The Leech Woman: Edward Dein

Somewhere buried deep inside Edward Dein's The Leech Woman there is the kernel of a good idea.  A foolhardy scientist named Dr. Paul Talbot is approached by an old woman who claims that she has the secret to eternal youth and beauty.  She explains that the combination of a particular orchid pollen native to her old home in Africa mixed with a mysterious substance reverses the aging process.  So Dr. Talbot and his alcoholic wife June travel to Africa and discover that the secret ingredient is pineal gland secretions. The problem is that the secretions are harvested with the use of a ring which is plunged into a victim's pineal gland, killing them almost instantly.  When June is de-aged during a savage ceremony, she goes insane and steals the pollen and pineal ring.  Once back in America, she goes on a killing spree to gather the precious pineal secretions needed to maintain her youth.  As I said, there's a good idea to be found in this film: a woman who kills to maintain her beauty. This could have easily been a taut, supernatural thriller where the police have to track down a serial killer who stabs her victims to death. But as it stands The Leech Woman is just a sub-par horror flick.  To be fair, Coleen Gray's performance as June is pretty damn convincing. But everything else about The Leech Woman, from its rampant use of stock footage to its mediocre make-up effects, is just so-so.

5/10