Powerful

Just perfect...

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Although she was once a beautiful woman, "June Talbot" (Coleen Gray) is past her prime and because of that her husband "Dr. Paul Talbot" (Phillip Terry) wants nothing to do with her. This results in her seeking solace in alcohol which only worsens the situation. But that all changes one day when an exceedingly old woman from Africa named "Malla" (Estelle Hemsley) comes into his office and tells him of a mysterious drug known only to her small tribe which can reverse the aging process. Extremely intrigued, Dr. Talbot feigns a rekindled romance with June for the purpose of using her as a human guinea pig. What nobody counts on, however, is her discovering the truth and the side effects this new drug carries with it. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a somewhat entertaining B-movie which ends rather dramatically but—in my opinion--much too quickly. Likewise, the fact that this film is quite dated might also turn off some viewers as well. That being said, I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Coleen Gray plays June Talbot, an aging alcoholic stuck in a toxic marriage to Paul Talbot (Phillip Terry), an endocrinologist. But he insists on taking her along on an African trip after he gets wind of a process used by a tribe over there to retard, even reverse, the aging process. Once she reacquires her youthful good looks, she finds that she doesn't mind that she was made a guinea pig. The only problem is, she now has to keep killing in order to remain young and gorgeous.The title makes this unmemorable but still entertaining movie sound like utter schlock, which of course is not such a bad thing. But what the viewer gets is actually something a little more interesting and thoughtful, a commentary on the desperate, aggressive need to pursue youth and beauty. Don't go into this expecting a high body count, or an actual "leech woman".The primary assets are a wonderful performance by the lovely Gray, who gets to sink her teeth into a real character role, and the rather convincing makeup effects by Bud Westmore. Gray is ably supported by a cast also including The Incredible Shrinking Man, a.k.a. Grant Williams, as a roving-eyed attorney, Gloria Talbott as a nurse who gets deadly jealous, the striking Hemsley (73 or so at the time of filming), Kim Hamilton as the beautiful young version of Hemsley, and Arthur Batanides as a sleazy con artist.This would make an apt double feature with Roger Cormans' "The Wasp Woman", which this viewer watched just the other night.Seven out of 10.

Colleen Gray, the leech woman of the title, was born in Nebraska, a farmer's daughter, and she looked it, cream-fed, sort of, as fresh and pretty as a field of sunflowers. She really was active for only three or four years, from, say, 1947 to 1951. Her clean, conventional Midwestern beauty notwithstanding, her career never took off and this film gives some indication of why it didn't. Her range as an actress was limited. She was perfect as the tough, loyal, and cheerful wife or girlfriend of the hero in "Kiss of Death". In "The Leech Woman" she's required to display a wide range of emotions and to do technical tricks with her voice and body, and she's not convincing in the role.Not that the role deserves more talent than she was able to bring to it. The story is disjointed and primitive in outline and execution. I've seen better stories in comic books from the 1950s.Try to follow this. I'll make it as painless as possible. Philip Terry is a practicing endocrinologist. (Kids, that's a gland specialist.) Gray is his alcoholic wife. Both are middle aged. Terry discovers from one of his patients that there is a youth elixir used by a "tribe" in Africa. It changes you from old to young but after it wears off in a day or so, you die. Terry hustles his wife along as he follows his patient back to her tribe on a "trek." The "jungle" is a studio set and the general atmosphere and iconography is that of the 19th century. Everyone dresses in pith helmets and safari jackets from Banana Republic, probably leased with an option to purchase. Once in a while the safari stops and someone points off screen and some stock footage is inserted of a monkey in a tree, a shuffling pair of lions, or a crocodile sloshing into a river.They arrive at the "native village", where Terry's patient tells them the secret of the youth elixir. In fact, she demonstrates how it works. You see, you have to drink an infusion of something that comes from a rare orchid and -- oh, yes, you have to chase it with some fluid from somebody else's lanced pineal gland. Good for the user, bad for the poor guy who sacrifices his pineal gland. Well, I'll tell you, it certainly does a job on Terry's original elderly African-American old lady. Behind a puff of smoke she turns into a knockout.Terry then insists that his wife try it. It will bring them together again. She's so grateful that she weeps against Terry's chest, but Terry is too stupid to shut up. He goes on oleaginously about how lovely she will be again. I think any red-blooded male will know where Terry is coming from. Colleen Gray certainly does, and she's bitterly disappointed. So when the time comes for her to be transformed into a youthful girl again and she can pick any man she wants as the pineal provider, she picks -- Terry! She may be middle aged and debauched, but she's not brain dead.Poof, and she's a beauty again, at Terry's expense. (The potion gives you a new hair style too.) Actually she was 37 when this was shot and she looks quite alright, having only acquired a bit more heft since "Nightmare Alley" and having come to resemble Anita Ekberg, another actress of the same period, only without the mass. This isn't so evident until we get back to the states, where she poses as her own niece, flipping back and forth from old age to youth again, depending on the availability of hapless pineal providers. Back home, she's all glamorized while playing her niece and trying to seduce her lawyer. She wears dresses with tight bodices, cinched waists, and troublingly tight skirts. "Troublingly" because it must be hell, trying to walk in them. Or so I imagine. I wouldn't know. I don't wear dresses myself except for exceptionally important dates on Saturday nights.But why go on with this slapdash farce? The cops discover her secret, track her down, and while she ages on screen under the horrified stares of the two detectives and her lawyer/lover, she falls or throws herself out of a window and crashes to earth, dead and withered.There's something to be said for being old and dying. It's the great leveler. "Golden girls and lads all must/ as chimney-sweepers, come to dust." It doesn't matter if you're a knave or a king. Or, as the stereotypical Great White Hunter advised Gray back in Africa, "There is only one trouble with running away. You always meet yourself when you get there." Now, I don't know if the writers were dabbling in the space-time continuum or Four Quartets, but Einstein or Eliot, they managed to hit the nail on the head. The only way to deal with old age and impending doom is not through this obsolescent impulse to be beautiful for him, but to do it the French way. You shake your gray hair, shrug your arthritic shoulders, and say, "Pass the wine and the escargot, please." You say it in French, of course.

"The Leech Woman" was part of a package deal on some DVDs I bought. I had planned to keep the ones I wanted and get rid of this one, but after watching it, I've about decided that it's one of my favorites of the lot. OK, Leech Woman may not be Lady MacBeth, but this movie's really not too bad. When a wizened old African woman offers an ambitious endocrinologist the secret of eternal youth, he decides to take his estranged and no-longer-young-and-beautiful wife along with him on the safari (I didn't think she looked all THAT bad to start with.) But when she finds out the true reason for their sudden reconciliation is so that she can serve as a guinea pig, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially one with a stolen pineal gland tapper. But once you try Nipe, there's no going back...This movie is better than anything named "The Leech Woman" has a right to be. Although the first few minutes drag a bit as the unhappy couple are introduced (the dialog stops just short of parody) from there on it's a snappy little story that moves along pretty well for the rest of its short 77-minute run time. A cast of semi-familiar B-movie faces (plus a terrific performance by Estelle Hemsley as the creepy old woman) also help to hold your interest.The movie plays out as a light-weight "Double Indemnity" with aspects of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and while it never rises to the level of either of those, it's firmly in the mainstream. Sure, there's a lot of stock footage of jungle animals, and the depictions of the African natives are about five decades away from modern political mores. But the production values are good, the acting, while not Oscar-caliber, is at least earnest, and the story is interesting. As a flick on the tail end of the golden age of Universal sci-fi and horror movies, this one certainly holds its own. "Leech Woman" will never be on anyone's top ten list, but it's well worth a bag of popcorn on a rainy afternoon.