Starring Matthew Twining, Josh Henderson, Stacey Nelson, Alexandra Westmore, Michael Lutz, Tony Carroccio

Directed by David DeCoteau

QUESTION: What do you get when you combine an Afterschool Special on the dangers of steroids, a nature gone amok movie about killer mutant leeches, and then toss in a dash of homoeroticism for good measure?

ANSWER: Leeches! - The newest movie from David DeCoteau and his Rapid Heart Pictures production company.

The prospect of a movie about hunky, wet-lipped, college studs in Speedo's getting sucked to death by mutated leeches made by the man who has single handedly created the sub-genre of homoerotic horror sounded like it had a lot more camp potential than it actually does. If truth be told, Leeches! is for the most part just another ultra low budget nature run amok movie with a premise that showed far more promise than it delivers. I'd dare say if you eliminated the killer mutant leech aspect of the movie you'd have an Afterschool Special about athletes using steroids and quite frankly that part of the script is handled better than the monster part.

Scenic Lakecrest College's swim team is on the verge of winning the state championships or something like that thanks to the steroids the team's star athletes are taking. When not in the pool practicing, the swim team and their girlfriends hang out by the leech-infested lake, so for the past few months these leeches have been sucking the blood of roided up swimmers. Now the leeches have grown to arm's length and are suffering from a serious case of roid rage.

First and foremost, getting through the very slow paced first 30 minutes is brutal. They set up the premise and introduce us to the characters but the spawning of the mutant leeches takes all of about 60 seconds and the characters are virtually interchangeable. Only one character in the whole movie has any distinct personality: the arrogant captain of the swim team responsible for getting others on the juice. Also, DeCoteau apparently decided to get nearly all the homoeroticism out of the way early on so the first half hour is further bogged down with way, way, way too many scenes of the swim team members in their tiny bathing suits walking in slow motion, getting out of the pool in slow motion, just standing there in slow motion… I think you get the point. I know you have to expect this sort of thing from a DeCoteau flick but even Baywatch doesn't feature this many slow motion montages in a single episode. Personally, the gay element doesn't bother me. In fact, I find the way his camera lovingly slides down their bodies in slow motion in a manner usually reserved for a Playboy video rather giggle-inducing. But it still gets done so much early on in Leeches! that it bogs down the movie. As I've said in other reviews in the past, there is a reason why movies like this used to be only about 70 minutes long.

And I'm still rather fuzzy on the logic of the first leech attack. This already huge leech climbs into this guys mouth and basically ends up in his stomach. I still don't understand what the point of this was supposed to accomplish unless it was just the only way DeCoteau could come up with to have one of the victim's stumble back to his room so he could vomit up a ton of blood and a big leech. It's gross and pointless. Then again, if I wanted to nitpick to that degree I could say the whole movie is pointless.

If this is the most expensive production Rapid Heart Pictures has ever done than I guess the typical Rapid Heart movie budget must be a change of clothes and a tank of gas because this movie reeks of being a cheap production. Everything from the lighting to the special effects comes across as being done on the cheap and while you have to understand that when watching a low budget movie there are just some cases where the movie simply cannot overcome its monetary shortcomings. Hell, at one point the leeches supposedly massacre a whole group of characters at once. I say supposedly because the budget must not have been there to actually show us the massacre as the sole survivor has to tell us about it afterwards. This is especially bad because one of the characters killed in that scene we didn't see was a character that had quite a bit of screen time prior to it.

If nothing else you expect a movie called Leeches! to deliver with the leech attacks. Nope, they suck. No pun intended. Here's how a typical leech attack goes down. Somebody is sitting or crouching or whatever and all of a sudden the movie jump cuts to the leeches shooting out of the side of the screen and latching themselves to the actor's face. From the looks of things, the leeches can either fly or teleport because they literally appear out of thin air several feet above the ground all at once from out of the top and sides of the screen to land on someone's face. Again, I suspect this was a casualty of the budget. At least they didn't use any crummy CGI. There's one character that falls prey to a leech attack in the shower that's actually done in a relatively believable manner. Other than that, every other leech attack plays out as described above or with people thrashing about in a body of water.

Oh, there is one death that is clearly an homage to Charles Band, as it plays out like the scene from the first Puppet Master in which the Leech Woman puppet killed a man tied up in bed. I'll give that one some points for creativity. In what I believe to be another homage the movie makes, when the leeches latch onto someone they make this fluttering noise which sounds like a higher pitched version of the sound made during the attack scenes in Piranha.

Leeches! does have its moments, mainly during the finale. Aside from the dopey plan they concoct to kill the leeches, there's also a human murderer loose on campus yet to be revealed and a scene in which one character sort of turns the tables on a giant leech and…you just have to see it to believe it. The movie also has a surprise twist ending that comes from completely out of left field, makes absolutely zero sense, and no attempt at explaining the reasoning behind it is given. Well, other than they clearly needed an excuse to set up a sequel that has yet to come about.

Outside of the first 30 minutes, Leeches! isn't a complete disaster or a crashing bore but it really is a victim of its meager budget and only occasionally delivers what it could. If you're just a huge fan of DeCoteau's work (although I really did find the directing rather shoddy) or you just like seeing men and women scream while hand puppets designed to look like leeches massage their faces then I suggest you rush right out and rent Leeches! For anyone else, you can take it or leave it.

At least it was better than Ice Crawlers.

2 STARS