Friday, May 7, 2010

The Mesa Of Lost Women, Review By The DarkSider

THE PLOT: Our story of webby females begins with a credit roll over ominous bolero music. Yes…ominous bolero music…guitars done in a Latin fashion but scary sounding. For your listening…um…“enjoyment” this serves as an underlying form of water torture throughout the one hour of this film endeavor. After the credits, in jumps the narrator which of course means the film shoots itself in the foot head on. The narration hammers on for what seems like a millennium about how man, as a life form, generally sucks eggs…or something to that point. I found myself not caring after one minute of it to be honest.

We catch up with a couple stumbling through the desert looking a little worse for wear. I guess they must really dig each other because they hold hands. Apparently dealing with gallons of palm sweat won’t keep them apart. Luckily for them a friendly surveyor named Frank and his trusty jeep driver Pepe are nearby. The kids are rescued and get whisked off to the safe haven of an oil refinery. Yeah, that’s because hospitals are overrated anyhow.


"OK! Bodies are buried...now its time to
shave, sh*t and shower..."

The wandering guy wakes up to inform us that there is something awful going on in the desert. Somewhere out there is the evil Dr. Aranya who specializes in…well…evilness of some sort. He immediately goes into flashback mode which oddly gets intercepted by Pepe’s own flashback. I should stop here to say that Pepe kind of fits the “Mexian characters for dummies” stereotype. He wears a big old sombrero while muttering out broken English at times. Anyhow, Pepe recollects about a Dr. Leland J. Materson who one day paid a visit to Dr. Aranya. I didn’t see Pepe in the flashback but I’m assuming he was around somewhere off camera or something.

Materson arrives at Aranya’s lair which has several mute women hanging out in white dresses and dwarf men who stare uncomfortably at visitors. Aranya greets the doctor and takes him on a tour of his crib which is oddly set up in a desert cave. Aranya explains to Materson he has taken refuge in the desert to perform his experiments. His whole claim to fame is mixing human gland secretions with that of a spider and vice versa. Aranya shows off his two proudest achievements. The first being Tarantella (cute huh) who is a tough looking female that he predicts to live a long, intelligent life. Then he proceeds to show off a giant spider that…well…sits around and looks inanimate. Materson goes into panic mode when Aranya prompts him to join his efforts. He insists that he is going to stop Aranya. Of course this doesn’t pan out for Materson who gets popped with a sedative by Tarantella. I often wonder why guys like Materson just don’t say, “that’s cool, let me think about it” and then bolt to the authorities.

Well luckily for Materson, he only ends up insane. During his stay at the local asylum, he escapes to the local dive bar. While there he spots a fellow named Jan van Croft and his stuffy, yet attractive fiance Doreen. Materson goes into pimp daddy mode and flirts with the fiance right in from of van Croft. This goes on for a bit until Tarantella (guess she read the script to find out where everyone was) shows up for a seductive dance. While she sporatically boogies, Materson's nurse George shows up to reclaim him. This doesn't go over well and Materson decides to shoot Tarantella. Why...not too sure. It doesn't matter though because Tarantella rises from the dead minutes later.


"Don't tell me to f*cking calm down! You
tell me how we are supposed to make
smores without the graham crackers..."

Materson takes everyone hostage and they ride into the desert where van Croft's personal airplane is located. His pilot Grant Philips, accompanied by the valet Wu, reluctantly agrees to take off but is openly worried about a bum engine. Materson insists they fly at gunpoint and they all take off. I have to admit, no one really seemed concerned about taking off with a madman at gunpoint. Don't know, it was a bit odd to me. Well, since we need something remotely resembling a plot for this flashback, the group crash lands in the Mesa.

Immediately its apparent the baddies are out on the prowl. One of them happens to be Delores Fuller who we all know was Ed Wood's squeeze at one point. She appeared in a slew of films such as this one and Glen Or Glenda in 1953. I guess quantity was on the agenda over quality that year. Anyhow, the next 20 minutes or so consists of standard "group of people stuck somewhere they don't want to be" plot points and dialog. George is the first to find himself off'd in the group. After the group finds his body, they decide getting rest is in order.

During the evening, Philips and Doreen share a pointless romantic moment. Minutes later Doreen spots some of the baddies hanging out in the forest. Mr. van Croft wakes up and chastises Doreen for losing a comb he gave her. He sends out Wu who we find out is behind the group being in their current predictiment. He meets up with Dr. Aranya who is basically after Materson. He has his girls take out Wu in the meantime.

Philips later finds Wu and van Croft goes ape sh*t thus running into the giant spider. The remaining three end up getting taken into Dr. Aranya's lair. Aranya cures Materson's insanity (just go with it...please...just go with it) but this backfires. Materson takes a few steps over to a way too conviently located explosive concoction. He tells Philips and Doreen to leave and blows the cave to smithereens. This wraps up the flashback and we rejoin Philips/Doreen in the current time. Apparently they are ok after their desert walking experience but the evil Mesa folks may still be alive. I don't care either way.

This film is a shot up mess. The editing is all over the place which honestly gave me the shakes at certain points. Mix this with 2nd grade play acting, horrible props and a ton of plot killing devices and you have yourself a really awful movie. However this one I'd easily put in the "so bad, its just bad" category. There is nothing really redeeming to it and is quite boring at times. Its not like it couldn't go places with the plot but it seems money was low and there was nowhere it could go. And yes, the bolero music made me pucker after awhile.

YOU'RE A GRAND OLD A-HOLE
(the A-holes of the film get their moment)

Dr. Aranya

His subjects are part spider, part human and
dance awful. See also Toby Maguire in
Spiderman 3.

OVERALL GRADE


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