Attack of the Giant Leeches

Mr. Jonathon T. Beckett

at 10:19 pm

Trapper Lem Sawyer is attacked by a strange creature in the Florida swamps. He manages to shoot it and it sinks underwater. Later on he is regaling his tale to a group of sceptical people in Dave Walker’s grocery shop. They just think he’s been a bit liberal with the moonshine. However, that night Lem turns up dead, found by Walker’s wife Liz. Soon several people are dissapearing in the swampland, but Game Warden Steve Benton’s efforts to investigate the matter, are hampered by an unhelpful local Sherriff. Little do they know, that there are giant mutant leeches living in a cave under the water, storing their still living victims for a constant supply of blood.

Well, this certainly does what it says on the tin. Theres plenty of giant leeches, and they do attack at regular intervals. Rather, men in unconvincing rubber suits wrapping themselves round various screaming actors, who somehow manage to keep a straight face.

Still,I must not put too much of a downer on this film. Its very low budget, and really the director does an admirable job in creating a nice little horror. There are actually a couple of very creepy, stand out scenes. One is in the leeches lair, where the monsters feast on their various victims, the other is when the bodies of the victims slowly rise to the surface after dynamite is used in the river. Ken Clark is pretty wooden as the main lead Steve ‘By-the book’ Benton, far more interesting are a couple of the supporting characters, especially the machocistic Dave Turner(Bruno Vesota), his unfaithful wife Liz(former Playboy centrefold Yvette Vickars) and her lover Cal(Michael Emmet). Interestingly enough, the script for this film was written by well knowncharacter actor Leo Gordon, and not so suprisingly the executive producer was Roger Corman.

The picture and sound quality are okay on the dvd. No restoration job this one though. 3 out of 5
Rating: 3 / 5