Region:
Video: Black & White
Weight factor: 1 item(s)

Plot Synopsis

This hysterical drive-in favorite pits a community of swamp-dwelling yokels against the silliest-looking monsters since the shag-rug aliens of The Creeping Terror. Despite the strange sucker-marks found on a dead trapper's blood-drained body, and a man's story of seeing his unfaithful wife and her lover dragged into the swamp by the creatures, the police refuse to acknowledge that something freaky is going on. Only after more trappers disappear does the local game warden decide to take action, which he does with a vengeance. When the leech lair is discovered in a cave beneath the swamp, explosives are employed to blow them to little rubber bits. It's hard to be too critical of this early film from prolific TV-director Bernard L. Kowalski (Night of the Blood Beast), since executive producer Roger Corman allocated a budget for this production that would hardly cover the catering bill on a major studio film -- even in 1960! Look carefully to spot the scuba tanks beneath the leech costumes. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Editorial Reviews:

Obese general store owner Bruno Ve Sota is married to sluttish teenager Yvette Vickers, who is cheating on him with his best friend, Michael Emmet. The trio ends up in the swamp, Ve Sota literally hunting down the adulterers with a shotgun. That situation alone should have made for an interesting tale, a sort of humid James M. Cain for the beat generation. But this is a Roger Corman production and into the mix are thrown a couple of stunt divers wearing what appears to be small ponchos with tentacles, the leeches of the title, and a hunky game warden (Ken Clark), who displays a disconcerting ignorance of alligators, the game he is hired to protect. The results are uneven at best but the swamp locations, filmed at Pasadena's Arboretum of Tarzan fame, are certainly picturesque and the cave sequence, photographed, according to co-star Yvette Vickers, at the old Charlie Chaplin Studios, at least somewhat creepy. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide