802-The Leech Woman

Film Year:  1960
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Edward Dein
Starring:  Grant Williams, Colleen Gray, Phillip Terry, Gloria Talbot, John van Dreelan, Estelle Hemsley, Kim Hamilton, Arthur Batanides
MST Season:  8

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Season eight's Universal International invasion continues with what was likely the final horror film the studio made in black and white, marking the end of an era.  Quickly filmed to be latched onto a double feature with the vastly superior Hammer film they acquired, Brides of Dracula, The Leech Woman is almost a reworked version of The Wasp Woman.

In this movie an elderly lady asks a scientist to escort her back to Africa before she dies, promising the secret of reversing the aging process.  The greedy doctor takes his aging wife in hopes it will turn her beautiful again.  There they find a ritual in which the lady kills a man with a ring and uses his spinal fluid to become young again, as a celebration of their life before they pass on.  The wife is offered the same chance chooses her husband as her sacrifice, killing him and turning young again in the process.  But the de-aging is only temporary, and as she returns to the States she much continually murder men in order to stay young.

It's not entirely an uninteresting concept, but The Leech Woman is a waste.  It's screenplay is underdeveloped and there are a few logic holes that need to be ironed out.  Setpieces are belabored as scenes go on forever, while the horror is not as pronounced as it should be.  Once one finds out this movie is a rush job it makes perfect sense.  Nothing about The Leech Woman has any drive to it.  It's just an idea, and nobody cared what they did with it.

It's sad that this was the last gasp of Universal's dwindling classic horror legacy.  They still dipped their toes in the genre after this, notably three years later with Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but they never had that same output, that determination to make it a continuing legacy.  The Leech Woman isn't a fitting sendoff.  It's the defecation of a corpse's bowels.

The Episode

The sophomore episode of the Sci-Fi era finds us with a movie that's much worse than the previous, but the riffing is far more consistent.  The Leech Woman stays pretty hilarious it's entire runtime, with some great stabs at character quirks.  They have some great fun early on when the wife is portrayed as a drunk ("Oh, I'm sorry.  I was going to get you a drink but I got held up at the bar."), and her jerk husband gets a broad load of jokes about his personality as well.  When the second act revs up in Africa they get some new material to play with and make the most of it.  They have a grand time pointing out stock footage vs. stage footage ("Real Africa...HOLLYWOOD AFRICA!"), while the ritual sacrifice is a bloody hoot ("I choose Adam Sandler!").  The movie switches gears again for the finale, where it turns into a bit of a slasher movie.  Only the killer is a grandma who turns young to seduce every man in sight.  You do the math on how funny this is, but that's an equation worth solving!

Probably the one big riffing walkaway is that this is the episode where Tom Servo does his Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies impersonation, and whenever an elderly woman is onscreen he screams "Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!"  This run-on joke runs straight into a highlighting final host segment in which he holds Mike and Crow at gunpoint in order to do a Beverly Hillbillies sketch.  Other sketches have the Nanites on strike, Crow trying to rid the SOL of prairie dogs (don't ask), and the Bots trying to get Mike's sweet pineal juice out of his neck.  In Deep Ape, Bobo and Peanut de-evolve for a spell by putting on diapers and rollicking around and Pearl tries to live up to the Lawgiver name.  They're certainly having fun with the Planet of the Apes parody this week, I'll give them that.

The Leech Woman smooths out the rough edges of the new Mystery Science Theater and runs with it, proving the crew still has it in them to do an episode this hilarious.  Even if Revenge of the Creature left you indifferent, I think this episode is well worth a look to see if the Sci-Fi era can win you over.  And they're just getting started, because there are plenty of super episodes left in the series.

Good

The DVD

The Leech Woman hit DVD as a part of Shout Factory's 25th Anniversary Edition release.  Audio was good, video was slightly flawed but not overly bothersome.

The third and final chapter of Return to Eden Prairie is on this disc, this one is a hefty half hour long and focuses on the various characters and performers on the show.  Joel, Trace, Kevin, Mary Jo, and Jim all discuss both their main characters and the performers around them, how they were conceived and developed.  The topic also stems to guest characters, as crew members Beez McKeever and Patrick Brantseg both discuss their various guest spots on the show, including fan favorites Steffi the Babysitter, Pitch, and Ortega.

Also here is Life After MST3K:  Mary Jo Pehl, a look at Mary Jo's post MST career.  It includes small tidbits about her books, Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic, and being "1 Across" in a TV Guide crossword puzzle.

Also included is a theatrical trailer.