Attack of the Giant Leeches

As a monster movie, Attack of the Giant Leaches is utterly hopeless and as completely useless as anything else. The titular giant leeches appear on the screen for a total of five minutes and the rest of the film consists of insipid soap-operatic quarrels among Southern hillbillies and scenes of swamps accompanied by dialogue about something fishy happening in those swamps. (06/26/2016)

Another cheap B horror from the ’50s produced by the Corman brothers, this time featuring people wrapped in bags and covered with giant suckers who are supposed to evoke overgrown leeches. The script is dull (Leo Gordon is a solid actor, but a miserable screenwriter), and the acting is tragic – the fact that I consider Bruno VeSota’s performance to be the best says it all. What’s more, in the final scene, it’s as if the actors didn’t receive any instructions from the director, so once they triumph over the leeches, they just stare into space stupidly and then part ways. It’s bad, really bad. (11/09/2018)

Poster tagline: CRAWLING HORROR!!! RISING FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL TO KILL AND CONQUER!!! An utterly unlikeable film. What I love about the sci-fi movies of the Golden Age, even if some of them are silly, is the charming naivety with which they were made, including the cute sets, the costumes, the make-up, etc. But in this case, Corman's calculating approach offers no such thing – "We've got one camera, two cheap costumes and a swamp, let's put something together in a few days!" Cheapness oozes from every frame of the film (as one contemporary review wittily noted - ".... the budget wouldn't cover the catering costs of another normal film..."), the lighting is non-existent, so most of the scenes set at night are drowned in darkness, the exteriors of the Pasadena Arboretum are drab, ugly, repulsive, and visually uninteresting, and the giant leeches are only occasionally and briefly (one might want to say "fortunately") glimpsed. I give one star for the few shots from the cave with the prisoners, which at least remotely resemble a horror atmosphere, otherwise avoid this miserable hour. (04/15/2015)