Coventry Review of Attack of the Giant Leeches

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Early creature-feature. Cheap and harmless

[3/10 · 16 March 2005]

Something's wrong at a remote hillbilly swamp, where all the alligators seem to have disappeared and been replaced by giant ugly monsters that are impossible to kill, even with heavy shotguns. The local sheriff initially doesn't accept the presence of man-eating monsters but he quickly has to acknowledge their existence when more and more villagers go missing in the swamp. This is a typical example of Z-grade monster movies from the 50's. Mostly, these films are from the hands of Samuel Z. Arkoff and Roger Corman and they feature lousy acting, bad editing, unclear cinematography and immeasurable amounts of cheese. Yet, I don't see the point in carefully pointing out all the elements that went wrong in this production. This "Attack of the Giant Leeches" is worth one viewing, definitely not more than that and even then you need to have a lot of tolerance and a wide attention span. The "best" sequence in this film unquestionably involves a chubby townie who chases his adulterous wife (a yummy blonde) and her lover into the swamp, where a hideous bloodsucker eventually does the nasty work for him.