Cheap Mesa of Lost Women (DVD) (Jackie Coogan) (Herbert Tevos, Ron Ormond) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mesa of Lost Women

Average DVD of legendary Z-chiller
I would have to include Mesa of Lost Women in that unique subgenre of "is it spellbindingly awful or just awful?" (members of which include The Creeping Terror, Beast of Yucca Flats, They Saved Hitler's Brain, Teenage Devil Dolls, Battlefield Earth, etc.). Bad movie fans may find this a scream, or merely dull depending on their taste and mind-set at the time of viewing (and how many Carl Dreyer films they've made it through). No rants please, I love Carl Dreyer movies. It is fairly slow-moving, even for a poverty-stricken 50s thriller, and that guitar-and-piano score has the potential to put the most stable person in the rubber room. That said, the plot, dialogue, characterizations, etc. are so loony that there is much to marvel at for those tough enough to stick it out: Jackie (Uncle Fester) Coogan as a demented scientist, Spider-Babe Tandra Quinn's bizarre dance stylings, mutant midgets, florid narration, etc. And this is mandatory viewing for fans of that giant spider prop (you know the one).
The DVD itself is not terrific, but serviceable. The brightness, contrast, and tonal values are quite adequate, although the sharpness is a bit soft, and the print suffers from relatively low-level but fairly constant speckling, dirt spots, and sporadic vertical and horizontal scratches. Some stretches of the film are pretty clean, some aren't, although overall it is still an improvement over the VHS copy I taped off PBS [!!] several years back. Interestingly, the TV print shows vertical scratching at the same points in the film and in the same locations in the frame as the DVD; perhaps these flaws derive from the master elements. In other details, the prints were not identical. There appear to be no missing shots/scenes other than the 15-second "prologue" tacked on to the TV print before the opening titles (was this part of the original theatrical release?). The DVD actually runs just slightly longer than my tape. Extras include the Mesa trailer (also a little dirty), chapter stops, and five more trailers advertising other Image discs. Not as impressive as other Image releases (e.g., Missile to the Moon), but given the history of this movie, it's possible that no better print of the film was available. Once again, Z-movie completists will probably be pleased with the disc, if not overly excited; anyone not into this stuff already, run for your life!

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A Rodger Corman want-a-be
Two people are found wandering in the desert. They are brought back to a local clinic where upon recovering from sun stroke the man wants to immediately burn "it." "Burn what?" you say. Well He slows down to tell the tale of a Doctor on a remote mesa that is a little ahead of his time working with you guessed it Lost Women and things best left to nature. We are now in for a 70 minute flash back.

With great actors as Jackie Coogan (you can tell he must be the bad guy with a huge mole on his face), Allan Nixon, Tandra Quinn and Delores Fuller, You know it can not go wrong. Yeah, sure.

The dialog gets a little boring and some of the screen play (by Herbert Tevos) is a little disoriented. I suspect that much was cut out for brevity; so we must make great leaps and assume we just missed something.

There is a great dance scene by Tarantella (Tandra Quinn) that would subdue Captain Kirk had he been there.

Do not worry though we have wonderful background music by Hoyt Curtin that consists of an off key flamingo guitar and a spinet that won't spin; I think they are trying to sound Spanish; you get to hear it during the beginning credits; You get to hear it during the narration (by Lyle Talbot); you get to hear it every time a suspenseful scene appears; You get to hear it every time one does not; you still hear it when the DVD is safely packed away.

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Back and Forth, Back and Forth
Oh, this is so bad. The second half of the movie should have just been left on the cutting room floor. The first half is interesting and looks like it will build up to a pretty good story. A mad scientist experiments on humans and insects. Since the female is superior in the insect world, his women are super strong babes. The men in his experiments are evil little dwarfs. So by injecting human female growth enzymes into spiders, we have giant tarantulas.

No doubt you've heard of the seductive and ultra sexy dance performed in the bar by Tandra Quinn . It is not over-exaggerated. For it's time it's probably the hottest bit of celluloid from that era. Clearly it is the high point of the movie.

Well, that's about it. A plane and its party are hi-jacked and are forced to land on the mesa top of the evil scientist's lab. From here on out it's a waste of time. The director was not trying to build suspense, he was trying to eat up film and time so this would be a movie and not a half hour Twilight Zone episode. The back and forth begins across the set begins!

The 'nurse' decides to explore in the dark by himself and is killed by a spider and screams.

After much ballyhoo and useless dialog, everyone decides to investigate. They walk across the set to the dead nurse. Then they head back.

The girl lost her hair band, bracelet, or whatever the heck it was, and the 'Man Friday' is sent to look for it. Of course he is working for the mad scientist and gets killed by him when he descends into the lab.

Now there is more walking around the set (Meanwhile we have a romance building up between the girl and the pilot). The girl's fiancée get's killed by a spider's stomach, and finally they make it down to the lab. OK let's see, the super strong female (who is immune to bullets by the way) is held easily by an ordinary girl. They escape and wrap up the film conveniently with an explosion (what else)? The film ends with a super girl on the side of the cliff, watching and waiting.

The worst part of the movie by far is the music (yes, it's worse than the not-so-special effects). It's this piano/guitar thing that just plays over and over and over and over.

Watch with caution, but don't expect much. When you say you'd rather watch Cat Women on the Moon instead of this, that's really saying something.