Classic Horrors Club

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) is a mean little movie. Its biggest flaw is the time it takes for the thankfully little-seen monsters to dispatch its despicable characters. I don’t know what backwater town is represented, but it’s one where there are almost no redeeming characters, including our heroes.

Let’s start with one of the non-heroes, Cal Moulton (Michael Emmet.) On one hand he commiserates with his buddy, Dave Walker (Bruno VeSta), owner of the general store, about troubles with his wife, Liz (Yvette Vickers.) On the other hand, he’s sleeping with her in the woods near the giant leech infested lake.

Liz is also a piece of work. She supposedly married Dave because he was kind to her after a failed marriage in which her ex-husband beat her. Neither she nor Cal are shy about their feelings when Dave catches them. She tells him she likes a “strong” man. He tells him he can’t see her tied to a “tub of lard” like him.

Poor Dave. I suppose he’s the sympathetic one. Naturally, he’s one of the first people killed when a giant leech sticks its head out of the water and waddles up behind him. This is after a local man and his jug of moonshine witness the creatures, but his buddies at the general store ridicule him.

Now for the “good guys.” Game warden Steve Benton (Ken Clark), the man who can probably save the day, is uncharacteristically a non-believer, refusing to drop dynamite into the lake because it would disrupt its natural habitat. He’s played so low-key that I wanted to shout at him to put a little more purpose in his step.

His girlfriend, Nan Greyson (Jan Shepard), does not stand by her man. Instead of supporting him in his noble efforts at wildlife preservation, she grows impatient with him and is even cruel to him when he won’t listen to her father, Doc Greyson (Tyler McVey), the only one who suspects there’s something unnatural happening in the woods.

I suppose it’s Doc, then, that’s the real hero. However, he doesn’t really know anything; he can only speculate. Therefore, we get no science lesson typical of an Atomic Age giant monster movie. The closest we get is that there’s a “freak” or “malformed alligator” terrorizing the town.

Near the end, he expresses a more pseudo-scientific explanation. We learn that this unidentified town must be in Florida because it’s near Cape Canaveral. If you didn’t know it, NASA uses atomic energy in its rockets, and that can cause mutation, gigantism, or in this case, both.

Back to the despicable characters, Sheriff Kevin (Gene Roth) is understandably resentful of Steve, a man who works for the state that he’d rather keep his nose out of county business. Even as dead bodies float to the surface of the lake, he chomps his cigar and scoffs at the proceedings.

Some of my comments may lead you to believe Attack of the Giant Leeches is atypical. In the end, though, it’s not much different from any number of low-budget monster movies of the 1950s. That doesn’t mean it’s not sometimes entertaining, but at only 62 minutes, it needs to be more exciting.