Attack of the Giant Leeches: Bernard L. Kowalski

As if you didn't need another reason to not go creeping through the Florida Everglades at night, Bernard L. Kowalski's Attack of the Giant Leeches assures us that if the snakes or alligators don't get you, man-sized monstrous leeches will. In the film, a pair of these terrible beasts start to terrorize nearby inhabitants of the Everglades, kidnapping them, draining them of blood, and storing their corpses in subterranean caves. For such a short film (62 minutes) it is surprisingly padded. One sub-plot about a local woman who is caught by her husband while cheating on him with another man in the swamp is particularly bloated. Although, to be fair, the scene where the cuckolded husband forces the two lovers into the swamp to scare them straight is rather tense. But the rest of the movie is forgettable. The film is competently shot and John M. Nickolaus, Jr.'s cinematography is occasionally moody. But Attack of the Giant Leeches is tedious and uneventful. And it commits one of the worst monster movie sins of all: it only features the monsters in it for a few shots!

3/10