Mesa of Lost Women, Blonde Babe vs Spider-Babe

It was such a beautiful thing! The sultry Doreen (Paula Hill), smartly dressed in a white suit with a slightly tight skirt and some three inch heels...and in the other corner, Tarantella (Tandra Quinn)! Tarantella may look like a sultry babe...brunette...very shapely...exotic and a blouse well off her shoulders, but is actually a super-human spider monster-babe. Before 1953's "Mesa of Lost Women" concludes, these babes will grab each other, pull hair, scratch, in a fight to the death. You just don't get this kind of drama in modern films.

We'll skip much of the plot, but I will tell you that in the Mexican desert lays a 600 foot mesa. In the mesa is the secret lab for Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan). In 1953 his experiments would be considered horrifying, but to all of us amateur mad-scientists, they are tame and old-hat. Aranya abducts beautiful women, injects their DNA into tarantulas, and then as the tarantulas grow into giant arachnids, he injects their DNA into the women, turning the babes into spider-women monsters. Or something like that. His plan? World domination...good luck with that. The spider-babe monsters are all sultry, until they sprout spider legs...and all are deadly.

The plane crash leaves a bunch of survivors on top of the mesa. The spider monster babes are dispatched to kill off the survivors. All are expendable except Doreen...the sultry babe mentioned in the opening and her new boyfriend, the handsome pilot Grant (Robert Knapp).  The two fall madly in love and will exchange much spit. Aranya's plan for the blonde is to make her a spider babe and for Grant...well...he is slated to be made into a dwarf-drone. One by one the surviving passengers fall victim to the huge tarantula monsters. Aranya may seem to have the upper hand, but when Doreen sees Tarantella, and her flattering figure, and Tarantella sees Doreen's blonde hair and elegant features...a war begins which Aranya did not foresee. Typical women!

Will Doreen and Tarantella's cat-fight derail Aranya's plans for world domination? Will Grant's machismo serve as a vehicle to save the planet from spider-monster domination? Haven't we asked that question a lot lately? Pure 1950s B film schlock...but oh, so much fun. For a horror film with an epic cat-fight, and a plot of gritty reality, enjoy "Mesa of Lost Women" and ignore IMDB's rating, as they only give this film a 2.1/10.