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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
Arrow Video continues to be among the global leaders in the
boutique releasing home video industry alongside Radiance Films, Vinegar
Syndrome and Severin Films as far as unearthing forgotten or otherwise
overlooked cinematic gems and publishing them in lovingly made deluxe collector’s
sets. Most of Arrow Video’s output has
consisted of older preexisting titles restored in 4K and/or pressed to 4K UHD
disc, among their most recent The Warriors and the forthcoming Conan
the Barbarian 4K collection.
But as
with their sought-after releases of hard-to-find horror movies, they also put
out a lot of brand new movies of varying quality such as Lake Michigan
Monster and Two Witches, smaller digitally rendered movies which
somehow or another get snuck into the otherwise solid roster of Arrow Video
titles. Some turned out great like The
Stylist but most of the time they end up being like today’s Arrow Video
title: writer-director Eric Pennycoff’s holiday freeloader horror freakout The
Leech.
Not wholly unlike Mark O’Brien’s The Righteous (also
a newer crisis of faith title released on Arrow Video), The Leech follows
Father David (Graham Skipper) who is struggling to keep butts in the pews of
his hole-in-the-wall church with a fledgling music director when a homeless man
crashing in one of his pews accosts him looking for shelter from the winter
cold. Taking pity on the man whom we
learn is named Terry (Jerry Gardner), the priest invites the hobo into his home
as an act of kindness.
However, his
hospitality is thrown right back in his face when the man’s pregnant
girlfriend, Lexi (Taylor Gardner) shows up in tow and house rules are broken
right and left including but not limited to blasting profane music, drinking,
smoking and eventually hard drugs and the threat of blackmail. Gradually succumbing to their trashy
lifestyle, Father David’s life begins unraveling as he slips into madness and
makes it his life’s mission to purify the couple of their evil ways even if it
means Old Testament bloodletting in the process.
An exercise in gradual discomfort with the audience taking
the point-of-view of Father David (played brilliantly by Graham Skipper) as he
sees his carefully constructed and ordered life being taken apart piece by
piece while these two reprobates continue to test the man with what they can
get away with, The Leech is a nice little holiday horror flick that
winds up being an increasingly madcap and perverse exercise in transgressive
provocation.
Ostensibly a chamber piece
with most of the unacceptable behaviors crammed within the walls of the
parochial home, the film is a button pusher with Jerry Gardner as our
gatekeeper to Hell gradually finding more and more ways to creep under our
skin. Take for instance a scene where
the beleaguered preacher is trying to simply go to bed and the troublemaking
duo rouses him out of bed for some drinks which turns into a full-blown night
of debauchery. Watching this encounter,
we share with David in his feeling of being cornered with arms twisted into
sinning, a man of faith and character being unwillingly sullied by forces of
evil.
Visually speaking The Leech for being a
straight-to-video title from Arrow Video looks solid in 2.35:1 scope widescreen
by Blue Ruin camera operator Rommel Genciana and finds ways to make the
walls of the parochial home feel ever more imprisoning with time as these two
miscreants take over the poor preacher’s life.
Near the end the lighting gets a little funkier with the time-honored
blue-red lights crashing together ala Dario Argento or more recently Nicolas
Winding Refn. Where the film falters
some however is the score by Eric Romary.
Though able to establish a mood of unease, it always sounds like a casio
keyboard and a climactic locking of horns near the film’s end sounds like a
generic Hollywood action movie. Not
terrible but definitely the film’s weakest element.
Given a festival release in 2022 before going to the Arrow
Player online and given a deluxe limited edition on blu-ray disc, Eric
Pennycoff’s The Leech intends on tossing the tables over and climbing
over the top with some sneaky The Exorcist references including a
flash-cut of Pazuzu but somehow never gets as nutty as it could have. While touching on unspeakable debaucheries including
but not limited to human ashes being used for, well, I’ll leave it at that, somehow
The Leech never fully explodes with insanity and feels made within the boilerplate
of an unwanted guest thriller. The
acting is generally good though it is more or less a minimally cast film that
could’ve also been a stage play at one point.
Overall it’s an entertaining, unrated holiday horror romp mixed with
pious madness and occasionally wild lunacy but it really could’ve been crazier.
--Andrew Kotwicki
