-- then best known for writing and directing low-budget westerns-- to shoot new continuity to make MESA more salable. Ormond brought back many members of Tevos' cast and crew for additional scenes, but a few actors shot completely new scenes, including performers Jackie "Uncle Fester" Coogan and Katherine "Batwoman" Victor. Most of the new scenes have the effect of a wraparound, as the survivor of a catastrophe narrates his experiences as the Mexican Zarpa Mesa, followed by the Tevos footage with new inserts, and then the conclusion comes back to the "real time" of the survivor. The wraparound also sports a narrator speaking some extremely wonky lines, the writing of which has been intriguingly (if not decisively) attributed to Ed Wood.

On this page of the CHFB discussion-board, Tom Weaver testifies to his having read the original Tevos script, entitled "Tarantula." This involved a madman with a gun, name of Masterson, showing up at a Mexican cantina. After shooting an exotic dancer (Tandra Quinn), Masterson forces three people-- two of whom landed in the city in a malfunctioning plane-- to help him escape justice. Two other persons, one of whom is Grant, the plane's pilot, are also taken hostage as the plane takes off. The plane crashes on a lonely mesa, apparently inhabited by some sort of unexplained giant tarantulas. The only part of the Tevos section that has any psychological substance is that while the crash victims are contending with the elements and the giant spiders, Doreen, a woman who plans to marry a rich man she does not love, falls for pilot Grant, and though she's a trifle shrewish, Tevos allowed both of the new lovers to survive. In the Ormond reworking, Grant and Doreen are also the only survivors,

Ormond attributes the giant spiders to the research of mad scientist Doctor Arana (Coogan), but his main purpose has been to produce a race of "super spider people," with whom Arana plans to rule the world. He relates all this to a Doctor Masterson, a potential colleague who visits Arana's lab on Zarpa Mesa. But when Arana demonstrates that the many hot women in his lab are actually spiders turned into mutated humanoids-- one of whom is Quinn's dancer, dubbed "Tarantella"-- Masterson repudiates Arana's plot. Arana injects Masterson with a drug that drives him mad, so that no one will believe his wild story. Thus in Ormond, Masterson has a grudge on his mind when he shoots Tarantella in the cantina (which she survives, thanks to being able to regenerate), and also when he hijacks the plane, intending to return to the Mesa for a confrontation. Then all the survival-scenes from Tevos are interpolated. Ormond then has the survivors of the crash meet Arana. Doreen tussels a little with Tarantella and then Masterson blows up the whole lab, with only Grant and Doreen winning free. However, the last shot of the film shows that one of the spider-women survived the conflagration, ensuring that humankind may yet face a Giant Spider Invasion.

Ormond probably did make the original version more coherent, but it's still a muddled mess, in which none of the characters are interesting, much less likable. The only reason I give this one a "fair" mythicity rating is because Ormond introduced the notion of "female supremacy" among the insect world, because Arana can only make formidable killers out of female spiders, while male spiders only produce deformed dwarfs. Thus Ormond's finished version joins the burgeoning company of other Female Monsters of the Fifties, whose ranks-- the Fifty-Foot Woman, Lisa of CULT OF THE COBRA, Kyra Zelas of SHE-DEVIL, and various others-- far outstrip the paltry number of she-creatures from the previous decade. To be sure, the "Lost Women" don't really DO much of anything-- though in the cantina Tarantella performs what some fans have called a "mandible dance." But when dealing with a goofy black-and-white flick with wooden performances and an insanely repetitive flamenco score, one has to take one's virtues where one can find them.