Roger Cormon strikes again in this film that most people have probably seen on the comedy riff show, Mystery Science Theater 3000 or perhaps packaged in one of those horror movie collections that you can get for like five bucks. Either way, what you are going to get with this film is pretty standard Cormon of the 1950's era. I do enjoy a good deal of his films, but most of the ones I enjoyed were in the late 70's to early 90's portion of his career when he made lots of cool horror films. This one is pretty standard of his films from this time where you just know he made movie after movie. And why not? During this time the drive in theater was reigning supreme and there were not blockbuster films being released on a weekly basis so a movie theater could show some lower budget horror films. The internet was nowhere to be found either, meaning if one just designed a really nifty movie poster and gave their movie something catchy or that stood out, someone would shell out money to see it. Thankfully, I saw this movie done by Mystery Science Theater 3000, because it was not very good and way too short. I always say you need at least an hour and twenty minutes worth of movie before you even start filming.
The story has a community that seems to revolve around hanging out at the local grocery store being terrorized by something lurking in the swamp. One man, who claims to have seen something horrific is killed and soon people are disappearing. The sheriff is skeptical as there were even those skeptical people in the 50's films too, but a man in charge of the local wildlife seems to think there is something going on. Of course, then you have a doctor who is really eager to use dynamite to try and bring everything up to the surface, never mind that it probably killed a number of the people stuck in the cave with the giant leeches! So, as usual with a Cormon film from this era, you get a rather decent episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I enjoyed their dissection of this film, but the film did move kind of slow for a film about giant leeches. Seriously, there was more scenes of people drinking coffee or offering to make coffee than there was scenes of giant leeches. The characters in this film were as obsessed with coffee as the one gentleman in the film Skydivers! It was overall a good episode though I found some of the best riffs to be in the Undersea Kingdom short that preceded the film.
In the end, we have a rather typical Cormon film with lots of coffee and a hot wife that is sort of bad and a fat husband he is jealous and giant leeches for some spice. The husband would also appear in the Mystery Science Theater riffed movie Daddy-O playing the bad guy of the piece. He does a pretty good job as the two characters are nothing alike, my guess is that he did not get much work due to his appearance. I cannot really recommend the film without the gang of the satellite of love, but apparently there are people that enjoyed the film. More power to them, I just thought it moved a bit too slowly with too little leech action.
The story has a community that seems to revolve around hanging out at the local grocery store being terrorized by something lurking in the swamp. One man, who claims to have seen something horrific is killed and soon people are disappearing. The sheriff is skeptical as there were even those skeptical people in the 50's films too, but a man in charge of the local wildlife seems to think there is something going on. Of course, then you have a doctor who is really eager to use dynamite to try and bring everything up to the surface, never mind that it probably killed a number of the people stuck in the cave with the giant leeches! So, as usual with a Cormon film from this era, you get a rather decent episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I enjoyed their dissection of this film, but the film did move kind of slow for a film about giant leeches. Seriously, there was more scenes of people drinking coffee or offering to make coffee than there was scenes of giant leeches. The characters in this film were as obsessed with coffee as the one gentleman in the film Skydivers! It was overall a good episode though I found some of the best riffs to be in the Undersea Kingdom short that preceded the film.
In the end, we have a rather typical Cormon film with lots of coffee and a hot wife that is sort of bad and a fat husband he is jealous and giant leeches for some spice. The husband would also appear in the Mystery Science Theater riffed movie Daddy-O playing the bad guy of the piece. He does a pretty good job as the two characters are nothing alike, my guess is that he did not get much work due to his appearance. I cannot really recommend the film without the gang of the satellite of love, but apparently there are people that enjoyed the film. More power to them, I just thought it moved a bit too slowly with too little leech action.