Written by James M. Tate / 8/29/2016 / No comments / coleen gray , cult , exploitation , gloria talbott , horror , jazz score , kim hamilton , philip terry , science-fiction , sixties
DEFENDING THE NOIR-HORROR CAMP OF 'THE LEECH WOMAN'
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Part of the Universal Science Fiction Collection YEAR: 1960 |
That's not always the case – THE LEECH WOMAN, one of many victims of the MSTK-3000 treatment, should also be called a C-movie, for Creative: What it lacks in budget, it makes up for in... other ways, like how the title character, an aged, formerly attractive wife of a doctor seeking an impossible cure for aging, winds up on a killing spree. The first act plays out economically inside two interior locations, the most important being the Doctor's Office where Coleen Gray's bitter June Talbot verbally tears into her husband, Dr. Paul Talbot, played by BORN TO KILL stiff-suit Philip Terry...
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A younger Gray at her own real age |
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Gloria Talbott injects some Noir |
Along with the petal of a rare flower, grown only in that region (ala WEREWOLF OF LONDON), it takes a man's death, and blood (from the pineal gland), from a sharp ring in the back of his neck, for a woman to acquire a few hours of youth...
While learning this, the African scenes are both suspenseful and bizarre (with the creepy Old Malla transforming into one of the prettiest women to appear in a b-flick, Kim Hamilton)... And in an exploitation manner the picture also includes a politically-incorrect KING KONG style "ooga-booga" tribal ceremony: The quickness in which the characters go from the Idyll Rich to – with the aid of a second-tier leading man guide – leaping through jungle terrain while tossing grenades, is farfetched yet effectively entertaining: While this LEECH might crack you up, it sure ain't boring...
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Coleen Gray, Philip Terry, Kim Hamilton LEECH WOMAN Score: **** |
And while this is no Stanley Kubrick picture, Gray's performance outshines her usual one-dimensional (albeit a great dimension) Girl-Next-Noir persona, giving her a chance to thrive on being a vicious woman needing blood from men, adding ominous layers – including a two-step process of eliminating her victims – to a story that, closing up well under ninety-minutes, could have been longer... Proving those otherwise hilarious robot puppets aren't always right: As with LASERBLAST and several other wonderful B's, taken in context, THE LEECH WOMAN does... actually... work!
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Kim Hamilton The Leech Woman Kim Hamilton as the young super-fine version of a once old, creepy African native Malla |
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