Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Director: Bernard L. Kowalski

Starring: David Miller, George Wilson

Run Time: 75 mins

Certificate: 12

 

Plot Outline: Local alcoholic trapper Lem Sawyer sees a giant creature in the swamps but no one will believe him at first. That is until people start disappearing and local game warden Steve Benton gets involved. He searches the swamps and finds that giant leeches are living there and sucking the blood out of unsuspecting people taking a trip in the swamps!

The Review: Every now and then I stumble upon movies which are so astonishingly bad that it's hard to really write a review for them. Attack of the Giant Leeches is simply one of the worst films ever made, an agonising trip through everything that is wrong about 50s horror flicks. Low production values ring true here and the film looks like it was made it 1859, never mind 1959. There's about three locations used for the film and they keep getting used and used and used. Watching characters going through the swamp is like watching them go around in circles. The title monsters look like men in garbage bags with suckers on their faces. I don't know whether the intention was to make them humanoid in appearance but that's how they turn out, especially in the ridiculous blood-sucking scene inside the cave. The monsters work slightly better when they're half-concealed by the water but even then, the illusion is so hard to believe, you might as well give up trying. Above all the film is just so uninteresting and bland. There's countless scenes without dialogue and loads of characters on-screen who look and sound the same as each other, with the exception of slutty Yvette Vickers in a rather suggestive role for 1959. Coupled with the constantly dark nature of the film, it's really hard to see what's going on at times. The only saving grace is that at a slim 75 minutes, you won't have to suffer too long.