Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) centers around a bunch of swamp people who start disappearing and a game warden out to find the creature responsible. Not only have people gone missing, but so have all the alligators, all because of a group of giant leeches which pull their victims into a cave at the bottom of a lake where they slowly suck the blood out of them over the course of a few days.
This movie is a brief 62 minutes, and for the first half is a fairly engrossing movie. This has nothing to do with the leeches, but the love triangle between Dave (Bruno VeSota) a gentle put upon husband, his sexy but nasty wife, Liz (Yvette Vickers) and Cal (Michael Emmett) a young good looking local man who is having an affair with Liz. As long as this is going on, the movie remains interesting, and the actors are compelling to watch. Sadly, both Liz and Cal become early victims of the leeches, and the rest of the movie is filled up with dull game warden Steve (Ken Clark), his equally uninteresting girlfriend, Nan (Jan Shepard) and her bland father (Tyler McVey) who spend the rest of the movie standing, sitting, or paddling around and having the same dull conversation over and over again. The first half hour goes by really quickly, the second seems forever.
This is a Roger Corman film, so when it comes to the leeches themselves expect not to be dazzled by the convincing creature effects. Yes, when standing up they look just like people wearing decorated vinyl costumes and are pretty silly, but when writhing and wriggling around under water they aren't half bad at all. The movie is about the same way. It's not half bad, but the half that is is painfully awful.
1 comment:
When I was a kid, this turned up on TV periodically. The scenes of the leeches' victims being fed upon in the cave really creeped me out!
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