2807. Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959)

Starring: Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepard

Director: Bernard L. Kowalski

Running Time: 62 mins

Attack Of The Giant Leeches is an American film about a mystery that unfolds in a small town after three people go missing by a swamp. Monsters are suspected as the culprits, but the local police refuse to believe the theories.

The title says it all. If you’re going in expecting anything out of Attack Of The Giant Leeches, you’ll be sorely disappointed. A tedious and stupid B-movie in every way, the film is a lifeless watch throughout, punctuated only by brief moments of laughably awful sci-fi horror. There’s no point to this movie, and it takes far more effort to get through than should ever be the case.

At just 62 minutes, you’d think that this film would at least be a little bit of throwaway fun. It could have been a short, sharp extravaganza of silly sci-fi horror, without too much worry about supporting real dramatic intrigue over a longer time period.

However, rather than having a bit of fun with its ludicrous sci-fi premise, there are barely any giant leeches to be seen in this movie. And that’s not just because of budgetary concerns, but simply because the screenplay spends most of the time on a totally uninteresting human story.

Although we get a brief glimpse of a giant leech attack in the first ten minute, it then takes another half hour for anything remotely enjoyable to pop up on screen. In the meantime, a bunch of characters wander aimlessly across the pokey sets as the film attempts to develop emotional drama with an affair and some personal distress at the disappearances.

The brief moments of joy come in the form of the hilariously bad giant leeches (they’re just a couple of guys in big rubber costumes), as well as a ridiculous performance from Yvette Vickers (of Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman fame) that seems to entirely consist of uncomfortable moans and groans whenever the leeches approach.

Director Bernard L. Kowalski has no idea of how to make this film stand upright, and with painfully slow pacing and terrible writing throughout, there’s barely a memorable moment.

And as moronic as the giant leeches are (they’re just a couple of guys in big rubber costumes), those scenes can’t come soon enough after the ridiculous boredom of the alleged ‘drama’.

So, although the film runs for barely over an hour, it feels like three. A painfully exhausting watch that never even lets us have some fun with its most laughable elements, Attack Of The Giant Leeches is uninteresting, unentertaining and unmemorable in every way, and that’s why I’m giving it a 3.0 overall.