Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

The Leech Woman Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson May 17, 2021

The Leech Woman was one of the last in Universal's "third wave" of monster films. It was produced during a primordial phase when Hollywood would relax its restrictions in the portrayal of screen violence, which burgeoned throughout the '60s. This penultimate film by director Edward Dein is often looked at as a close cousin of Francis D. Lyon's Cult of the Cobra (1955), Richard E. Cunha's She Demons (1958), and Roger Corman's The Wasp Woman (1959).

The Leech Woman opens with Dr. Paul Talbot (Phillip Terry; The Lost Weekend), an endocrinologist, visited by his wife, June (Coleen Gray; Nightmare Alley). The Talbots are caught in a loveless marriage. Paul thinks that June has lost her glamor even though she remains an attractive woman approaching middle age. June asks Paul to pour her some brandy and all but asks for a divorce. He says she should think it over when she's in a clearer state of mind. As June departs, she's confronted by an elderly lady with a leather face who makes some cryptic remarks about sacrificing her husband to give her a new life of youthful beauty. Sally (Gloria Talbott; All That Heaven Allows), Paul's nurse, sends Malla (Estelle Hemsley) in to the lab to see the doc. Malla tells Paul that she's over 152 years old! (That number changes over the course of the film.) She claims that she was taken from her tribe, the Nandos, when she was a child and sold into slavery. Before her mother died, Malla received nipé, a powder extracted from orchid pollen. This de-accelerated the aging process. Malla offers Paul that if he finances a trip to Africa so she can reunite with her lost tribe, she will give him the elixir. At the Talbot home, June is meeting with the family attorney, Neil Foster (Grant Williams; The Incredible Shrinking Man), as they discuss drafting the divorce papers. Paul comes home and tells her not so fast. He wants her to accompany him on an African safari. She naively agrees and they're led by the British guide, Bertram Garvay (John van Dreelan) to “the Dark Continent” (as it's pejoratively called in the film). June becomes angry while in Africa that Paul really wants to use her as a guinea pig in a de-aging experiment. They track down old Mala and her tribe, who hold the Talbots and Bertram captive. Mala invites them to a sacrificial ceremony where she takes the large gemstone ring (which has a stinger) on her finger and pierces the back of the neck of one her voluntary male tribesmen. Combined with nipé, the hormone from the pineal gland of a human male, this mixture restores Mala to a beautiful young woman (Kim Hamilton). Mala asks June to select a male who can serve as a sacrificial lamb for her reverse transformation. Who will she select?

Let's have a brandy, dear.

The Leech Woman contains some loathsome male characters who are misogynist and avaricious. What makes this low-budget B picture compelling are the strong female characters. Malla may be willing to kill to reclaim her youth but she's wise and classy with the way she goes about it. June is a solid villainess. When she returns to America, she poses as her niece Terri and tries to woo Neil, who's now engaged to Dr. Talbot's nurse, Sally. Neil doesn't really love Sally and gets ensconced in a duplicitous web of deceit and unfaithfulness.

The Leech Woman played on a double bill with Terence Fisher's The Brides of Dracula (1960). Wanda Hale of the Daily (NY) News gave The Leech Woman a one and a half out of four stars in her review. An anonymous reviewer for the Kilgore (TX) News Herald was much more enthusiastic about The Leech Woman and Gray's turn as June: "Her change of character to show a woman aged 25, 35, 55, and 75 is a masterpiece of achievement, a performance that should easily rank with the leaders in the Hall of Fame of Hollywood Villainy. Throughout the picture Miss Gray etches a compelling and realistic portrait of a woman desperately searching and using any means at her command for youth and beauty."

The Leech Woman Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scream Factory has brought The Leech Woman to US Blu-ray on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-25. The film has been made over courtesy of a 2K scan of the 35mm fine grain composite print. The picture appears in its original exhibition ratio of 1.85:1. The image looks sparkling with top-notch grayscale and deep blacks. Grain is balanced evenly throughout the frame. Tiny dirt pops up on some occasions. Screenshot #s 19 and 20 of the elephants are from Universal's stock library. Scream has encoded the feature at a mean video bitrate of 36000 kbps.

Scream has provided twelve chapters for the 77-minute movie.

The Leech Woman Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono mix (1618 kbps, 24-bit). The track sounds clean with a minimum of background hiss. Dialogue is generally comprehensible. Non-diegetic music and sound f/x come through the center channel with good clarity.

Scream delivers optional English SDH in a yellow font.

The Leech Woman Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• NEW Audio Commentary with Author/Film Historian Tom Weaver, Film Music Historian David Schecter, Author/Film Historian Alan K. Rode, and an Archival Audio Interview with Actress Coleen Gray - Weaver wastes not time in getting going on this feature-length track. He admits that production reports for The Leech Woman may no longer exist so he may not know as much as other films he's given commentaries on. Nonetheless, he makes observations from at least one draft of the script he read as well as a press booklet. Weaver conducted a phone interview with Coleen Gray in July 2012, which he excerpts here. Schecter delivers an outstanding and highly detailed analysis of the film's music. He goes into considerable depth about the score's use of instruments and pitch. Being a Universal film from the studio era, there was stock music culled from UIP's library. Rode reminisces about actress Kim Hamilton. Additionally, there are actor recreations reciting Weaver's archival interviews. In English, not subtitled.

• Theatrical Trailers (3:51, upscaled to 1080p) - two original theatrical trailers for The Leech Woman. The first is a film- sourced trailer Universal-International Pictures ran in theaters. It displays dirt and other artifacts but has decent quality for its age. For the second, Scream has inserted a prefatory note: "The narration in the following trailer was re-recorded using the original script." Image quality is very similar.

• Still Gallery (3:49, 1080p) - a slide show of dissolving images from The Leech Woman's marketing campaign. The first twenty-nine are glossy photographs from UIP's press packet, followed by various snapshots, which show the behind the scenes and the film's publicity shoot. The next fourteen sport poster sheets and lobby cards (all in color!). The last seven are taken from UIP's "Showman's Manual," which contains production information, stills, and composite mats.

The Leech Woman Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Leech Woman is on the lower rung of Universal's monster movies of the '50s and '60s. I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Credit should go to Coleen Gray, Estelle Hemsley, and Kim Hamilton, who each deliver engrossing performances. Scream Factory's 2K restoration looks terrific. None of the film's DVDs had any extras. The Weaver commentary is filled with nuggets and anecdotes from the cast members he interviewed. A MILD RECOMMENDATION for The Leech Woman.