Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I love this movie so much

Wonderful character development!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Why watch this movie? To say you have. It's a bit like mountain climbing, but only if you're climbing molehills. Or collecting bottle caps. Or counting the tiles on the ceiling at the DMV. This film came in the 50 Movie Pack SciFi Classics DVD collection by Treeline. Not all of the films are bad. If you have any sense of nostalgia or affection for theater or genre movies, most of the flicks have something to offer despite the poor budgets, terrible plots, dialogue that wouldn't satisfy your fifth grade teacher, or hopelessly bad acting. Nonetheless most of the films are entertaining, and it's a shame they have not been restored - what with the computing power we have today, you'd think someone would clean up these lost 'antique' films. But Mesa of Lost Women is a truly bad film. The only logic reason for watching this film is if you're working on a Camp SciFi Horror flick, and you want to find something ridiculous to add. But even there, Mesa is a let down: The mad scientist makes his case the same way a loan officer explains the terms of your car loan. And he inexplicably wears a pair of glasses with the left side glazed over. His mad scheme to take over the world is as plausible as granny's plan to rid her trees of squirrels by feeding them her leftover meds. Watching the film is absolutely tedious. So tedious, if an American military or intelligence agency forced prisoners to watch it, it would probably be considered a war crime. I'm retired, so my mental health is irrelevant, and it's too late to do anything about it anyway. Treeline failed to put a warning on this film for those who might be triggered by slowly watching nothing unfold. Another excellent review has adequately covered the plot, but I wanted to add a comment about the obnoxious score. The musical score consists of guitar strumming as if the musician is about to begin a classical Latin piece. But it doesn't. The guitar just strums. A bit up. A bit down. And always too loud. It was so irritating my college student (daughter) came out and gripped at me for disturbing her - that despite the fact that she's never bothered by Godzilla or any of the other campy, silly flicks I run on the big TV. I think its so bad, I'm afraid it could cause sensitive people to have a mental reaction. Caution is warranted.

There is only one reason to watch this really bad film: hunchbacked dwarf John George. George worked in films from the late 'teens to the early 1960s. He had some nice roles in silents but his heavy accent limited him in sound. He usually played news vendors and the like. As such he appeared in many big films: Picture of Dorian Gray, Bride of Frankenstein, The Killing, A Streetcar Named Desire, Around the World in Eighty Days and Ocean's Eleven. In each of these his appearance can be measured in seconds. It's a treat then to see him in Mesa of Lost Women where he gets a number of glowering close-ups. Once you've noticed him you'll see him everywhere: Mark of the Vampire, The Black Room, Tower of London, The Black Cat, Man of a Thousand Faces and so on. Keep looking for him but look fast!

Thanks to IMDb's kindness, I watched this for free. Thank you, IMDb!!! I watched it after spending most of a day doing family bookkeeping on my laptop. This may have left me in an especially appropriate mood. I'm 80 years old. Truly inept, minimal-budget movies are a new experience for me, and I love them. I sit back speculating how they could have built their sets and animated their monsters at the least possible expense.Despite what other reviewers have written, the actor who portrays the visiting scientist and who is transformed into a ... well, to avoid any spoiler, make it "a different sort of person" does a lovely job. I mean that seriously. The brunette who dances seductively does so well --- though even in my long-vanished youth she'd have terrified me, and the (admittedly repetitive)loud guitar music is generally superior to the dialog. The blonde who serves as Heroine is perhaps the nastiest person in the film, though this doesn't seem to be intentional. And actually the admittedly inexpensive monster was pretty good in its brief, brief appearances. So, in their brief appearances, were the dwarfs, midgets and poor scantily-attired young ladies.Logic? Sensible behavior in dangerous situations? Competent acting by all but one of the cast? Of course not: that's part of the fun.

High on a mesa in Mexico, mad scientist Jackie Coogan (as Aranya) turns spiders into people. The females become voluptuous beauties, and the males become ugly dwarfs. It is explained that this parallels the insect world's gender inequality. One example of a "spider woman" is voluptuous Tandra Quinn (as Tarantella). She is shot after a sexy dance, by wide-eyed doctor Harmon Stevens (as Leland Masterson). He tries hard to give the film's most awful performance. But, Mr. Stevens receives stiff competition.Mr. Coogan, who became a big star as "The Kid" (1921), was popular again as Charles Addams' "Uncle Fester" on TV's "The Addams Family" (1964). Lyle Talbot provides useless and tedious narration. The soundtrack, by Hoyt S. Curtin, is among the worst ever composed for a motion picture. It's nice to see cast and crew have a good grasp on the poor material. The film is enjoyably bad some of the time, but long stretches of boredom and the incessant soundtrack music could cause physical pain.* Mesa of Lost Women (6/17/53) Herbert Tevos, Ron Ormond ~ Jackie Coogan, Harmon Stevens, Robert Knapp, Paula Hill