Fear The Spider-Women!!
Jackie Coogan stars as Dr. Arana who is a crazed scientest who is breeding giant arachnids and dwarves in his hidden laboratory located in the Zapra Mesa in Mexico. His diabolical scheme is to form an army of superwomen by taking them and genetically altering them with spider venom making them into Spider-Women. Also a group of people on a plane crash land (not on an island with Polar Bears and mysteries Hatches) in the Zapra Mesa. Soon they try to stay alive as things lurk in the dark jungle trying to get to them and they try to survive the on coming dangers ahead. Like a Giant Spider which I think was wearing a diaper I dont remember. Tandra Quinn as Tarantella boosted this up to a two star rating with her sexy dance. Damnit that damn guitar music! It never went away and it was in every scene. The Dwarves were funny when they rean away. I was expecting one of them to have a pick axe. Campy fun all around. Also starring a cool Samuel Wu as well Wu and get this the only movie he did was, well...this.

A true classic!
Let me begin by stating the complaints about the soundtrack are so far off base, they're practically in the stands with the overweight Yankees fans gorging on hot dogs. The atmosphere of surreality is practically *created* by the flamenco music, Why, MOLW wouldn't be nearly as askew, or as fun to watch, without it. This is, in fact, the 50's version of a David Lynch film. And what's not to love, huh? We've got giant tarantulas, beautiful women (especially the morena with the restaurant dance...ouch!), ~MIDGETS~, a mad scientist, a bible-quoting madman with a gun. See the ensemble of the redneck riviera without the plane fare or the crocodiles! Bad taste is indeed timeless. Lester Bangs, call your office.

Tarantula Women!
There is one thing about this movie that stands out in my mind. The music is awful; really awful. The music is so awful that even if the movie content had been five stars, the music would have knocked it back to two stars. The combination of repetitive, annoying guitar and a spinet or piano that appear to be out of tune, poorly played, or just bad music, is terrible on the ears. By the time the movie reaches its final seconds you are thankful for the end.

The whole movie is a flashback of a guy brought out of the desert who wants to go burn something. This fellow's ravings are so intense that you think this movie has promise. Now we go to a flashback.

We meet Dr. Leland Masterson (Harmon Stevens) who willingly goes to Zarpa Mesa to see Dr. Aranya's efforts. Dr. Aranya is played by Jackie Coogan, a long-time veteran of television and movies who many may remember best as the original Uncle Fester on "The Addam's Family." Dr. Masterson sees how horrible Dr. Aranya's experiments are, and he refuses to help, and then goes bonkers, turning into some sort of weird ultra-goodie for much of the rest of the movie. Dr. Masterson shoots a woman who we know is one of the super spider women, and then climbs on board a plane to head somewhere. The engine conks and the passengers land by happy coincidence (can you see this one coming?) on Zarpa Mesa.

Evening falls and passengers are picked off one-by-one with weird puncture marks. Finally, the few remaining passengers are taken to Dr. Aranya's laboratory, where a big fight ensues, there are flames and an explosion and we are returned to the present. Wow. Such excitement. Such danger. What an awesome movie.

This movie is so bad that it is bad. There is minimal charm to the movie. I like Jackie Coogan, but his role could have been played by anyone. The music was awful. The best part of the whole movie was the plane crash, which I thought was reasonably realistic. With movies like these I try to either be at least a little frightened, or amused. I was neither with this movie. I wish there was some way to put this movie into perspective so that you have an idea of whether you should buy it. Since I cannot, I will say that if you like a movie that is about tarantula women, with minimal appearances of any real tarantulas, and you can handle the awful music, then by golly, this could be just the movie for you. However, I will note that this movie is worse than anything comparable by Ed Wood, so you can go from there.

Giant Tarantula Puppets And Unceasing Flamenco Guitar
This movie is relentless. I am a huge fan of grade-Z cinema, but this is sub-Ed Wood in quality (in fact many of the people involved in bringing this travesty to life were friends and associates of Wood), and commits the unforgivable bad movie sin of being boring.

As you might expect, the plot is a bit difficult to follow in places, but essentially deals with Jackie Coogan as the evil Dr. Arana (also spelled Aranya in some versions), which, cleverly, is Spanish for "spider." Given that piece of foreshadowing it's pretty much inevitable that he will create huge, chemically mutated leaping spiders, dancing spider women, as well as a bunch of dwarf men in accordance with his understanding of the arachnid world. There are subplots about a plane crash, murder, and romance, but honestly, the whole thing is so tepid that I just ended up screaming "End!" at the television for the last twenty minutes of the film or so. The dancing scenes are particularly un-erotic, despite the reaction shots of the men in the audience, while the portrayal of "Pepe," the standard-issue cartoonishly superstitious Mexican national definitely dates this turkey.

I was feeling generous and gave this film two stars on the basis of the hilarious spider puppets and the endless droning flamenco guitar soundtrack, which is ever present and wildly inappropriate. Don't get me wrong, the soundtrack is awful, it just gets a bonus star for the comic juxtaposition against otherwise odorous background action. The "double narration" technique is also quite annoying, as there are several places where there is not one, but two narrators explaining what's going on. On balance, though, it's good that someone is explaining it, or I might have to watch it again to try and figure it out for myself.

This one is for Jackie Coogan completists (if there is such a thing) only. As an alternative, you can give it as a gift to someone you want to subtly torture while remaining within Geneva Convention guidelines.

It Really Didn't Take Much
It really didn't take much to entertain me when I was a kid. I even liked Godzilla movies. When Ed Wood films turned up in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, I took them seriously.

But I also remember MESA OF LOST WOMEN, a movie so bad that my eyes were actually opened to just how horrible some movies could be. And that I might be wasting my time--even watching Chiller Theatre.

It's not that this movie got me to grow up, but I definitely wanted to see something good afterward....

(The shame is that there are still so many good--and great--movies that you can't find on DVD!)