MESA OF LOST WOMEN (1953)

Though Ed Wood had nothing to do with this film, it bloody well could have been his. The female lead, Mary Hill, is a dead ringer for Wood's then-girlfriend, Dolores Fuller. Also in the cast are Mona McKinnon and narrator Lyle Talbot, both of whom turned up in Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space. Not to mention that the score features a mercilessly repeated flamenco riff a la Wood's Jail Bait, along with a maddeningly discordant piano. And it's just as badly written, acted, and directed as anything Wood created.

The film begins with a pompous, interminable narration that has nothing to do with the storyline. Then we see a young couple, Grant (Robert Knapp) and Doreen (Hill), running desperately through the desert, only to be rescued by an oil-company surveyor. At the local hospital, Grant tells their story in one long flashback, all of whose details he couldn't possibly know. For example, it kicks in before Grant even turns up in the plotline.

A year earlier, Dr. Leland Masterson (Harmon Stevens), the world's top something-or-other, received an invitation to visit the laboratory of Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan), a world-renowned entomologist who refers to spiders as “insects.” Aranya's facility is located atop a 600-foot mesa in the Mexican desert, which is necessary given the nature of his work. It involves making spiders grow to human size, then somehow morphing them into inarticulate women who do Aranya's bidding and possess the attributes of a spider—but, which attributes is unclear. The women certainly don't look like spiders, nor do we see them do things like spin webs or climb walls. Also present is a bunch of ugly male dwarfs, the less successful result of Aranya's work.

When Masterson refuses to help Aranya, we suddenly fast-forward a year to the insane asylum in which Masterson is now confined. He escapes and obtains a gun, which Masterson uses to abduct Doreen and her fiance Jan (Nico Lek) from a local barroom. Long story short, they (and additional characters) end up in a plane flown by Grant, which crash-lands on Aranya's mesa. During the night, his dwarfs and spider-women kill three of the people, then abduct and bring Grant, Doreen, and Masterson to the lab. Aranya gives Masterson an injection that instantly restores his sanity. The still-defiant Masterson then mixes two chemicals, which explode and burn down the lab. Grant and Doreen escape while everyone else is killed. With that convoluted a plot, it's hard to believe the film is only 70 minutes long. And I do mean lo-o-o-o-ng!

As for the acting, I would like to draw special attention to Harmon Stevens. His portrayal of Dr. Masterson does not suggest insanity so much as high-functioning autism. When he isn't speaking in pseudo-Biblical nonsense, Masterson bears a grin strongly suggesting a man who just farted and finds it highly amusing.

Item: Early in the film, Grant begs an oil-company man to fill a truck with barrels of oil to set on fire and destroy Aranya and his minions. But didn't the lab already catch on fire as he and Doreen were escaping?

Item: The film offers many, many close-ups of dwarfs and spider-women staring at...something.

Item: Wu, Jan's Chinese valet, speaks in fortune-cookie cliches like, “The curtain of darkness veils even the sharpest eyes.” Wu is also in cahoots with Aranya, which raises way more questions than the film can answer.

Item: After Masterson surrenders his gun, it doesn't occur to anyone to subdue him.