Review: Attack of the Giant Leeches

Set in the Florida bayou, people are mysteriously vanishing. Bruno VeSota plays a brutish storeowner whose wife (Yvette Vickers) gets caught in the arms of another man (Michael Emmet) and is about to shoot them when they’re whisked away underwater by some kind of giant aquatic beasts. Game warden Ken Clark investigates.

 

Not-bad AIP silliness from producer Gene Corman, Executive Producer Roger Corman, and actor and screenwriter Leo Gordon (who wrote “The Wasp Woman” and “The Terror” for Roger, and appeared in Roger’s excellent “The Intruder”). This 1959 creature feature from director Bernard L. Kowalski (who later directed episodes of “Baywatch Nights” and “Thunder in Paradise”) is silly but kinda effective and decent amusement, though it does drown in talk a bit too much to really recommend wholeheartedly.

 

The best asset here is the swampy scenery captured by cinematographer John M. Nickolaus (Corman’s “The Terror”, TV’s “The Waltons”), whilst the giant calamari monster suits are obvious but fun. I can see a certain kind of undemanding audience enjoying this, for me it’s probably more of a near-miss. I do like all the yucky, grisly giant leech attacks, I just wish there were more of them and more frequent. I particularly liked a creepy, post-explosion scene where bodies rise to the water’s surface. That’s quite something for a film from 1959. I also liked how Gordon’s script changes perspectives/protagonists a year before “Psycho” did the same thing. However the absolutely terrible Bruno VeSota somehow manages to get more screen time than the more interesting philandering lovers (Michael Emmet and Yvette Vickers). So that drags the film down a touch. Bit of a flat ending, too. Not a bad film, but not one terribly worth your time either unless you’re a Corman completist like me. 

 

Rating: C+

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