The Leech Woman * (1960, Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Gloria Talbott, Phillip Terry) – Classic Movie Review 11,565

‘She drained MEN of their loves and lives!’

Director Edward Dein’s 1960 US black-and-white Universal-International horror film The Leech Woman is hysterically awful, with actors down on their luck and a ghastly low-rent production. It stars Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Gloria Talbott, and Phillip Terry.

Gray plays an unhappily married, alcoholic, middle-aged American woman called June, who is desperate to be young again and uses an ancient, secret African potion to regain her lost youth and beauty. The potion works, but requires repeated doses.

A mysterious old woman named Malla (Estelle Hemsley) approaches her husband, endocrinologist Dr Paul Talbot (Terry), and promises to reveal to him the secret of eternal youth. The couple follow Malla to Africa and witness a secret ceremony of the Nando tribe that uses orchid pollen and a sacrificial male’s pineal gland secretions, extracted from the back of the neck by a special ring and mixed with the pollen, temporarily transform Malla into a young, beautiful woman (Kim Hamilton).

June returns to the US, and masquerades as her own niece, Terry Hart. She keeps herself young by picking up men and killing them for their pineal extract but, each time the potion wears off, she is older than before.

It mixes stock footage, partly from Tanganyika (1954), of African wildlife and tribal dances with scenes shot in the studio

All in all, a satisfyingly entertaining item in the so-bad-it’s good class.

Gray recalled: ‘That picture was 10 days of sheer joy. I got to “camp” all over the place. It was kind of flamboyant and, really, excruciatingly funny.’

Gloria Talbott in The Oklahoman.

Talbott said: ‘I made that picture because I wanted to buy a horse for my son, and The Leech Woman got him a really nice horse and saddle.’

Screenwriter David Duncan recalled: ‘They gave me a screenplay written by Ben Pivar. It wasn’t a very good screenplay. Really, it was unshootable. In redoing it, I suppose I changed the story somewhat. I rewrote it on a two-week assignment.’ He said that he never saw the film in a cinema, but called it ‘awful’ after seeing it on TV years later.

Produced by Joseph Gershenon, it was released in the US in a double bill with the British horror film The Brides of Dracula. Rank Film Distributors released it in the UK, where it was given an X-certificate by the British Board of Film Censors, for persons over age 16.

When the DVD was released in the UK in 2016 it had a BBFC 12-rating for persons of 12 and over because ‘dated racial stereotyping is seen in the portrayal of African tribes people as savages with spears and shields, practising voodoo magic’ as well as for ‘moderate violence and horror’.

The UK video’s running time is 73 minutes 54 seconds, three minutes seven seconds less than the film’s theatrical running time of 77 minutes and one second.

The cast are Coleen Gray as June Talbot/Terry Hart, Grant Williams as Neil Foster, Phillip Terry as Dr Paul Talbot, Gloria Talbott as Sally Howards, John van Dreelen as Bertram Garvay, Estelle Helmsley as Old Malla, Kim Hamilton as Young Malla, Arthur Bantanides as Jerry Randall, Chester Jones as Ladu, Murray Alper as Drunk (uncredited), John Bryant as Vice Officer (uncredited), Charles Keane as Superior Officer (uncredited), Harold Goodwin as Detective (uncredited) and Paul Thompson as Head Warrior (uncredited).

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,565

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