Leeches! (2003)

The Age of Commercialism

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Why would a schlocky horror movie like this be on LOGO? The answer is very simple. It is about a swim team that takes steroids and there are lots of bare-chested guys running around in speedos.Now, these guys love to strip and jump in the lake (No, no nudity), and the steroids transform the natural leeches into monsters. This has been done before by Roger Corman, and remade again in 2008. Why, I cannot imagine.You will not believe the leeches. They are the cheapest monsters I have ever seen! So, if watching Josh Henderson is for you, then this is the film for Halloween.

When a person tunes in, rents or (God forbid) buys a film called "Leeches!", the expectation really should not be that the film is going to provide a deep, thought-provoking experience. However, one would hope that at least it will be entertaining and, on that score, the film perhaps partially succeeds, if on a very modest level. The story concerns a bunch of college swimmers and their girlfriends who are adversely affected by the title creatures who have become larger and more aggressive than usual thanks to having fed off the steroid-infested blood of some of the guys. While a couple of the guys wrestle with whether or not to even use steroids, the leeches have already seen the benefits of the stuff and have set about killing as many nubile and hunky teens as they can! In what is an obvious take off on the old creature feature films of the 50's and 60's, another layer of story is added by having one or more of the cast members involved in duplicitous schemes involving the wonder substance. What sets this film apart from the standard "violent monster on the loose" flick is the blatant and unusual focus on all the male physiques in the film. Yes, there are some girls present and they are in decent enough shape, but the camera virtually ignores them while fetishistically ogling the young, fit male cast members who appear in Speedos, board shorts and underwear and who seem to take their clothes off every time they enter a room! The panning shots linger on the men's perfectly toned chests and torsos (though, oddly, coyly cutting away when nearing the crotches) and roam up their legs when the men are in bed. It's all quite ridiculous, but intentionally so. Even more ridiculous is that when these guys are being attacked by the giant leeches, they consist of, in many cases, an oven mitt-like glove operated by someone's hand! So these hunky young men are basically being felt up and molested by a guy with a rubber mitt on his hand, posing as a leech (they could have left off the gloves and called this "Letches!" just as easily!) The script for the film is quite bad, despite the pedigree of the author having worked for Fangoria magazine. The acting is, at times, atrocious, though a few of the participants have managed to work again, some fairly successfully. The worst performance in the film actually comes from an adult, the heavily accented and exceedingly poor Carroccio as the swim coach. The hunk deemed to be the nerd of the group is delineated as such in no other way than that he wears thick-rimmed, dark glasses in his first and last scenes! Novel idea… The special effects, to use the term loosely, are proudly done the old-fashioned way, meaning that no CGI was used. However, they're handled so cheaply and sloppily that the result is never convincing. Frequently, it's very obvious that rubber leeches are being pulled by fishing line and often the leeches are bone dry when a little Karo syrup may have made them look appropriately slimy. Speaking of sloppy, one guy who is taking a shower alone in his home is later clearly shown wearing flesh-toned underwear during it. Many elements, however, are surprisingly good for a film made in 6 (count 'em) days! The lighting, cinematography, editing and music are not that far below the standards of a mid-level feature film. Unfortunately, the bad far outweighs the good here, though it may make some fans of bad movies smile a few times or, perhaps, arouse gay men who don't get out much.

Leeches! is set in & around 'Lakecrest College' somewhere in California where lately hunky dude Jason (Josh Henderson) has been having disturbing nightmares. Together with his girlfriend Casey (Stacey Nelson) they come to the conclusion that the steroids he has been taking may be responsible, you see Jason is aiming to get a swimming scholarship & has been taking steroids supplied by his best friend Stevo (Matthew Twining). It's not like the rest of the swimming team aren't taking them is it? As Stevo & Jason take a dip in a river blood-sucking leeches attach themselves to their backs & start drinking. They eventually discover the leeches & pull them off but don't kill them... Having drunk steroid loaded blood the leeches mutate into, well, bigger leeches. As an important swimming contest fast approaches Stevo puts pressure on another team member named Tony (Stephen Swan) to take a whole bag of steroids for even better performance, unfortunately Tony ends up in the river where even more leeches feast upon his blood which has a seriously high steroid content. It's not long before Lakecrest College is overrun with giant blood-sucking slimy mutant leeches & the students are on the menu...Co-produced & directed by David DeCoteau, who according to the IMDb also has a small uncredited role in the film as Franklin the Walkie Talkie Voice(!), Leeches! is a very poor film throughout. The script by Michael Gingold could have been decent fun as a creature feature type horror but instead it's just lame, it's boring & has no depth as it skates over & all but ignores the drug usage issue. The character's are awful, the dialogue sucks & everyone is one dimensional teenage leech food & wouldn't you notice or feel a huge mutant leech crawling up your naked back? It's one of those films which has an outrageous premise & promises so much but in the end I simply couldn't wait for it to end, speaking of the end there's a 'twist' which comes from nowhere & seemed totally pointless. The body count is low & the leeches themselves are far from scary or threatening, in fact the real leeches used at the start are more effective than the stupid rubber ones.Leeches! was one of two films director DeCoteau made during '03, the other being Speed Demon (2003), so you can probably guess the sort of time & commitment spent on Leeches! First of all it's true what everyone says about Leeches!, DeCoteau uses & films as many half naked young guys as he can. I can't remember a shot where a guy actually had a shirt on to be honest, constant shots of young men in their speedos as DeCoteau's camera can't get enough of it! Surprisingly this was shot in a 2:35:1 aspect ratio (basically you will have thick bars at the top & bottom of the screen if you see it that way) which could have given DeCoteau the opportunity to make a nice looking & stylish film, he obviously passed the opportunity up. The violence & gore is as restrained as possible, someone coughs some blood up, a few leech bite marks & a decent bit where a wire slices through someone's throat. For some bizarre & highly annoying reason DeCoteau films the weak attack scenes with quick cuts & with strobe lighting effects which happen during the attack's but not before or after, the words cheap 'n' nasty spring to mind.With a budget that probably wouldn't cover a round of drinks Leeches! is a pretty shoddy production that was probably made with the video/DVD market in mind. Low production values, really poor special effects as the leeches themselves are mostly just glove puppets & are only filmed from half way up their bodies & Leeches! just has that cheap vibe throughout.Leeches! is a pretty poor film, to it's credit it's short & it moves along at a fair pace although generally speaking it's just poor. If you enjoy looking at half naked young guys then Leeches! is definitely for you, if you enjoy a good horror film then Leeches! definitely isn't for you.

In what is possibly the most unscary horror film ever made, college students are having the blood sucked out of them by the terrible creatures in the title. Er.. why not just stay out of the water, then? Unfortunately, this bunch of morons are the stupidest people ever to graduate.. so we get scene after scene of them diving in, despite being given plenty of warnings about the danger. In fact, it is impossible to care whether they live or die after a while, their behaviour is so idiotic and suicidal. So instead, why not sit back and enjoy the plastic toys that are supposed to pass for leeches and the worse acting you'll see outside pantomime. And this little treasure was made in 2003. The mind boggles.. 0/10