Drunken moonshiner Lem is out for his daily otter poaching run in the swamp when he is attacked by a vicious-looking Hefty bag. No one believes his story, except the Hefty bag, which kills him a few scenes later. Things then switch over to sweaty hillbilly Dave (Bruno VeSota) and his hot, white-trash wife, Liz-Baby (Yvette Vickers). They have all kinds of trouble, including Liz-Baby’s affair with another redneck, but all that comes to an end when several enraged plastic bags do away with Liz and her lover, and the local stereotypical sheriff locks up Dave. With all of the major characters removed from the plot, we’re stuck with white bread Steve Benton (Ken Clark), his bland but still annoying girlfriend, Nan (Jan Shepard), and her doctor father (Tyler McVey). Doc is sure that there are monsters afoot, and the best way to find them is to drop dynamite into the swamp (really; that’s presented as a reasonable step). The tactic does uncover the dead yokels, which means its time for Steve to strap on an oxygen tank and go diving to face the bags, and save humanity.
In general, I like my giant monster movies to have gigantic monsters in them, but I suppose I can be generous, at least with regard to what counts as being huge. When the atomically enlarged creature is a leech, a man-sized monster is pretty big. But that’s the extent of my generosity. Hey, the filmmakers weren’t generous to me, displaying uncommon stinginess with talent and skill, so why should I extend the courtesy to them?
There’s the potential for an hysterical, cult film, with the zany hillbillies, sexy Yvette Vickers playing the sleazy wife, a doctor with an explosives fetish, and the title: Attack of the Giant Leeches. That’s all it is, potential. The hillbillies don’t get enough screen time. The first half of the picture plays like a soap opera performed by the cast of Deliverance, but it comes to nothing. The sleazy wife isn’t nearly sleazy enough; her scenes might have been pretty wild for 1959, but come off as prudish by the early 1960s, and are forgettable today. The doctor’s bizarre need to blow up wetlands isn’t nearly extreme enough. Most of the doc’s time is spent in tedious discussions with the hero, while his daughter whines. I didn’t use a stopwatch, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of the film is spent on these stagnant chats.
However, the title is the one unqualified success. Without it, most viewers would be flailing, trying to figure out why plastic garbage bags, sculpted with Mr. Bill faces, are attacking rednecks. But the title explains that those garbage bags are supposed to be giant Leeches. How else would you know? They don’t look like leeches. They look like guys wearing plastic sacks. And they don’t act like leeches. They act like guys stumbling about inside bags. So telling the audience is the only way. That doesn’t make the leeches any more entertaining, or the entire film any less plodding.
Shot on poor quality film stock, with sluggish camera work and inappropriate lighting (the only way to tell if it is day or night is to guess), this is an amateur operation from beginning to end. The dialog is no better than the monster design. All these flaws make it ripe for MST3K-style viewing, which is the only way to get any fun out of it. While it did make it onto that program (I haven’t seen the episode), I’d suggest getting a few friends together and going at it yourself. It isn’t as if you need to be a professional to find ways to rip Attack of the Giant Leeches apart.