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Frosty loves kim chee even though it smells like vomit. My distant relatives in Norway crave lutefisk even though it reeks of putrefaction. Gastronomes assure us that the stinkiest Roqueforts are the most divine. And some movies are so supremely cheesy that they reach an artistic critical mass, pop through an esthetic space-time warp, and become scrumptious cinematic palate-pleasers.

In hopes of making a discovery of this sort, and also because he digs scary monsters, your faithful reviewer has seen nothing this summer but sci-fi horror flicks. 

TERROR IS A MAN and BRIDES OF BLOOD are of special interest to film historians, being the first of the cult-classic Blood Island films made in the Philippines during the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's. The monsters are disappointing, but calendar pin-up girl turned starlet Beverly Hills impressed me with her prodigious cone-shaped mammary glands in BRIDES OF BLOOD.

If you live for celebrity scandals, you'll want to check out ALIEN 51. A low-budget, made-for-DVD turkey, it features notorious Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss in her first public performance since being released from prison. Heidi plays the wife of the owner of Psychobilly's Circus, a traveling carnival-tent freak show. Her acting, like that of the rest of the cast, is stupefyingly bad (go back to pandering, Heidi!), but her costumes, makeup, and the huge toy plastic syringe she keeps in her purse are right out of Fellini.  Enjoy, enjoy!

If you're not a film historian or an aficionado of celebrity scandals, then CONTROL ROOM, FAHRENHEIT 9/11, and THE CORPORATION are your best bets. The monsters in them will make your blood run cold and disturb your sleep for years to come.

Oddly enough, even though all six of these movies include savory treats, your trusty reviewer has no desire to review them. The film that keeps calling my name is an old favorite, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. It had been nearly ten years since the last time I'd seen it, so late in July I gave in to my deepest and most depraved urgings, hopped on my bicycle, and raced to the library to check it out again. What a delight! I can honestly say that ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES has never failed to please me.  And that brings us back to the thesis posited in my first paragraph. Some movies are so bad they're good. A definite contender for the honor of being named The Ultimate Cheese, this is a film that flaunts its awfulness like an anorexic supermodel strutting down the runway in a black garbage bag with chunks of foam rubber glued to it.

You can turn on ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, close your eyes, and be entertained by the soundtrack alone. Alexander Laszlo's garish score for symphony orchestra evokes a mood of screeching panic rather than anything so subtle as suspense or dread. Indeed, the hysterically emotional pitch of the music makes it sound like something Bela Bartok might have composed if a sadist had kept injecting him with life-threatening doses of meth cut with a little bit of horse tranquilizer to keep his heart from exploding.  In a bizarre counterpoint to this scream-and-run music, we also get the peppy 1959 rock 'n' roll songs that swamp slut Liz Walker plays on her battered old record player whenever she's in the mood to cheat on Dave, her spineless fatty of a husband.

The camera work matches the music. John M. Nickolaus Jr.'s black-and-white cinematography favors chiaroscuros of shadow and bare-bulb glare when we're inside Dave's general store, brooding inkiness when we're prowling through the Florida swamps at night, and an eerie, washed-out, etiolated paleness during the few brief scenes that take place in daylight hours. When the sun goes down in the cypress groves, a deeply layered darkness swallows the characters, and all we can perceive on the screen are phantom figures – vague, blurry outlines groping blindly through the fearful night. I don't know for sure, but I would prefer to believe that this wonderfully dismal ambience is the result of canny artistic judgment, not just a lucky break due to the movie's low budget.

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