The Leech Woman

Poster tagline: She drained men of their loves and lives!!! This should be featured at the the Shockproof Film Festival. A piece of work from the pen and director's chair of some chauvinist pigs. It addresses the theme of eternal youth, but ultimately demeans women. The basic premise alone – an endocrinologist wants to divorce his wife because she has wrinkles around her eyes (huh, what a horror!). She, therefore, understandably desires to rejuvenate herself to avoid the divorce, and the clue may be an old woman, a 142-year-old retiree, one of the doctor's patients (and in fact the chieftain of a black tribe in Africa) who, with the help of the secrets of the Nando tribe and its medicine Nipe (for God's sake), is able to bring youth and beauty back to the woman. There is one catch, though, a man must be killed in the rejuvenation ritual. So yes, it sounds like colossal shit, and it is shit. And it doesn't end with the ritual. You honestly laugh at the scene where, on a getaway from Africa, a guy has sex with the woman in question, and when Nipe stops performing the next morning and she has wrinkles again, the guy runs from her in terror and screams at her not to touch him. Yeah. And the beauty ride of stupidity continues even after we return to New York, where women are being murdered. P.S. The only good thing was the small role of the hugely charismatic Grant Williams (The Incredible Shrinking Man), who definitely deserved a better film career, but alas, no luck. (19.02.2024)