There is an old joke about "sound" technicians, common in the business. "They don't know what the hell they're doing." And low budget films suffer from it. Sound technicians make and break a film more than people know.
This film is a remake, very true to the original about giant monsters in a swamp. Like the original, the giant monsters come across more as "killers" than leeches.
The low budget has its shortcomings, but this really turned out very well.
The actors struggled, but when all of the actors struggle, you have to look and listen close. It becomes obvious that they had to sacrifice a lot for audibility. You can tell that the actors were of higher quality than they looked.
The original ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES was the king of cheese, with the champion of all time cheese still, when the muscle bound hero has a gun in one hand and a skimpy dressed, shapely blonde in the other.
And the original was not the classic science fiction style of the problem solving characters in the forefront. In fact, they were the backdrop, with the yokels in the forefront. The original was mostly Yvette Vickers, the sultry, shapely, super sexy long haired blond. It was her story. The original was Yvette 98%.
Here, the Yvette Vickers character is in the backdrop. Much of the reason is the production style.
The original used darker sets, which complimented the blond vixen. Here, we have bright sunshine. And bright sunshine is the enemy of blonde hair and pale skin. Our vixen is hardly a sexpot in this light. Nothing against the actress. She would be stunning in a dark light.
Which may be why we have the three needless additional girls in bikinis, whose darker complexions are more complimented by bright light. They serve little purpose for the story. However, their comic relief is fairly well placed.
While the vixen was the story in the original, in this version there are no favorites. Everyone has almost equal time.
Yet while the characters have close to equal time, the classic science fiction style of a focal group of principals is used.
What helps this low budget survive the turmoils of poor sound quality is "the characters". And the actors. Those who serve for comic relief are very adept. And the serious characters are better than your average film characters.
The camera work gives it an "ordinary" look, and the cast looks incredibly "next door neighbor" style, which works very well. While it is low budget, and sound quality is poor, it looks well blocked, and there are more assets than defects. This is very watchable. And despite some crinks, it is much more entertaining and satisfying than most of the modern science fiction you'll find with bigger budgets.
There are some nit picks. I didn't care for the "canned" macho fist fight, but that is minor, and pretty much a staple in action movies.
One gets the feeling that the editing wasn't quite ready. I wouldn't be surprised if it is reedited in the future, and that would make a huge difference.
