Attack of the Giant Leeches

My goodness, that’s one hell of a creature design! According the the IMDb trivia, the costumes for the “leeches” are basically thin plastic suits with the “suckers” sewn on. That’s some classic low-budget monster work there, perhaps worthy of Ed Wood. As with many of these movies, there is a fantastic alternate title that was used for some of the foreign releases that I absolutely adore: “The Diabolic Marsh”. There isn’t a whole lot to glean about the film’s plot from the trailer, but there also isn’t much information doled out at all. I think the biggest takeaway from the trailer is getting a solid look at those pathetic leech costumes. I’m willing to bet that those suits see way more time on film than they by any right should. Someone put some time into sewing on all of those suckers after all, and they’ll be damned if those suits don’t get some solid screen time! I’m cautiously looking forward to this one, because I have a feeling that this may be one of those movies that has a dull, dragging plot and way too much overexposure of the monsters. Then again, it looks mighty cheesy, and could make for some good unintentional laughs.

—

Land of the Minotaur

I’m surprised that I haven’t been able to find a formal trailer or many clips from this. I have heard it mentioned a number of times as one of Peter Cushing’s lowest points, and I was pretty excited to finally find a copy of it in a monster movie collection with the likes of “The Creeping Terror” and “Eegah!”. I’m also eager to see how Donald Pleasence is in this flick, as the last thing I caught him in was the dreadful “Pumaman”, which he apparently said on record was the worst movie he was ever involved in. I guess that means he thought more highly of this movie then? Apparently this was originally titled “The Devil’s Men”, which sounds like a more accurate title from what information I can piece together about the plot. I’m a little surprised they didn’t go with that title, so I have to assume that someone had a hangup about using the term “devil” somewhere along the line. That would be pretty strange for folks making a B-movie, and I certainly don’t see any reason why someone would think a Minotaur title is more marketable that one about the devil. I don’t seem to recall there being a big boom in Minotaur movies at any point.

—

Star Knight

I was really surprised to find a Klaus Kinski appearance in a bargain bin collection of old science fiction movies. The only exposure I’ve had to Kinski is through his stellar work with Herzog, and those films are about as far as you can get from the movies I typically feature here. Never the less, here he is. After some further reading, it looks like Kinski did a handful of European exploitation films early in his career, but this one was oddly and unfortunately one of the last movies he did before his death. The film seems to be a sci-fi interpretation of a knight versus dragon tale, which seems interesting enough in concept. Kinski plays the “dragon”, and Harvey Keitel stars opposite him as the knight named “Klever”. I haven’t been able to find a trailer or clips for this one, but I did locate the theme song. The writer/director has quite a few credits in Spain, but not a whole lot that stands out or saw much of a wide audience. I’m looking forward to seeing how this movie goes horribly, horribly wrong.