Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Posted By: brian@brianschell.com February 9, 2022

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s a creature feature, and it’s okay. Not quite awful. Not quite great.

Synopsis

Lem, a hillbilly rows his boat across the lake. He sees something in the water and shoots at it. He takes another swig from his jug and moves on. Credits roll.

A bunch of locals hang out in Walker’s General Store. Lem, the guy from the pre-credit sequence is there, telling his story about the man-shaped thing with suckers on its arms. They all tell him he’s been drinking too much.

Big Fat Dave, the owner of the general store, goes in the back room to talk to his slutty wife Liz. She’s going out but won’t tell him where. Dave’s clearly out of his league with her.

Steve Benton and Nan Greyson are out on the swamp putting animals out of their misery. He’s the game warden. The two start to kiss, but are interrupted by a scream. It’s Liz, and she’s found a dead man; it’s Lem. Steve knows that it wasn’t an alligator attack, but the sheriff says it was.

Doc Greyson explains squids and octopuses to Steve and Nan. There’s no way these salt-water creatures could be living in their swamp, so it’s a bit of a mystery.

The two go out in a rowboat later to investigate. They hear some things, but don’t see anything.

Dave and Liz argue again. She wants him to sell out and leave town after the killing. Liz and Cal are having an affair, and they go over to the swamp to make out in secret. Dave’s out there with a shotgun searching, and he finds them. He forces them to walk deeper into the swamp at gunpoint. Suddenly, the giant leeches come up behind Cal and Liz and kill them both. Surprise!

The sheriff offers a fifty dollar reward if someone can find the bodies. They all just assume that Dave killed the pair, as everyone knew they were fooling around. They arrest Dave, and soon find him hanging in his cell.

Doc Greyson still thinks there’s some previously-unknown life out there, but Steve thinks that’s unlikely. Meanwhile, a pair of the local men are still hunting for the missing bodies in the swamp. They think it’s odd that they haven’t seen any gators in this swamp. The leeches capsize their boat and take them both.

Next we see the leeches drag the men into their secret cave lair. Cal and Liz are there, but they aren’t dead. The leeches are keeping them alive and feeding from them.

All the townspeople head to the swamp to search for the two most recently missing men. They also note the lack of gators.

Doc wants to use explosives to bring the bodies up, but game warden Steve says that’s too destructive. The next day, Doc bombs the swamp anyway. Three of the bodies flat to the surface; all except Liz. We see that she’s still alive in the cave.

Doc examines the bodies and thinks it’s something like a leech. He also says they hadn’t been dead more than an hour or so before the bodies were found.

Steve and Mike put on scuba equipment and go down into the swamp with spear guns. The sheriff and his men watch from shore, because he’s a know-it-all jerk. Steve shoots one of the creatures, not realizing there are more than one.

“Maybe the proximity to Cape Canaveral has something to do with it. They use atomic energy there,” Doc hypothesizes. Liz finally floats to the surface, dead and covered in sucker-marks. Steve and Mike attack the leech and drive it off.

They drop a bunch of dynamite into the swamp, set up the detonator, and Steve presses the plunger. BOOM! Giant dead leeches float to the surface. Problem solved! No, we see a few more just out of range.

Commentary

It’s a very straightforward, by-the-numbers creature feature. The acting is fine, the pacing is good, and the monsters are silly and ridiculous. Steve, the main character, is about as wooden as an actor can get, though he looks really good doing it.. The actors who play Dave and Liz do well here, but their parts end before the halfway point.

The underwater photography was pretty good for the time, but it’s no “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” The monsters themselves are silly looking men in costumes that look like a cross between a starfish and octopus.

I like how we’re supposed to sympathize and root that Liz makes it out alive, when she was a slutty cheater, a gold-digger, and caused her husband to kill himself. It’s a happy ending for the two romantic leads. The sheriff gets taken down a notch. And the Doctor has some interesting new specimens to study.