ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES sucked blood money from drive-in patrons in 1959 as the last of the vitally silly ‘Attack’ quartet, joining Of The clubmates Crab Monsters, 50-Foot Woman and Puppet People as they imprinted their engaging awfulness on a willing section of cinema connoisseurs. Or is that ‘conned into the sewer’? By that dipstick of bottom feeding, the bait for this morsel was double-barreled. One was just how bad were the nonspecial effects and script going to be? The other was just how good at being bad was poster tease nymph Yvette Vickers? Guilty on both counts, your honorless: the mocked-up people-feasting parasites and emphatically dorky screenplay succeed in the laugh-quotient and the concupiscent Miss Vickers secures WTBS Evergladia (White Trash Bayou Slut) as its own nasty subspecies. Now this would be a theme park ride to go out on. “Beware, all those who–etcetera…” *

“Search every wet spot in the swamp“—a line that speaks for itself.

Florida Everglades. The lazy local sheriff (go figure) isn’t bothering with unusual violent deaths and mysterious disappearances. Plucky game warden ‘Steve Benton’ (Ken Clark, start snoring) and his pert girlfriend ‘Nan’ (Jan Shepard, keep sleepin’) investigate. Nan (ever meet anyone called Nan, and if you have, were they pert?) is the daughter of ‘Doc Grayson’ (cue back & forth explanations & excuses). Their end of the 62-minute running time is pretty lame, aside from the odd sage observation like “Well, conceding the possibility of one such creature, we must also concede the possibility of others.”

Thankfully, the yummy part is the local tramp ‘Liz Walker’ (Vickers) cuckolding her pathetic gob of a hubby (Bruno VeSota) until he catches on (the hints none too subtle) and takes 12-gauge in hand to teach Liz and one of her studs the meaning of ’til death do us part’. Shotgun counseling is rudely interrupted when monstrous leeches drag the lovers into the mire to use as stored refreshments.

Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski (Hot Car Girl, Night Of The Blood Beast and Krakatoa: East Of Java—the hits just kept on comin’), this lust-meets-lunch slurp was produced by Gene Corman (Roger’s bro) for something like $70,000 and took all of eight days to shoot in the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Character meanie Leo Gordon banged out the script (the credits sequence looks like simple closeups of typewriting) and the leeches were represented by guys in wet-suits covered by black raincoats and black garbage bags sewn together.

VeSota (he appeared in 15 Corman flicks) is amusing, Vickers deliciously brazen: their bickering interplay, her wildcat carnal appeal and the sheer yucky-hilarious idea of cow-sized leeches makes it a camp fest to savor. Your good taste can take an hour-long break once in a while.

With Michael McVey, Tyler Emmett, Gene Roth and Dan White as ‘Porky Reed’.

“Sure, you loved her. That’s why you chased her through the swamp with a shotgun.”

* WTBS (someone had to dub it, and, real life mimicking art, I  bravely took the bait) on Film—it’s hard to top (in a manner of speaking) the late great Yvette Vickers but to-vaccinate-for competition would include the Cassandra of car-washin’ Joy Harmon from Cool Hand Luke, Gene Tierney lolling fer lovin’ in Tobacco Road,  Jennifer Jones panting away as Ruby Gentry, Fay Spain wringing sweat outta God’s Little Acre, Jaime Pressley boiling up Poor White Trash, Nicole Kidman seducing The Paperboy, Diane McBain countin’ coups as Claudelle Inglish and—hold the fire hose—lil’ thang Christina Ricci, all messed up with nowhere to go in Black Snake Moan. This here job requires re-search, cousins, and I duz it fer yew.

** Yvette Vickers was 29 in ’59, busy with parts in seven TV series and one other movie (as ‘The Blonde’ in I Mobster, also for Corman). She also raced pulses that year as Playboy’s Playmate of the Month (July, for you fact-impacted). Her film work—which began with a bit in, aptly enough, Sunset Boulevard—waned (look for her in Hud) but she also worked as a jazz singer. Tragically, her story came to a grotesque end when her mummified body was discovered by a neighbor in 2011. Coroners guessed she had been dead (heart failure) for perhaps a year. Yvette was 82.