Customer Reviews

Attack of the Giant Leeches [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is one of those movies that are so terrible that you have alot of fun watching it and making fun of it. The swamp natives are stereotypically ignorant backwater white trash, and the leading lady is ever so stereotypically ready to faint and hide her face at every scene, and always leaves the dreadful work up to the big strong men. That and make coffee ofcourse. She always was making coffee for the men. The acting is beautifully sub-par and almost seems as if it was shot while they were rehearsing their lines (except for the believeable character of the sheriff). You'll marvel at the scientific dialogue of the "doctor" and his theories of the leeches origin (hokey fourth grade science that is, almost as bad as the movie where the locals needed "SODIUM...WE NEED SODIUM! ") You'll cheer when the giant leeches attack the bad people, and love every leech sighting. This video edition is in terrible shape and is so dirty it's too dark to make out at times (usually the thick swamps)...but that's why it's so cheaply priced. I highly recommend this for camp movie buffs, and especially for B sci-fi lovers like myself. It's a gem. You know you want it, or you wouldn't have found it on Amazon...I mean...how many people go and search for "Attack of the Giant Leeches" unless they liked movies like that in the first place? Thoroughly enjoyable.

11 out of 12 reviewers (now 12 with mine) are in agreement. 'Attack of the Giant Leeches' is all about the very sexy, kittenish Yvette Vickers in the role of the town tramp Liz Walker. Yvette undoubtedly got the part based on her recent popularity as the July '59 "Playmate of the Month" and all the males out there who were in their adolescence back in the late fifties certainly appreciated her inclusion in the film. She certainly made it watchable for me.

Make no mistake, you're watching this movie for one reason and one reason only. Thanks for the memories Miss Vickers!

Note: Can you believe it, one reviewer actually prefered the leeches over Yvette. Now that's scary.

OK, so there are some goofy hillbilly types running around the swamp, getting bled dry by gigantic leeches. Yes, the leeches are grown men wearing plastic trash bags. The hero is a living Ken doll. So what?! The ONLY reason to watch this flick is to see Yvette Vickers (Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman) in her underwear! She dances! She prances! She applies body-lotion! She parades about like the free-spirit she is! Hallelujah! I remember seeing her in this movie 33 years ago. I was 9 years old. I never forgot her! Buy this movie now...

It must have been great to live in the 1950's. All you had to really worry about was communists and radiation. The communists were evil soulless people who wanted to take over the Earth with a fleet of Sputniks, and radiation turned any animal into a giant killer.

So goes Attack of the Giant Leeches. Underwater monsters that kill without warning from the swampy deep. Apparantly they have an underwater cavern under the swamp where they take their victims to feed on them later. The leeches themselves are a marvel of 1950's technology. They look more like starfish than leeches. Actually they look like men wearing large, unformed rubber suits. Our hero ends up blowing the swamp with dynamite. Of course he doesn't want to, he's an environmentalist (they had those in the 50's). Before he blows the swamp to hell though, he must show his physique and skin dive for a good ten minutes, giving female viewers a thrill. But to no avail, fighting leeches with spearguns is futile.

Now lets get to why anyone would really watch this movie...drum roll please......Yvette Vickers. Oh she is hotter than a firecracker this one. Beautiful legs, face, and a killer bod that she doesn't mind showing off at all. She's Betty Page and Mamie Van Doren rolled up into one. Look how beautiful as she runs through the swamp. She's all wet and she's breathing hard which accentuates her beautiful bosom. Is she running from leeches? No, from her jealous fat husband with a shotgun. How's that for asubplot? Check this movie out, you can't beat the price.

Yvette Vickers and her tube of lotion make this a must-have.

If you try hard, you can find both positive and negative things to say of this movie. One definite plus is Yvette Vickers, who looks good in leopard-skin underwear. The tawdry little plot is a combination of Erskine Caldwell style southern lust and adultery portrayed against the background of a 1950s/early 1960s low-budget sci-fi flick. Some of the supporting characters resemble the "gloom, despair, and misery" guys from TV's Hee Haw. There are atomic-size leeches in the local swamp. The authorities are baffled when local-yocals mysteriously disappear. As in many of these old sci-fi flicks, the script wastes time having the various characters dispute that anything unnatural is going on, and then arguing over how to deal with the problem.

Ultimately, this movie can either be totally disregarded, or taken as unintentional humor. I usually have a weakness for movies that are "so-bad-they're-good," hence the 2 stars rating. Others beware.

It is silly and incredibly tacky but this is a truly fun 50s drive in flick. A beautiful damsel <Playbo playmate I believe>, silly music, terrible acting and very silly montsters ... but if y ou like campy movies, don't miss this!! No true violence or foul language, it is safe fun for everyone! Keep the lights on, tho there are some genuinely scary parts if you let yourself get into it! For fans of drive in movies only. Great fun!

This is a silly but fun romp where people close to a military establishment that dumps nuke waste arte taken away to ... ?

This is not a masterpiece like THEM or TARANTULA but it is a lot fun to watch.

Yvette Vickers is, to put it simply, gorgeous ! Tho it is uneven, there is a spooky mood over the movie. I have never been to Florida but there is something very creepy about the swamps and within the budget < which would get you a coffee and do nut today>, works well.

I can speculate and say it would be a minor classic had the leeches never been shown, but it was made fo r the drive in crowsd and the luckier ones were not interested in the movie by that point. :-)

Anyway, this i s a campy, fun film for the whole family <no real violence> and Yvette is certainly candy for the eye!

For B fans mostly but it does have some haunting moments. I am curious why swampland has not been used more often as a setting for chiiling movies. Shhhhhhh, don't tell! I just got an idea!

This is one of the zillion Roger Corman horror flicks of the fifties in which normal creatures are turned into monsters thanks to you guessed it, nuclear energy. This time it's the bloodthirsty leech that gets the monster treatment, replete with actors in rubber leech suits. At a mercifully short 62 minutes, one doesn't have too much time to really fault this sometimes howlable horror. Ken Clark (a blond Clint Walker) is hopelessly deadpan and Yvette Vickers camps it up as the swamp slut. If you're an aficionado of the 50s giant bug movies, you'll have fun with this one.

The MST3K version is the version I saw and that
was just watchable as I can't imagine sitting through
this garbate without Joel and The Bots.

Actually I would recommend the Mystery Science
Theater version as The Bot Sketches are pretty damn
funny in this that you will die laughing with glee!!!
The first sketch working with difficult people
is a hoot.

Ask for the movie itself, typically turkey, except
we now have dumb hillbilly's thrown into the mix,
this was before the term white trash became popular
in our society. The effects are laughable, but this
what this film is, a really bad movie that'll
make you laugh. There's a side story about
some stupid floozy cheating on her husband, but
the Leeches are the main attraction. At least
we had some sort of setup with the death scenes.
It's classic B-Movie cinema in action.