Mesa of Lost Women is a 1953 American low-budget black-and-white science fiction film directed by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond[1] from a screenplay by Tevos and Orville H. Hampton, who is given on-screen credit only for dialogue supervision.
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Grant Phillips and Doreen Culbertson get lost in the "Muerto Desert". They are nearly dead from dehydration and sunburn when discovered by Frank, an American oil surveyor, and his Mexican companion, Pepe. The two victims recover in the "Amer-Exico Field Hospital" somewhere in Mexico. Grant starts narrating his story to "Doc" Tucker, foreman Dan Mulcahey, and Pepe.
The film flashes back a year earlier in Zarpa Mesa. Famous scientist Leland Masterson arrives, having accepted an invitation from a fellow scientist, Dr. Aranya. Aranya has reportedly penned "brilliant" scientific treatises, and Masterson looks forward to meeting him. Aranya's theories intrigue Masterson, but Aranya states his work is not theoretical. He has already completed successful experiments creating both human-sized tarantula spiders and human women with the abilities and instincts of spiders. His creation, Tarantella, has regenerative abilities sufficient to regrow severed limbs. He expects her to have a lifespan of several centuries.[2] His experiments have had less success in male humans, who become afflicted with disfiguring dwarfism.[2]
A horrified Masterson denounces Aranya and his creations. In response, Aranya, with the help of his henchman, injects him with a drug, turning him into a doddering simpleton. Masterson is later found wandering in the desert. Declared insane, he is placed in the "Muerto State Asylum," a psychiatric hospital. Masterson eventually escapes. Two days later, he is seen in an unnamed American town on the U.S.-Mexico border. Also present are Tarantella, businessman Jan van Croft, and his fiancée, Doreen. They were heading to Mexico for their wedding day, but their private airplane had engine problems and stranded them there. Jan's servant Wu is working with Tarantella.
Masterson's nurse at the asylum, George, tracks him to the bar. The entire bar, its patrons and the bartender observe Tarantella perform a dance. Masterson recognizes Tarantella, pulls a handgun, and shoots her. He then takes Jan, Doreen, and George hostage. He heads for Jan's private airplane and forces pilot Grant to prepare for takeoff despite the latter's protests that only one engine is fully functional. The aircraft departs with Doreen, George, Grant, Jan, Masterson, and Wu aboard. Meanwhile, Tarantella regenerates following her apparent death and leaves the bar.
Grant discovers that someone sabotaged the gyrocompass, resulting in their flying in the wrong direction. Unbeknownst to him, the saboteur is Wu. The airplane crash-lands atop Zarpa Mesa, where Aranya's creations were expecting them. The group dwindles with the deaths of George, Wu, and lastly, Jan.
The last three members of the group are then captured. Grant recognizes their captor's name is identical to the Spanish term for spider, "araña." Aranya cures Masterson of drug-induced imbecility, hoping to recruit him. This backfires as Masterson performs a suicide attack. He allows Doreen and Grant to escape, then causes an explosion that kills them all.
The flashback ends. At the hospital, Grant fails to convince anyone but Pepe of the truth in his story. Yet it is later revealed that at least one of Aranya's spider-women has survived.
Cast
L-R: John George, Tandra Quinn, and Harmon Stevens
The film was originally made by Pergor Productions under the title Tarantula and was viewed and granted a Motion Picture Production Code seal in October 1951. The original director, Herbert Tevos (born Herbert Schoellenbach),[3] reportedly claimed to have had a film career in his native Germany and to have directed films starring Marlene Dietrich and Erich von Stroheim. Tevos also claimed to have directed the Dietrich film The Blue Angel (1930), which was actually directed by Josef von Sternberg. Mesa of Lost Women was Tevos/Schoellenbach's only known film credit.[4] When the producers had difficulty securing a distributor for the Tevos footage, it was sold to Howco Productions Inc. in the spring of 1952, with Ron Ormond assigned to direct additional material.[5] Tandra Quinn recalled that among the new sequences created by Ormond were the scenes of the Jackie Coogan and Quinn characters being killed.[6] Katherine Victor said that she was hired by Ormond in order to create her desert sequences.[7] Filming locations included the Red Rock Canyon State Park.[8]
The film's musical score was composed by Hoyt Curtin. It makes use of flamenco guitar and piano, combined in an apparent free jazz style. This music was later reused in the Ed Wood film Jail Bait (1954).[2][9] The narrator Lyle Talbot also appeared in several films by Wood, including Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), as did the "spider-woman" actresses Dolores Fuller and Mona McKinnon.[2] The film also features the debut of Katina Vea as the spider-woman who first drove Masterson to the desert, who was later a regular in Jerry Warren films using the stage name Katherine Victor.[10] One of the dwarfs in the film was Angelo Rossitto, a veteran of Poverty Rowhorror films whose film career had started in the 1920s.[11]
Although Tarantella is a key character of the film, it was a silent part. Actress Quinn also had a silent part in The Neanderthal Man (1953), playing a deaf-mute. Decades later, Quinn recalled that she never received "a decent speaking part" in a film.[4] She reportedly chose her stage name by modifying one suggested by Tevos. He had suggested the stage name Tandra Nova. She agreed to the first name "Tandra", but thought the last name unsuitable and reminiscent of Lou Nova. She instead chose the last name "Quinn" in honor of dancer Joan Quinn.[4]
Mesa of Lost Women was noted for being one of several 1950s science fiction films that utilized wire-controlled giant spider props, the others being Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), Tarantula (1955), World Without End (1956), Queen of Outer Space (1958), and the Cat-Women of the Moon remake Missile to the Moon (1958).[12] The spider prop used in Mesa of Lost Women was limited in movement, a single jump being its only action feat.[12]
The movie has been criticized for its low-quality production and acting, most notably that of Harmon Stevens and Jackie Coogan. The loud and repetitive musical score by Hoyt S. Curtin, melding flamenco guitar and piano, is described variously as maddening and "very able, a sustained inspiration"[13]
Film critic Glenn Erickson wrote that "watching [the film] is like being on drugs. The storyline, the performances and simple narrative logic just don't add up. The direction is incompetent in a decidedly Ed Wood style: The camera is never in a good position and every insert and cutaway is awkward," adding that the "ridiculously complicated plot hides the fact that nothing really happens," and that the "film [has] lapses in judgment that boggle the mind."[14] In his review of the film for AllMovie, Richard Gilliam wrote that "[t]he story is more incoherent than non-linear, the characters are woodenly constructed, and the overall film is a dull, tepid mess."[15] Critic Nigel Honeybone described the film as "hopelessly muddled and misguided," claimed "the soundtrack will drive you insane as the same refrain is repeated again and again and again," and speculated that the film is "so bad you have to ask yourself, is it actually evil?"[16]
Creighton Tull Chaney, known by his stage name Lon Chaney Jr., was an American actor known for playing Larry Talbot in the film The Wolf Man (1941) and its various crossovers, Count Alucard in Son of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Mummy in three pictures, and various other roles in many Universal horror films, including six films in their 1940s Inner Sanctum series, making him a horror icon. He also portrayed Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men (1939) and played supporting parts in dozens of mainstream movies, including High Noon (1952), The Defiant Ones (1958), and numerous Westerns, musicals, comedies and dramas.
1913 was a particularly fruitful year for film as an art form, and is often cited one of the years in the decade which contributed to the medium the most, along with 1917. The year was one where filmmakers of several countries made great artistic advancements, producing notable pioneering masterpieces such as The Student of Prague, Suspense, Atlantis, Raja Harischandra, Juve contre Fantomas, Quo Vadis?, Ingeborg Holm, The Mothering Heart, Ma l’amor mio non muore!, L’enfant de Paris and Twilight of a Woman's Soul.
The year 1912 in film involved some significant events.
Missile to the Moon is a 1958 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film drama, produced by Marc Frederic, directed by Richard E. Cunha, that stars Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, and K. T. Stevens. The film was distributed by Astor Pictures and is a remake of an earlier Astor Pictures-distributed film, Cat-Women of the Moon (1953). Missile to the Moon was released in late 1958 as a double feature with Cunha's Frankenstein's Daughter.
Bela Lugosi (1882–1956), best known for the original screen portrayal of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1931, performed in many films during the course of his 39-year film career. He appeared in films made in his native Hungary, Germany and New York before re-locating to Hollywood in 1928. Films are listed in order of release.
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Anne Gwynne was an American actress who was known as one of the first scream queens because of her numerous appearances in horror films. Gwynne was also one of the most popular pin-ups of World War II. She is the maternal grandmother of actor Chris Pine.
Katherine Victor was an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles in Ron Ormond's Mesa of Lost Women (1953) and a number of Jerry Warren's films. She was also known as Katina Vea.
Captive Women is a 1952 American black-and-white post-apocalyptic science-fiction film. It stars Robert Clarke and Margaret Field. The film has a running time of 64 minutes. It deals with the effects of a nuclear war and how life would be afterwards.
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The Hideous Sun Demon is a 1958 American science fiction horror film produced, directed, and cowritten by Robert Clarke, who also starred in the title role. It also stars Patricia Manning, Nan Peterson, Patrick Whyte, and Fred La Porta. The film focuses on a scientist who is exposed to a radioactive isotope and soon finds out that it comes with horrifying consequences.
Don Megowan was an American actor. He played the Gill-man on land in The Creature Walks Among Us, the final part of the Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy.
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A list of reference works on the horror genre of film.
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The Strange Case of Doctor Rx is a 1942 black-and-white murder mystery/horror B film by Universal Studios directed by William Nigh and starring Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Anne Gwynne, Ray "Crash" Corrigan and Samuel S. Hinds. Although Clarence Upson Young is credited with the screenplay, the actors mostly ad-libbed their lines. The plot involves the search for a serial killer who is targeting men who have been acquitted of murder. The film received poor reviews upon release.
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Tandra Quinn was a Hollywood film actress and pin-up model mostly active in the 1950s.
Mona McKinnon was a Hollywood film actress and model mostly active in the 1950s.
↑ p.221-225 Weaver, Tom Tandra Quinn Interview from I Talked with a Zombie: Interviews with 23 Veterans of Horror and Sci-fi Films and Television McFarland, January 1, 2009
↑ p.386 Weaver, Tom Katherine Victor InterviewReturn of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes: The Mutant Melding of Two Volumes of Classic Interviews McFarland, 2000
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