In the league of Z-movies, this hits a home run. We have Jackie Coogan (the Addams Family's Uncle Fester as a deranged scientist, a pack of killer midgets, a immense tarantula puppet, fifth rate cheesecake dancing performed by buxom negligee clad women with immense fingernails, a nerve scratching flamenco score performed endlessly by a guitar and piano and a Chinese philosopher given to dropping innumerable profundities, each with the depth of a petrie dish.

I won't bother summarizing the plot, save to say it involves a lost pilot, a pack of scantily clad "Spider Women" who lust for the blood of humankind, and assorted surreality. It's undeniably hilarious though, and well worth wasting 90 minutes on, provided you're in the mood for a piece of epic cinematic trash.

This trailer gives most of the key elements in this undoubted masterwork.

Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space" has nothing on this amateurish attempt at science fiction. Widely available in the public domain, "Mesa of Lost Women" (1953) isn't even good for laughs. However, it does offer the most grating score in film history. Recommended for viewers dying to see Jackie Coogan as a mad scientist.

Bad wigs, a completely absurd plot, and a voice-over narration that rivals even the Astounding She Monster in over-the-top, rancid melodrama. And the unending guitar...

And yet, there were highlights. The engaging escaped lunatic managed to be fun to watch. Tarntella's dance was, well, something to see, even if it won't win any awards. As Z grade movies go, this one offered a few giggles, and in a 3$ rental, that's what I look for.

MESA OF LOST WOMEN is truly a bad movie--unfortunately it is not bad enough in the "good" category to be even remotely entertaining. There is plenty or blame to go around. The acting is atrocious. There is no chance that the audience will suspend however momentarily the ability to withold the difference between the false reality of any film and the non-reality of this one. Jackie Coogan of "The Adams Family" fame is Dr. Aranya (Spanish for "spider") who develops a serum that can change spiders into women--or is it the reverse; the film does not make that clear. None of the other actors is a household name--except perhaps for Mona Mackinnon, who stars in the immortal PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE, an opus that puts this one to shame. Then there is the budget. Does the term "shoestring" come to mind? Other films have had to operate under much the same handicap, but the best of that lot manage to redeem themselves by redirecting the audience's attention away from the truly god-awful special effects by some minimally competent acting and directing. No such luck here. There are a few shots of a rubbery spider that descends on a hapless victim even as one can see the not hidden strings manipulating that descent. There is the abysmal directing of Ron Ormand and Herbert Tevos, who have the actors hold hands like children crossing the street as they wander through the lost mesa jungle. And they do this more than once for no apparent reason. Finally, there is the manner in which Ormand and Tevos use a confusing narrative point of view of flashbacks within flashbacks. As they misdirect the viewer by having one flashback which suggests one coherent narrator, they inexplicably switch to an internal flashback with an unrelated other narrator. And this switching happens yet a third time before they abandon the concept altogether by dropping all previous narrators and filming a sequential plot with predictably disastrous results. The only redeeming point is the weirdly sexy cantina dance of Tarantella (get it, Tarantula?) played by Tandra Quinn, who undulates her arms in a manner mildly suggestive of a spider's limbs. There is no point going over the plot in any reasonably coherent way. By the film's close, it becomes clear that the lost women of the title are not the only lost ones.

Jackie Coogan stars as Dr. Arana who is a crazed scientest who is breeding giant arachnids and dwarves in his hidden laboratory located in the Zapra Mesa in Mexico. His diabolical scheme is to form an army of superwomen by taking them and genetically altering them with spider venom making them into Spider-Women. Also a group of people on a plane crash land (not on an island with Polar Bears and mysteries Hatches) in the Zapra Mesa. Soon they try to stay alive as things lurk in the dark jungle trying to get to them and they try to survive the on coming dangers ahead. Like a Giant Spider which I think was wearing a diaper I dont remember. Tandra Quinn as Tarantella boosted this up to a two star rating with her sexy dance. Damnit that damn guitar music! It never went away and it was in every scene. The Dwarves were funny when they rean away. I was expecting one of them to have a pick axe. Campy fun all around. Also starring a cool Samuel Wu as well Wu and get this the only movie he did was, well...this.

Let me begin by stating the complaints about the soundtrack are so far off base, they're practically in the stands with the overweight Yankees fans gorging on hot dogs. The atmosphere of surreality is practically *created* by the flamenco music, Why, MOLW wouldn't be nearly as askew, or as fun to watch, without it. This is, in fact, the 50's version of a David Lynch film. And what's not to love, huh? We've got giant tarantulas, beautiful women (especially the morena with the restaurant dance...ouch!), ~MIDGETS~, a mad scientist, a bible-quoting madman with a gun. See the ensemble of the redneck riviera without the plane fare or the crocodiles! Bad taste is indeed timeless. Lester Bangs, call your office.