The Leech Woman is a 1960 black-and-white American horror film directed by Edward Dein, produced by Joseph Gershenon, and starring Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Gloria Talbott and Phillip Terry.

The plot follows a middle-aged American woman, desperate to be young again, who uses an ancient, secret African potion to regain her lost youth and beauty.

A mysterious old woman named Malla who claims to have been brought to America 140 years ago as a slave approaches endocrinologist Dr. Paul Talbot and promises to reveal to him the secret of eternal youth if he will fund her final trip back to Africa, so that she can be beautiful and young for one last night before she dies.

The secretions, extracted from the back of the neck via a special ring and mixed with the pollen, temporarily transform Malla into a young, beautiful woman.

After discovering that her conniving husband only brought her along as "a guinea pig who could talk," June takes revenge, choosing Paul to be sacrificed so that she can use his pineal gland extract to become young again herself, though Malla warns her that the transformation will not last long.

[1] According to contemporary reviews, the filmmakers mixed stock footage of African wildlife and tribal dances with scenes shot in the studio.

Talbott was taken aback by the comment and approached the scene with the intent of overpowering her blonde co-star even though the script called for Gray to win the fight.

[7] In a separate interview, screenwriter David Duncan told Weaver that the story did not originate with him, saying, "I think they gave me a screenplay that had been written by somebody named Bruce Pivar.

[5] The film premiered in Los Angeles on Wednesday 15 June 1960 as the bottom half of a double bill, following The Brides of Dracula.

Beginning that night, both films were billed as a "Double Chill and Thrill Show" in the Los Angeles Times and played at six indoor theaters and eight drive-ins in the LA area.

[9] When The Leech Woman reached Dayton, Ohio on Saturday 17 June 1960, just two days later, it was the second film on triple features shown simultaneously at three local drive-ins.

Eight theaters in cities around the US reported their percentages: Minneapolis, 140; Buffalo, Detroit, Indianapolis and San Francisco, 100 each; New Haven, 95; Boston, 90; and Omaha, 85.

But he writes that "Gloria Talbott can't work up much energy" in her role and that Williams was "a hapless contract player (...) who had no choice about appearing in certain films".

[4] British horror and science fiction scholar Phil Hardy puts The Leech Woman into the category of "one of several low-budget rejuvenation films of the early sixties", but compliments "Bud Westmore's striking makeup" as "the most notable feature of this workmanlike offering, the last to be directed by Dein, a Poverty Row regular".

[18] Senn, on the other hand, says that Gray is "let down by Bud Westmore's makeup department in her early scenes where her face looks like it needs rejuvenation less than just a good scrubbing".

But Senn, too, writes that Gray's "performance as the female Mr. Hyde stands out" in a film that is otherwise a "juvenile but well-acted chiller that came at the tail end of Universal's string of 1950s sci-fi/horror melodramas".

[19] In looking at race in the film, the anonymous reviewer at Blackhorrormovies calls it a "parade of clichés and stereotypes" and points out that its "portrayal of Africa is pretty typical of Hollywood in this era (and to some extent, up to the turn of the [21st] century)" with its "mystical rites with wildly gyrating natives", its "references to indigenous tribes as 'savages'" and its "'good' locals escorting the outsiders who either die or flee in terror (in this case, both)".

[27][30][31] When the DVD was released in the UK by Screenbound Pictures Ltd., it received a 12-rating by the British Board of Film Classification on 18 April 2016 due to "dated racial stereotying seen in the portrayal of African tribes people as savages with spears and shields, practising voodoo magic," as well as for "moderate violence and horror".