Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

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Hello and welcome!  C’mon in, and don’t mind the gunk on the floor.

 

For those who already know more or less what I’m about or (more likely) couldn’t give a rat’s ass, feel free to scroll down to the movie review proper and skip this wordy and tangential introduction.  Before pressing onward, I hereby exalt the Icemann for granting me this public forum and say thanks for his kind words.  If you think these reviews suck, blame him.

 

Dude, what the hell?!?

 

I can’t help it, I love crap.  I was weaned on Sci-Fi Theatre, nourished on Elvira's Movie Macabre, and through repeated (and repeated and repeated) exposure I finally blossomed into a full-on proper movie masochist.  B movies, C movies, Z movies; if it’s garbage I have to see it, doubly so if there’s a sorry-ass gorilla costume in there somewhere.  Well, I was sitting there one day watching Mutant and Wings Hauser’s white-guy afro just demanded comment.  So I posted up an eensy little paragraph laughing at him and figured that was the end of that.

 

Yeah right.

 

A bit of fair warning: While not limited exclusively, I spend a lot of time hanging out on the wrong side of the tracks with early gore, horror, and exploitation films.  I’ve written pages on this in the past, but the Blondie and Dagwood version is that a failed movie generally evokes the opposite reaction of the film’s intention.  Bad action has the potential for fun, but only if Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing Hercules.  Bad drama is boring at best, and at worst will leave you overdosed on a diabetic level of glurge that only some Portuguese horse porn can alleviate.  Bad comedy is the anti-entertainment, and if you don’t believe me just watch anything by Friedberg and Seltzer.  Hell, I dare you.

 

Bad horror, sci-fi, and exploitation by contrast are often bursting their seams with unintentional entertainment, which is why Bloody Pit of Horror is a laugh riot and Reefer Madness is the second best movie in history to get messed up for.  The all-time best movie in history to get messed up for is Blood Freak and will be dealt with extensively in a later review, count on it.

 

One more note before pressing forward. Once, long ago, I wondered why I couldn't like good movies. Then I realized the selection was really awful.

 

Disclaimer  [dis-kley-mer] –noun

1. The act of disclaiming; the renouncing, repudiating, or denying of a claim; disavowal.

2. A statement, document, or assertion that disclaims responsibility, affiliation, etc.; disavowal; denial.

3.  A person who disclaims.

4.  Covering your pasty white geek-boy butt.

 

Some of the flicks I’m going to review here ain’t for the kiddies.  Neither will be the reviews either, really, as I seem to have a belletristic version of Tourette's syndrome.  For those who don’t feel like looking that up, it means I have a potty mouth.  Plus, some films just deserve to be cursed at – often at length with great vehemence.  Oh, and for you three guys who have read my stuff before, there will undoubtedly be movies revisited and jokes re-joked.  See how cleverly I’ve tagged this onto the end of a completely unrelated paragraph so nobody will notice it?  I am sneaky.

 

And finally, there may (read: most assuredly will) be gruesome detail gaffes and general misinformation.  I ain’t gonna lie, some flicks simply DARE you to watch them when not under some kind of influence.  So if I fuck up, blame Icemann.  Trust me, he loves it.

 

But enough of all that, the time has come to select a starting point.  Decisions, decisions.  Herschell Gordon Lewis or Roger Corman?  Jesus Franco or Joe D’Amato?  Take the easy route with some Ed Wood or go straight for the femoral artery with Bruno Mattei?  I actually had a piece on a classic Santo movie going, but at the last minute decided I needed something more… iconic to kick things off with.  Something I can give that little personal touch.  A flick that in an odd way defines me as a person.

 

See, I’ve never seen Titanic, Forrest Gump, or ET.  Meanwhile, as of this writing I’ve watched this wretched pile of stink nine fucking times.  Top that.

 

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES

 

This is a more widely seen movie than will probably be the standard as there is a MST3K version out there.  Surprisingly, despite my deep abiding love for both halves of that particular equation, it’s slipped past me so far.  My copy is part of the “Horror Classics” series, and while I doubt the flick ever looked very good, here it looks like they ran out of film stock early on and had to finish with stone tablets.

 

We start off with what may or may not be a guy in a boat, as the picture is so dark either the scene was shot by moonlight or they used a hunk of lead as a day-for-night filter.  In this instance that might be for the best though, as ol’ Lem here wasn’t beaten with the ugly stick so much as buggered with it.  And right off the bat, the flick hands up one of the titular giant leeches without any candy or sweet-talk.  Now, showing your monster before the opening credits is a bad idea at the best of times, never mind when it looks like a guy dressed in an octopus suit made from Hefty bags (which is exactly what it is).  Right now we only get a snicker-worthy glance, but the guffaws will come soon enough, trust me.  I love these guys.

 

Now we cut to Somebody’s General Store, as indicated by the sign out front.  Remember what I said about the light levels?  Hmm, is that a “J” or a “Q”?  Ah hell, it could be Dirty Sanchez’ General Store for all I can read of it.  We’ll find out in a moment it’s Walker’s General Store, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it if you ask me.  Oh, and while we’re here, wave hello to the nice cameraman so neatly reflected in a car window.

 

Inside we find six guys, five befouled shirts, three sets of overalls, two mangled felt hats, an even more mangled straw hat, and one yak coat waiting to greet us.  Not to be missed is the dude so unbelievably greasy he could have supplied the body oil for whole cast of 300 by himself.  Among the six dwarfs are Lem, Slim, Cal, and some other guys whose names I don’t think are ever mentioned, although I could be wrong there.  You see, the flick was actually shot with sound, but the combination of horrid looping and wildly inconsistent volume makes the dialog a leetle hard to understand - especially with Cal who apparently has a live hamster stuffed in his mouth.  So I’ll just assume the other two guys are named Pooter and Stank and move on.

 

Oh yeah, and there’s Dave.  Dave’s defining characteristic is that he’s fat.  Now there’s nothing wrong with being a fat guy, Lemmy knows my own ass is a few inches wider than I’d like just from sitting and watching all the crap I do.  But when you look like the Skipper just swallowed Gilligan whole, it might be time to consider Slim-Fast.

 

While Lem is failing miserably to convince the guys he hasn’t gone crazy from drinking wood-grain alcohol, enter Liz, Dave’s wife and the requisite blonde glamour girl (it’s the 50’s, dude).  We know Liz is Not Long For This World as in addition to showing us some leg, her every move is accompanied by 42nd Street strip-show music.  Holy crow, she smokes too!  This wanton strumpet even has the audacity to talk back to her husband!  In front of all his friends, even!  And just in case there was any doubt left that we’re dealing with the BAD GIRL, it is (coyly) revealed that she wears leopard print undies.  Bye Liz, it’s been nice knowing you.  Oh well, at least the boom mike is still here to keep us company.  I hope that thing earned a large paycheck because it sure gets a lot of screen time.

 

Cut back to what may or may not be the swamp – kinda looks like it, but who can tell in this light?  Here we meet our Hunky Male Lead with the altogether hunky moniker of Steve Benton.  He’s the hunky state wildlife commissioner, but the logo on the side of his truck could read Rachael Ray's Deep-Fried Dicks for all we can make out in the gloom.  In any case, we know he’s the hunky male lead as he can roll around in swamp mud all day without getting his hunky clothes dirty or mussing his perfect hunky coiffure.  And as per 1950’s film decree, his hunky acting ability falls somewhere between a rutabaga and Pauly Shore (to give Steve some credit I think he’s a little closer to a rutabaga).  Along with him is the brunette cast member, who we can tell is the GOOD GIRL due to the far more respectable name of Nan and the absence of bare legs.  This is Hunky Steve’s fiancée who exists for the sole purpose of being ignored because she’s a girl.

 

Anyway, some of the most unconvincing screams in the history of cinema alert Nice Nan and Hunky Steve to the presence of Liz, who decided to take herself on a nice constitutional in the fetid swamp while wearing a short minidress and pumps.  She’s discovered the body of poor old Lem, dead and coated in what appears to be used motor oil (which in hindsight gives the impression that Greasy Man from the general store had just come back from a romantic rendezvous with one of the leeches).  The cigar chompin’ town sheriff figures Lem met with the business end of a gator.  The town doctor (called “Doc” in a flash of astounding originality) reaches the far more sensible conclusion that there are mutant alligator octopuses lurking in the swamp.  So Hunky Steve heads out to search for mutant alligator octopus Hefty bag leeches, bringing Nan along so he can ignore her because she’s a girl.

 

Meanwhile, Dave sets out to make a grocery delivery (wave hello to the nice boom mike), which gives Lascivious Liz a chance to head out into the swamp again, this time to play the two-backed beastie with Cal.  Hmm, Liz got over finding that gruesome dead body pretty fast.  I guess Cal is supposed to be Hunky too since his clothes are clean and he doesn’t wear a bad hat, but he looks a bit too much like a ferret to really pull it off.  Interestingly, the pair disdains the back seat of Cal’s car (that could easily house an entire Italian family complete with in-laws), opting instead for the comfort of two inches of stinky muck.  But whoops, here comes Fat Dave complete with shotgun, and he proceeds to chase the illicit lovers all around the swamp – or maybe around a cave; much of the time the only thing visible in the blackness is Dave’s disembodied white hat bobbin’ around.  It should go without saying that he chases them straight into the flailing tentacles of the mutant alligator octopus Hefty bag leeches.

 

This is as good a place as any to mention the sounds of Dave’s shotgun are exactly those of Elmer Fudd’s.  It’s pretty hard to take this sequence seriously when you keep expecting to see Daffy Duck picking his beak up off the ground.

 

The bit that follows has no business being funny, but is so woeful in its execution that it dares you not to laugh.  The sheriff naturally doesn’t buy into Dave’s story about mutant alligator octopus Hefty bag leeches and figures he blasted his cheating wife to kingdom come.  What Dave is demonstrating, by the way, is known formally as Terminal Honesty™ and informally as Fuck The Truth™.  Anyway, the big guy hangs himself in his cell that night, but the way the shot is angled makes him look less a tragic suicide and more the world’s most morbidly obese piñata.

 

Even with two disappearances on his hands, Hunky Steve rejects a proposal to use dynamite to kill the mutant alligator octopus Hefty bag leeches.  See, such drastic action would utterly destroy all the natural wildlife and possibly the global environment.  Now I’m reasonably eco-friendly, but to hear him tell it, farting outdoors is enough to annihilate everything it took Mother Nature zillions of years to create.  Also, please ignore the fact that it’s been firmly established not once but twice that all the local fauna is currently absent, which would seem to indicate a problem a wildlife commissioner might be vaguely interested in.  It’s Nan who tries the hardest to convince him to get off his lazy ass and do something but she’s, you know, a girl.

 

Meanwhile, Pooter and Stank are poling the water, hoping to cash in on the reward for findin’ theyselves some o’ them daid bodies.  To make a short story even shorter, they’re rudely yoinked out of the boat by floating garbage bags and taken to a hidden lair.  Unfortunately for the film (and lucky for us), this is the one genuinely well-lit scene in the entire movie.  We get a good long gander at our monsters as they indulge in what can only be described as a giant hickey party with their captives (Liz and Cal are still alive by the way, though already pretty hickied up at this point).

 

This is the movie’s terrifying set piece, the one we’ve been waiting for and the one that made 50’s audiences shriek with fear.  Tremble, ye mortals, at the abominations that menace our innocent victims!  Marvel at the visible corners of the plastic bags!  Be amazed by the clear outlines of scuba gear underneath!  Bear witness as the actors inside struggle valiantly against the weight of the water that has completely filled their suits!  And quake with fear at the leeches’ inhumanly googly eyes and the vicious suckers painted onto their flaccid and flailing plastic tentacles!  Horror!  Horror, I tells ya!

 

In response to the disappearance of all these pillars of the community, the sheriff calls together a search party composed of every man willing to be smeared with offal and wear a bad hat.  The search is carried out in the middle of the night with handmade torches, but for some odd reason they don’t find anything.  Afterwards, Doc defies Hunky Steve by setting off some dynamite in the middle of the lake.

 

Okay, here’s where I have to pitch a bitch.  Seconds before the dynamite goes off, we see all four of the still very much ALIVE captives trapped in the underwater lair, which is currently a leech free zone.  Rather than make the short swim to freedom they loaf around moaning long enough for the shockwave to kill Pooter, Stank, and Cal.  After the brand new corpses float to the top, Doc reports that every single drop of blood has been drained from them and makes the important plot point that despite being missing for days, these men were only dead three or four hours before being found.  Uh, Doc, they looked okay thirty seconds ago before you fucking KILLED THEM with the fucking EXPLOSION from your fucking DYNAMITE!  Just sayin’.

 

Anyway, this finally clues in Hunky Steve that maybe it’s time he did something besides ignore his fiancée, and so he elects to take on the horrifying unstoppable mutant alligator octopus Hefty bag leeches on their home turf.  We’re treated to a few shots of someone who doesn’t even vaguely resemble Hunky Steve scuba diving in a swamp with delightfully clean water and oddly smooth sides.

 

Interspersed with the swimming pool shots comes the single most important part of the film, so sit up and pay attention.  Hey you in the back, put down that copy of Juggs.  Okay, is everybody with me?  Good.  As Doc stands there on the shore (ignoring Nan), he comes to the deeply contemplated and well-thought-out scientific conclusion that these things that he hasn’t even laid eyes on yet are, in fact…

 

Wait for it…

 

ATOMIC MUTANTS!  Remember, this was 1959, and any monster that wasn’t atomic got beat up for its lunch money.

 

So will Hunky Steve ultimately triumph against these nuclear mutant horrors?  Will Liz be saved from her watery doom?  Will Doc go to jail for murdering three men?  Will anyone ever listen to Nan?  Sorry, ain’t tellin’, you’ll have to watch for yourself.

 

Can you believe somebody actually remade this thing last year?  Yeah, I know right now they’re busy remaking everything that ever existed, but Attack of the Giant Leeches?  I honestly believe that Hollywood has simply run out of movie titles – the mere existence of The Happening backs this theory up rather convincingly.  The method now is to take any damn thing they feel like, slap on another film’s title, and try to pretend thought was put into it.  That’s how we got violated with the criminally execrable Day of the Dead remake.

 

But nuts to all that, this is the real deal.  You don’t need Mike and the ‘bots to give it the treatment, the flick simply screams to be mocked.  But credit where it’s due, this was an earnest effort.  You can tell the filmmakers really tried to make something good out of what they had, which probably amounted to thirty-nine cents and an expired bus transfer.  But if you ask me, the film not only surpassed the ambitions of its makers, it made them eat dirt.  Every failed element clicks with its fellows to create a mosaic of such glorious wretchedness that the movie itself falls into the background, leaving you free to enjoy every bad hat and plastic bag on display.  Ultimately, what we have been gifted with is a fun little hour-long brain break worth the all time I just spent insulting it.

 

FINAL RATING:  Deserves to be inflicted on as many friends as you care to risk losing.