FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

thestarkfist The Leech Woman is a depressing and turgid low budget melodrama. It reminds me of a lot of English movies in the fact that none of the characters have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Mala lures Doctor Paul and June with a sample of the precious "naipe" and fully intends to kill them after granting June one last night of beauty. Dr. Paul is a smug, callous creep who cons his aging, alcoholic and mentally unstable wife into not divorcing him so he can use her as his guinea pig. June has absolutely no moral qualms about killing men to get their even more precious pineal juice; the secret ingredient that keeps her young and desirable. Neil, their lawyer, is engaged to Sally, Dr. Paul's nurse, but he's instantly ready to dump her after getting a load of the rejuvenated June. Sally thinks that it's entirely appropriate to pull a gun on June and threaten her with her life in order to hold on to a man who apparently feels no real commitment to their looming marriage. And of course the hired African guide is all set to settle in with the restored June until she reverts to an aged nutball, upon which he flees and abandons her in the jungle. Sounds like a bunch you'd want to waste 90 minutes of your life with, eh? About the "special effects". Nifty? Not! There are puffs of dry ice smoke and Ms. Gray's old age make-up is a nylon stocking pulled over her head that creates wrinkles where it is bunched up around her neck! Estelle Hemsley as the ancient Mala looks like she's had oatmeal sprayed all over her face. Only the MST3K version is really worth a look.

oscar-35 *Spoiler/plot- 1960, An unhappy wife of an obsessed endocrinologist gets involved in his search for a youth drug when an 140 years old African woman seeks out the doctor to get money to return to her African home when she reveals her secret of youth. The doctor and wife go to Africa and learn the secret, but the wife kills her husband and multiple people to stay young when the widow comes home to the US.*Special Stars- Colleen Gray, Grant Wiliams *Theme- Be careful what you wish for, you might not like it.*Based on- Doctor Jeckle and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, Fountain of Youth myths *Trivia/location/goofs- ONLINE. This film is interesting in its attempt to take the story from urban US cities traveling into the 'darkest' remote parts of Africa and back. Continuity problem: The file footage shows several different well known African tribal dances of the era, but are unrelated tribes.*Emotion- A fun 50's B-movie romp from Universal Studios consisting of an interesting plot involving 50's cheesecake pin-up shots, some dramatic moral issues and interesting geographic location footage.

retrorocketx Okay, This is a cheezy low budget movie. That comment needs to be stated up front so that unrealistic expectations are brushed aside.This is a fun movie! An aging woman, June Talbot, is abhorred by her successful doctor husband and has to deal with her fear of aging, loss of love, and alcohol abuse - while somehow she must navigate her soul past a lecherous husband, a predatory hunter, and a slimy lawyer. She fails, and turns to the dark side, attempting to destroy these men to maintain her youth and beauty. An old African woman holds the key to youth - juice from a rare orchid combined with a sacrificed male's pineal gland fluid. The husband takes the wife into the 'heart of darkness' (Africa) to meet with the old woman, learn the secret of youth, and experiment on his wife! Um, what is not to like about this? The dialog is snappy, no one pulls any punches, emotions are worn right on the shirt sleeves. Plus there's plenty of stock footage of African animals doing their thing (a cheezy but cool bonus to any film), a bunch of murders, and a hoot of an old woman. All this in about an hour. Coleen Gray, the lead in this film, does a reasonable job in portraying a once wholesome girl, now aging and neglected, transforming herself into a predatory, sexy, man-hunter. My only complaint is that the movie was too short, I really wanted June to run roughshod over 1950s suburbia. Too bad her new way of life was cut short...

Robert J. Maxwell 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.