Mesa of Lost Women is a 1953 American low-budget black-and-white science fiction film directed by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond from a screenplay by Tevos and Orville H. Hampton who is given on-screen credit only for dialogue supervision. Plot Feminine hands with huge, non-human claws caress "Doc" Tucker. The next shot includes the face of the woman, Tarantella. A brief kiss between her and Tucker ends with his lifeless body collapsing. A disembodied voice asks the audience: "Have you ever been kissed by a girl like this?" The proper narrative begins in the desert. The narrator mocks humanity, a race of puny bipeds claiming to own everything on Earth. Yet, insects outnumber them, and the hexapoda are likely to survive longer than humans. The narrator then claims that when men or women venture off "the well-beaten path of civilization" and deal with the unknown, the price of survival is the loss of sanity. The film introduces its protagonists, Grant Phillips and Doreen Culbertson, lost in the "Muerto Desert." They are nearly dead from dehydration and sunburn when discovered by Frank, an American oil surveyor, and his Mexican companion, Pepe. The two victims recover in the "Amer-Exico Field Hospital" somewhere in Mexico. Grant starts narrating his story to "Doc" Tucker, foreman Dan Mulcahey, and Pepe. The film flashes back a year earlier in Zarpa Mesa. Famous scientist Leland Masterson arrives, having accepted an invitation from a fellow scientist named Dr. Aranya. Aranya has reportedly penned "brilliant" scientific treatises, and Masterson looks forward to meeting him. Aranya's theories genuinely intrigue Masterson, but Aranya states his work is not theoretical. He has already completed successful experiments creating both human-sized tarantula spiders and human women with the abilities and instincts of spiders. His creation, Tarantella, has regenerative abilities sufficient to regrow severed limbs. He expects her to have a lifespan of several centuries. His experiments have had less success in male humans, who become afflicted with disfiguring dwarfism. A horrified Masterson denounces Aranya and his creations. In response, Aranya, with the help of his henchman, injects him with a drug, turning him into a doddering simpleton. The front page of the Southwest Journal explains that Masterson was found wandering in the desert. He was declared insane and placed in a psychiatric hospital. Sometime later, Masterson escapes the "Muerto State Asylum." He is next seen two days later in an unnamed American town on the