Customer Reviews

Bucket of Blood/Attack of the Giant Leeches

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Though Marengo does not have thousands of titles available, that is what makes them unique. Each title can have more attention devoted to it and time to find the best elements. Though this was an early (pre equipment upgrade at Marengo) offering, it is well noted that this copy of "Attack of the Giant Leeches" is the best print available on DVD! It was the first time I was able to see what was happening in dark scenes and the rest is crisp. Marengo has several horror titles available and many other genera with more on the way - most all double feature at bargain prices without the bargain quality.

As for "A Bucket of Blood", it does have some early splices but again, overall the element was clean and crisp. A great addition for those who do not have either title.

These two films are from the Corman production mill. Roger directed A Bucket of Blood, which is a very entertaining (and brief) satire on coffeehouse/beatnik art pretensions. The Giant Leech movie has a couple of funny scenes with Bruno veSota and Yvette Vickers but otherwise falls flat. The print of A Bucket of Blood used for this DVD starts off very badly; it's choppy and distracting from the wonderful opening monologue ("I will talk to you of art, for there is nothing else to talk about..."). Worse, the sound quality is muffled, and it sounds like noise reduction was applied to a master tape that wasn't recorded with Dolby - instead of removing hiss, all the high and low tones are reduced to a flat middle-range. Sometimes it's difficult to understand the dialogue for this reason. The MGM VHS release looks and sounds better than this DVD, but of course, that tape comes without Attack of the Giant Leeches...

This "Killer B " DVD Double Feature released by Marengo Fims brings back the classic Creature Double Features I remember so well as a kid. The films are so bad they are fantastic! Do yourself a favor and buy this DVD!

I have always been a fan of 'Attack of the Giant Leeches' with the (sadly departed) Yvette Vickers and two very unbelievable giant leeches. It's cheap and tacky-looking, but never tacky. It has a great script and some clever use of a non-existent budget. -- I recently discovered that this movie had originally been released as a double-bill with 'Bucket of Blood', starring Dick Miller (Joe Dante's go-to character actor), about a poor schlep who works at a coffee house where all the cool people hang out and read their poetry (ala late 1950s, early 1960). He soon discovers that his sculptures make him the toast of the beat generation. But if those crazy beats only new what went into Dick Miller's sculptures, heh heh heh. -- Now you can get both movies on one disc and pretend you're at a drive-in theater in 1959. -- This double feature is truly a ton of fun. You have your monster feature with 'Attack of the Giant Leeches', where giant leeches are running amok in an everglade town. Yvette Vickers is the gorgeous (and nasty) wife of the local general store owner and she's having an affair with the local guy who has the most muscles. Soon the leeches put in an appearance and dynamite makes an appearance later on. Lots of fun. -- The really nice surprise is 'Bucket.' Roger Corman, himself, directed it (I would assume in 4 days with a budget of 800 dollars), and it has its toungue very much in its cheek. And the movie really is funny. The subject may be kind of gruesome -- man makes sculptures as people keep disappearing -- but it is done in a clever way and shows genuine wit. Dick Miller -- who seems to have been born at the age of 39 -- puts in a great performance, as does everyone. The stand out is Barboura Morris, a real beauty with deep-set eyes, who plays the coffee-house owner and champion of Dick Miller, even before he becomes a celebrity with his sculptures. This really is one fun double feature. If you like movies that are cheaply made but somehow seem to possess more literate quality because of that fact, this disc is for you.

The key thing to know about "A Bucket of Blood," the first of this double feature DVD is that Roger Corman made it a year before he did "Little Shop of Horror." Both movies starred Dick Miller, both were made in less than a week on shoestring budgets (five days for $30,000), and both films constitute horror-comedy, although "Little Shop" is decidedly more over the top. But do not be surprised if you like this 1959 Corman film better.

The horror element is actually in vogue again with the release of a new version of "House of Wax" this week, since Miller plays Walter Paisley, a bus boy at The Yellow Door, an art house care that is the place to go for the Beat Generation. Paisley is a would-be-sculptor wants to be accepted by all of the cool cats, but he does not really have any talent. Then he accidentally kills his cat and when he covers it with clay he is suddenly proclaimed as having a "talent" for lifelike artwork. Another accident, of a sort, gives him the opportunity to move on to human figures, at which point Walter starts looking for new subjects. The ending strikes you as being something out of "The Twilight Zone," but up to that point it works for the most part because of the performances by Miller, Barboura Morris as Carla, and most of the supporting roles.

The comedy part comes not from the killing and sculpting but from the movie's send up of the beatnik scene. The cafe is filled with Beat poets and folk singers. Part of the reason it works is that what is happening at the cafe is not really parody, but earnest attempts in the accepted Beat style. The babble coming out of the mouth of Maxwell (Julian Burton) has the appropriate sense of pseudo-profundity and the guy walking around playing the guitar and singing is Alex Hassilev, who was about to help form the Limeliters. This movie was remade in 1995 as one of the cable television movies presented under the umbrella title "Roger Corman Presents," but that was not half the movie the original black & white, quick & dirty film is as far as I am concerned.

"Attack of the Giant Gila Monster" is one of those films where you take a real animal and having it crawl through miniature sets. The tagline for this film was: "Only Hell could breed such an enormous beast. Only God could destroy it!" But this 1959 film from director Ray Kellogg ("The Killer Shrews," "The Green Berets"--how is that for a credit combo?), filmed in north Texas for $138,000, is a lot more low-keyed than those lines would suggest. In fact, what is interesting given when this film is made is the key relationship between Sheriff Jeff (Fred Graham) and young Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan). The kid is working on his hot rod and instead of busting his chops the sheriff really functions as a mentor: he says he is concerned about the kids in town, and you actually believe it. The idea of having a movie in which a teenage hot rodder, who also sings like Pat Boone who is not a juvenile delinquent, or at least treated like one by the cops, is rather refreshing, although admittedly the character is a bit heavy on the saccharine. But Sullivan has a natural charm and the guy wrote his own songs, so give him some credit.

But since we are talking letting a Gila monster wander through miniatures in a film with teenage hot rodders, of course this movie received "MST3K" treatment (Season 4, when Joel turned Crow and Servo into "The Thing With Two Heads" as inspired by the movie of the same name"). My major complaint about this film is that the day for night shooting is so dark I have a hard time figuring out what is happening. Obviously the special effects budget is such that most of the "horror" is suggested by quick cuts rather than actually showing everything. Still, I like the way that everybody is pretty level headed in this film and deal with the giant Gila monster in a relatively intelligent manner without wasting a lot of time and effort. Yes, finding the monster, which is the size of several houses, should not take so long, but then the movie would be shorter and it is only 74 minutes anyway.

action scenes: man shoots @ leech @ night on shore & gets it later but unshown how, a couple get it after being chased into swamp via upset spouse, 2 gator hunters get it from capsized boat after 1 of them just jumps in-funny & the underwater fight w/ marine biologists which involves underwater bombs but it ends w/ @ least 1 sole survivin leech.
ms vickers' accent/behavior, bruno vesota-"the choppers", gene roth-"earth vs the spider", ken clark & others are a hoot seen/in this film.
the marengo films corp. is the best version for completeness/film clarity-for this reason dont get any other co. .

First off I will mention the Marengo DVD has the BEST Attack of the Giant Leeches transfer,well it beats Alpha and Elite. The Bucket of Blood transfer is also very well done after the first minute. If you own Alpha's DVD of either one, get rid of them :)
For those that havent seen these movies, if you like 1950s B movies with weird monsters and cult stories, I highly recommend this DVD - not just for the films but the transfers.
Attack of the Giant Leeches has Yvette Vickers, Bruno Ve Sota and a cast of Roger Corman regulars in swamp land getting the blood sucked from over-sized leeches. A very minor love triangle is thrown in and Yvette looks hot here. This movie is also one of the MST3K experiments, and it is a good pick, but I can watch this with or without the MST treatment. Its a harmless one hour cheesy movie that is entertaining.
A Bucket of Blood has the legendary Dick Miller as a man who kills people and makes 'art' out of them - sculptures basically. It is a lot of fun as Dick kills people who threaten or dislike him and makes sculptures out of them and makes money - of course it all backfires, but it is also another fun 1 hour movie.
Great DVD, good fun flicks and worth the price.

Get the popcorn, a couple of cold beers, some friends and watch these two old drive-in horror flicks in the dark... it's a kick making fun of the actors, the monsters, the directing, the lighting... everything... a bargain by Marengo Films. I had some friends over... we laughed ourselves silly... one of the characters even looked like my boss... and best of all, he was eaten by one of the monsters...!..