{"id":649,"date":"2014-02-22T16:49:13","date_gmt":"2014-02-22T21:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bmoviemaniacs.com\/?p=649"},"modified":"2014-02-22T16:49:13","modified_gmt":"2014-02-22T21:49:13","slug":"attack-of-the-giant-leeches-1959","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/attack-of-the-giant-leeches-1959\/","title":{"rendered":"Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"leeches\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lem, a moonshiner famous for telling tall tales claims he saw a giant \u2018octypus\u2019 while poaching deer near the swamp.\u00a0 When he goes missing, Game Warden Steve (Ken Clark) and a handful of men search for him.\u00a0 They find him dead and drained of all his blood.\u00a0 Still no one in the Florida country town believes Lem\u2019s stories except Steve, his girlfriend Nan (Jan Shepard), and her father, Doc Greyson (Tyler McVey).\u00a0 Steve and Nan take a boat out on the swamp to search for anything out of the ordinary, but come up empty.\u00a0 Meanwhile back at the general store, slatternly Liz Walker (Yvette Vickers) teases and belittles her wimpy husband Dave (Bruno VeSota) and takes off to be sleazy elsewhere.\u00a0 After a bunch of conversation that goes nowhere we find that Doc Greyson wants to dynamite part of the swamp to flush out whatever killed Lem but Steve will not allow it.\u00a0 Here\u2019s where this film differs from most mutant creature films.\u00a0 Steve, the game warden takes his\u00a0job\"\"<\/a>\u00a0seriously and wants to protect the animals in his jurisdiction.\u00a0 He won\u2019t allow Doc to dynamite the swamp or do anything else that might harm wildlife in the area.\u00a0 Compare this to Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) in which the \u2018scientists\u2019 throw chemicals, poison, bombs, and everything but the kitchen sink into poor Gilly\u2019s lagoon in the name of science.\u00a0 I digress.\u00a0 Back at the general store, Liz puts on her favorite low-cut frock and heads out to the swamp for her date with local creep, Cal.\u00a0 Liz\u2019s husband, Dave, wielding a shotgun, surprises the couple mid embrace which ruins the mood completely.\u00a0 He then chases them through the swamp at gunpoint and forces them into the water.\u00a0 He just wants to scare them though and as they attempt to crawl out of the swamp a couple of slimy, suction cup covered creatures grab the lovers and pull them down into the swamp.\u00a0 Dave, shocked, tells the police, but oddly, they don\u2019t believe his tentacled fish-man story and toss him in the brig.\u00a0 The sheriff offers a reward to whoever finds the bodies and two more locals disappear.\u00a0 Doc Greyson introduces a theory that\u00a0nearby Cape Canaveral\u2019s radiation may have caused the leeches\u2019 mutation\u00a0and brings up dynamite again but Steve vetoes his suggestion.\u00a0 As soon as Steve leaves, the doctor and Nan place charges in the swamp anyway and up come the bodies of three of the four missing locals.\u00a0 Since Liz hasn\u2019t turned up yet, Steve and a former Navy buddy strap on air tanks and go swamp diving.\u00a0 An underwater battle between Steve and a giant leech guy leaves the leech wounded and Steve convinced that maybe blowing up the swamp isn\u2019t such a bad idea after all.\u00a0 A huge blast brings the dead leech and Liz to the surface.\u00a0 Everyone sighs with relief because the nightmare is over\u2026or is it?
\nI liked aspects of Attack of the Giant Leeches, but on the whole it left me cold.\u00a0 The story, written by Leo Gordon (The Terror, Tobruk) held my interest, but the acting was pretty poor and that dragged it down a peg.\u00a0 The eerie music fit and helped set the stage for bloodsucking fun.\u00a0 Bernard L. Kowalski (Night of the Blood Beast, Rawhide TV series) uses a fairly straight forward approach to directing.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing arty here, but no matter.\u00a0 A few scenes really stand out.\u00a0 The scenes in the leeches\u2019 underground lair are pretty creepy.\u00a0 Watching mutant leeches suck the blood out of their captives and leave their hickey-covered bodies in a crumpled heap made the film worth watching.\u00a0 All in all Attack of the Giant Leeches is worth a watch and at sixty-two minutes, the leech-filled time flies by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lem, a moonshiner famous for telling tall tales claims he saw a giant \u2018octypus\u2019 while poaching deer near the swamp.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[25,77,83,228,261,381,453],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-25","tag-b-movies","tag-bernard-l-kowalski","tag-jan-shepard","tag-ken-clark","tag-science-fiction","tag-tyler-mcvey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bmoviemaniacs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}