The best thing one could say about "Attack of the Giant Leeches" is that they would have made good bait for sharks or deep-sea fishing. But these so-called monsters are laughable. As a terrorizing horror, they can only work if the actors stand still, make a face and then scream. The folks can't fight off or use their arms to push away the slow, lumbering slugs that crawl onto them and then suck their blood. Except for an intimation of murder in this film, it is really a laugh all around. The script is lousy, most of the actors are wooden, and there never is an "attack" anywhere in the film. I kept waiting for these things to crawl out of the swamp and tear into the town. But these little blobs just waited for wimps to come their way. The only actor who did a decent job was Tyler McVey as Doc Greyson. The worst of the rest was the lead, Ken Clark. He played Steve Benton, a real doofus for a state wildlife officer. This may be the cheapest set ever made and used for one of these nickel and dime horror flicks.

It would be tempting to say that Attack of the Giant Leeches is a colossal failure. The funny thing is that if it were released today, it would likely be praised for its campy genius; the way it accurately parodies the 50′s era B-flicks that pitted steely muscle-men against over-sized creatures of just about every kind. But that's just the thing—this is the real deal. And when I say "real," I mean it's really funny.If you don't know what it's about, allow me to fill you in: giant leeches kill stupid people. That's it. Sure, there's a little more to it than that, but it's not worth mentioning (And, I mean, come one: with a title like Attack of the Giant Leeches, are you seeing this because it's analogous to the literary brilliance glimpsed in Hamlet?). One cheesy scene after another documents the hi-jinks of dimwitted adulterers, stubborn wildlife officials, oddly resigned doctors, etc., etc., etc. The transitions between these occurrences are awkward and choppy—just like the acting—and the giant leeches look like men wearing black garbage bags. When we're finally allowed to see how they feed on their victims, it's actually pretty gruesome. They attach themselves to peoples' throats and drain their blood.I do think it's worth mentioning that as idiotic as all of this sounds, writer Leo Gordon actually makes an earnest effort to logically connect one event to the next and, to some measurable degree, at least acknowledge that his audience is not moronic and that this sort of feature is meant only to satisfy our most basic instincts.And that, of course, is to shy away in disgust and laugh while doing it. It was Stephen King who said that he believes "we're all mentally ill." Why else would we spend money to see something this dumb, gross, and—for its time—horrifying? Because, he suggests, there's something appealing about knowing that we're not in this situation. It's a form of affirmation that gives us the chance to feed what he calls "the gators" rolling around in that subterranean area of our brains.Or we could simply say that braving something this hideous is just a lot of fun.

The first third of this movie is worth watching for the lurid interactions between the sleazy slut played by Yvette Vickers and her wormy lothario."I didn't hurt you, did I?" he murmurs after sex on a blanket sprawled in the Everglades. (Couldn't this creep spring for a motel room?) Moments after hearing Vickers praise his muscles, he's blathering to her gun-wielding husband that she practically raped him! Vickers had an amazing body and pouty face that're used to great effect here. "No no -- please stay away," she tells the rapist-leech approaching her air pocket. She even manages to be sexy after death, in that rowboat. However, it seemed incredibly unimaginative to allow Ms. Vickers' character to die in this flick. (She seems to expire only moments after floating toward the surface.) How interesting it might have been to hear her account of her ordeal! Instead, the movie peters out on a dully anti-climactic note, almost as if Corman had run out of film. Though this flick was too long by half, I wanted more.Intriguingly, Vickers the actress died in a manner B-movie king Corman might have appreciated. Check her out on Wikipedia!

This is one of those so-bad-it's-good '50s monster flicks that is as much fun as its title, and stacks up as a quick and easy 60 minutes of monster madness. Residents of a small hick town are plagued by rubbery blood-sucking creatures living in a nearby swamp that kidnap human victims and keep them barely alive in an underwater cave so they can keep sucking them dry. For a movie of this era, it's pretty gruesome in the way the leeches suck their victims' flesh and how this leaves them as stone-faced corpses floating back up to the surface. It's always a treat to see sexy Yvette Vickers (ATTACK OF THE 50 FT. WOMAN) as the town tramp, who two-times her "tub of lard husband" (Bruno Ve Sota). With Gene Roth as the doubting sheriff. **1/2 out of ****