YMMV / The Leech Woman

• Complete Monster: Bertram Garvay, a vain, racist British trail guide in South Africa, is hired by an American couple, June and Paul Talbot, to search for a secretive tribe who claim to know the secret to reversing the human aging process. Discovering that the process works, but requires the extraction of the pineal fluid of a sacrificial victim, Garvay persuades the emotionally unstable June to offer the abusive Paul as the next sacrifice and take the treatment herself, after which he will run away with her. He then attempts to destroy the tribal village and everyone in it with dynamite to cover his tracks, and despite all his promises, abandoned June when the age regression treatment wears off the next day.
• Hollywood Homely: June is actually not that bad-looking; it's just years of emotional abuse and alcoholism have taken their toll on her appearance.
• Special Effects Failure: While the foam-latex old age makeup is quite good◊ on then-78-year-old Estelle Hemsley, accentuating her already frail and elderly appearance, and innovative for the time, if somewhat crude◊, on 38-year-old Coleen Gray, the heavy accents used for June's physical deterioration from alcohol abuse look unfortunate◊, to say the least — more suited for the stage than the screen. At lower resolutions, it just looks like she's got dirt on her face.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The Movie: Every single male character instantly pounces on the most attractive female around (regardless of whether or not they're in a relationship), and are willing to literally leave them for dead once they get old and aren't so hot anymore; women are completely defined by their ability to attract men, and those that can't are better off dead. And if it's NOT base lust that motivates everyone, it's lust for money. Not a single character ever voices objection when another is murdered, and everybody seems all-too eager to kill. Perhaps a better alternate name would be Humans Are Bastards: The Movie. It's like a Lars von Trier film, without the innovation or style...
• Values Dissonance: The film doesn't lean quite as hard on most of the stereotypical Darkest Africa / Mighty Whitey cliches as some, but it's still a bit uncomfortable by modern standards. Its views on women, however, are appalling, even for the time period—and men don't come off looking too hot, either. Between all this and the decidedly-unpleasant moralizing listed above, the entire film plays like a gigantic ode to misanthropy.

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