It is interesting how the target audiences for various genre films can change over the years due to shifts in cultural climate. 

Since my early 20s, my favorite Roger Corman produced golden oldie has always been The Wasp Woman (1959). Not only are two strong women, Janice Starlin (Susan Cabot) and Mary Dennison (Barboura Marris).at the heart of its soapy drama, but its issues of youth and beauty have always been central ones to the gay community. 

Just as Starlin, a revolutionary in the cosmetics industry, struggles as her advancing age seemingly loses her vivacious importance in the beauty industry, many a personal friend has expressed how invisible they feel in queer spaces as they begin to grey.

Indeed, it’s rare that a male model in his fifties or sixties is featured on the cover of Out magazine or even on the front pages of local bar rags. As one nears senior status, gathering at nightclubs, a prime resource for LGBTQIA interaction, also feels less and less desirable, leading to a further sense of ostracization.

Thus, we can truly relate as Starlin enters into a covert deal with Dr. Eric Zinthrop (Michael Mark). Zinthrop’s experiments with the jelly produced by the queen wasp initially give Starlin a renewed glow, but her continual use of the product transforms her into a murderous insect-like mutant! As TLC sang, “Don’t go chasing waterfalls,” kiddos!

Interestingly, though, The Wasp Woman‘s central issues have reached a more universal appeal in recent times. The Looksmaxing community, often centralized by straight, openly homophobic men, is obsessed, a la Starlin, with physical perfection. Even heterosexual men less emphatic in their ways are now just as concerned with their looks as their queer counterparts. Products from Manscaping and other grooming sites have a large heterosexual consumer-ship…proving, once again, how ahead of the curve gay men are…and how flexible cinema can be.

That an exploitation exercise filmed over 60 years ago is still relatable in ever morphing ways is truly a valuable indication of the power of this centuries-old art form.

As always, I am proud to be bound up in its ever-changing spell.

Gay Times:

Actor William Roerick, who wrote plays and television scripts throughout the years with his romantic partner (and fellow actor) Thomas Coley, plays dubious business executive Arthur Cooper here. Roerick, famously, also portrayed the very popular Henry Chamberlain on the long running soap opera Guiding Light for fifteen years. Committedly, he essayed the elegantly rascally Chamberlain until the month of his death at the age of 82 in 1995.