Attack of the Giant Leeches

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.

I didn't know whether to think this was a fan-made version or an actual remake version of the 1959 classic. But regardless of what it actually was, then it stunk to high heaven.

The storyline in "Attack of the Giant Leeches" was adequate, or well at least as it can be for a movie of this type.

But it all snapped with the horrible acting, even worse dialogue and production value of the movie. You have to look long and far to find such an abysmal movie. They are out there, but luckily rare.

IT was so difficult to take anything in this movie even remotely serious, aside from one thing; the leeches. Now, they could have been better, much, much better, mind you. But they were like pure gold compared to everything else in this movie.

This 2008 version of "Attack of the Giant Leeches" should be given a wide berth. Some of us suffered through it so you don't have to.

My rating of two out of ten stars is solely because of the leeches. Everything else in the movie wasn't worth the marsh in which most of the movie took place.

This is a stinker, guys. You have been warned.

This is a sad excuse for a remake of the horror classic Attack of the Giant Leeches. That movie is in the public domain so this person did not get permission or anything they just took the plot and name and made their own pathetic version to literally "Leech" off of that movie. The poster looks OK but the sound and picture quality of the movie is pathetic or worse.

SHAME on you Brett Kelly and co for ripping off this cult horror classic and turning it into this useless and amateurish mess. You all suck and should quit, Never make another film.

Let us endeavor to conjecture and propose a supposition pertaining to a conundrum I am experiencing after viewing this atrocity. Variable one pertains to a Roger Corman. This is a man with an incredible propensity for the creation of films on a minimal budget and almost ALWAYS a profit on his investment. He truly is the king of exploitation films. This being a remake (probably due to the film being out of copyright date) is of a 1959 movie he made.

So how does one create a movie to begin with on a minimal budget that still exceeds the product created decades later? Could it be an overwhelming plethora of non-talent?

I have a great affinity for actors that do horrible hillbilly stereotypes with Canadian accents. The "Leeches" are hand puppets that can be misconstrued for earthworms on steroids. I did find the "rifle" that was supposed to be a shotgun but was a toy musket seen multiple times. They try to exploit young ladies which has absolutely no impact in sexually gratuity within the film. We get a few scenes of a marsh but the action takes place around a lake, no marsh or swamp. Our hillbillies are supposed to be comical relief while we wait for a meteorite to plummet to earth and obliterate them. The sheriff inhabits room 12 with crap being stored in some building somewhere.

Let us examine one scene in particular. A search party has been gathered to attempt to locate two bodies. Several men follow the sheriff down the shore of a lake, not a marsh. All follow after the sheriff. Would it not behoove them to "Spread out" instead of following him and looking at their feet literally as they walk? One idiot is looking up in the trees where many a body has been known to be discovered. If only the Lockness monster would have interjected itself into the movie and consumed the entire cast, that would have been worth watching.

The Corman version of this movie receives a 3.5 on the IMDb which sounds about right. If you view the MST3K riffing of the Corman movie then it is a 7.0 as this film rates a 1.9 and should be considerably lower.

After viewing this movie I made preparation to invoke the great Cuthulu and the old ones to enter this dimension to rule but they declined because it is too dark and forbidding a place even for them and with absolutely nothing original that can be done in writing, films or art we are all in a pathetic Hell anyway.

Attack of the Giant Leeches (2008)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Remake of the 1959 drive-in cult classic has pretty much the same plot as giant leeches in the swamp are sucking the blood out of locals so a wildlife expert and his girlfriend try to figure out what's going on whenever they're not arguing. I guess I should start off by admitting that the original film is one of my favorite "B" movies. Yes, it's incredibly cheesy but I love bad or campy movies and I consider it one of the best out there. With that said, I was really looking forward to this remake just to see what they would try to come up with but this here is pretty much a scene for scene remake. Perhaps that's a bit too strong since this does run about sixteen-minutes longer than the previous film but while watching this you can't help but feel that the director made the entire cast watch the original and try to mimic it. If you're familiar with the earlier movie then you're going to notice that there are countless scenes here that have the same setting, the same build-up and even the same dialogue. I'm not sure if director Brett Kelly was doing this as some sort of homage or if they were just being lazy and not coming up with anything new. Either way, fans of the 1959 version will probably find it mildly amusing at first but others are going to probably want to blow their brains out. Yes, the production values here are incredibly cheap, the actors seem uncomfortable and there's really no point to this remake. I'm not sure what they were trying to do but it really doesn't work because this film never manages to get its own personality because every step of the way it's reminding you of the previous movie. Even if you're unfamiliar with that movie then you're probably going to hate this even worse as you're simply not going to understand anything going on.