CheerupSilver
Very Cool!!!
Moustroll
Good movie but grossly overrated
Caryl
It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
topeka
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.
Adam
Like other movies, old B movies can still stand out for one reason or another. Maybe there are some unique special effects. Maybe the story is actually rather engaging. Or maybe everything that could go wrong did, and the movie was still released.This movie seems to fall into the latter category. As I watched it, I thought it seemed as though ideas were thought up and squeezed in somehow to make themselves fit and to justify other parts of the movie. It turns out I was right. If the trivia listed on IMDb is correct, the original concept was abandoned and the original movie had footage added to give us what we have now. A meaningless, senseless, illogical rambler of a movie.As the narrator sets the stage, we're introduced to a some individuals who wind up becoming an unlikely group. It's hard to explain exactly how they come together only because the pieces don't quite fit. Let's just say it was a matter of convenience. A short plane trip turns into a scary night on the mesa, made scarier by dwarfs and women who seem to only communicate with glances. It's downright peculiar that not a single one of them ever spoke. Throw in a trip into the forest on the mesa and a finale in the doctors laboratory, and you have about an hour or so that you'll never get back.In short, if you need something on in the background as white noise, this would do nicely. If you want a sensible, well assembled movie, move on. This ain't it.
jds_revenge_redux
Anyone expecting a film Terrence Malick or Mike Figgis might make has stumbled over the wrong toadstool. Hijacked and mutated by Ron Ormond, the crazy man's Kubrick, this is 68 minutes of just plain wrong. Cult movie precious dialog reciters have a goldmine here. This amalgam of beautiful, dangerous women, evil dwarfs, unnerving soundtrack music, bizarre images and "huh?" dialog are too reminiscent of David Lynch to be a coincidence. Just the scenes with Tandra Quinn as "Tarantella" are enough to make this a must see, especially the extended Mexican cantina scene where "Tarantella" dances "The Tarantella." Also notable are Jackie Coogan and Harmon Stevens who play, respectively, a mad scientist and a scientist who's been driven mad. Stevens plays his character tweaked and bug-eyed, like W.C. Fields traded booze for methamphetamine.
oscar-35
*Spoiler/plot- 1953, The Mesa of Lost Women, Dr Aranya is a crazed scientist with his lab located on the top of a Mexican mesa. He has developed a serum which will transform humans using spider's hormones. The females human injected with the serum turn into beautiful women. And the male test subjects into hideous dwarfs. A group of travelers are taken to the secret doctor's lair by his hypnotized erotic lab assistant. The travelers end up discovering his terrible outlaw experiments. They escape the clutches of their evil host and his human spiders. *Special stars- Jackie Coogan.*Theme- Nature cannot be conquered even when a male scientist wishes to conquer the world. *Based on- Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde *Trivia/location/goofs- Coogan, a huge and talented movie star on bad times. Maybe he did the movie just for the cash & keeping the union health insurance up that year. Very sad. He could do more than this. Ageism at work in Hollywood ? Watch out for the special 'tarantella' dance scene. *Emotion- A potty mad scientist movie that can leave you wanting to turn-it off. Child star of the silent days "The Champ" or TV's 'Addam's Family" Uncle Fester lends his many years acting to this terrible predictable monster film.
