1959: THE YEAR OF THE LEECH

by Mark McLaughlin

The little bell above the door tinkled as merrily as a drunken pixie as I entered PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

“Good morning, Mark!” the Professor cried, grinding the butt of a cigarette into an ashtray made from the top half of a human skull.

“Professor, I didn’t know you smoked!” I had three reasons for being surprised to see him with a cigarette in hand.

Reason No. 1: He was incredibly old, and while smoking is unhealthy for anyone of any age, it must be especially bad for someone who’s been around for more than a century.

Reason No. 2: The shoppe was full of valuable antiques, all old and dry, so smoking presented a fire hazard.

Reason No. 3: I’d known the Professor for quite some time and had never seen him smoke before.

“You must be quite surprised to see me smoking,” the Professor said. “After all, I’m well over a hundred years old — it can’t be good for me! And, the shoppe is full of dry old things — a fire hazard if ever there was one! And of course, you’ve never seen me smoke before.”

Sometimes, it’s like he can read my mind.

“Right on all three counts,” I said. “So what’s up with the cigarette?”

“I only smoke one of these a year,” he said. “They come from my private collection of curios: cigarettes handcrafted by the occultist Aleister Crowley, made from leaves he’d picked from the Tree of Knowledge.”

“They must be all stale and moldy by now,” I said.

“Oh no, they shall remain fresh forever,” the Professor said. “They’re quite refreshing, but I only dare smoke one per year.”

I looked down at the charred stub in the ashtray. “What would happen if you smoked a second one right now?”

“Smoking one a year gives me the knowledge one needs to live an extremely long time,” the Professor said matter-of-factly. “Smoking two in one year would teach me why death is actually preferable to life.” The old man shrugged. “I’d rather not take that lesson.”

I decided to change the subject to something less depressing. “Professor, I’m really enjoying that ancient Lemurian time machine you sold me!”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” the Professor said. “I really am sorry it can only visit the dimension of old movies and television shows. It was broken when it came into the shoppe, and apparently the replacement parts I used from a film projector, a VCR and a couple old TV sets limited its capabilities.”

“No need to apologize — or to supply exposition,” I said. “You told me all that when I bought it.”

The Professor grinned. “Well, I know you’re a writer, so I said all that in case you put this conversation word-for-word in a story, or perhaps one of those Internet blogs I’ve been hearing about. So have you visited 1959?”

“Not yet!” I said. “Why? Do you think I should?”

“Certainly, yes! American was in an intriguing transitional stage in 1959,” he said, his eyes glittering with knowledge. But then, he’d just smoked that Crowley cigarette. “The traditional ways of the Fifties were soon to give way to the new permissiveness of the Sixties. Even in the counter-culture, beatniks were soon to be replaced by hippies.”

“And how is that transition reflected in the movies of 1959?” I asked.

“Excellent question! I could tell you the answer, but that would only spoil your fun.” The Professor absent-mindedly stroked a stuffed lizard on the counter. “I will tell you this: 1959 was the Year of the Leech! Now, let me show you some items that came into the shoppe earlier this week…”

Later that day, I did indeed visit 1959 — but before we get to that, let’s take a look at what happened in the world that year….

On January 3, Alaska was admitted as the forty-ninth American state.

On January 12, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records.

On February 3, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died when their chartered plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa.

On February 16, Fidel Castro became the Premier of Cuba.

On March 9, the Barbie doll made her debut.

On April 9, NASA announced the selection of seven military pilots to become the first American astronauts.

On May 28, two monkeys, Able and Miss Baker, were the first living creatures to return from space, via the Jupiter AM-18.

On June 9, the USS George Washington — the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles — was launched.

On, July 8, Dale R. Buis and Charles Ovnand were the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam.

On July 17, an Australopithecus skull was discovered by Louis and Mary Leakey in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.

On August 8, a flood in Taiwan killed 2,000.

On August 21, Hawaii was admitted as the fiftieth American state.

On September 14, Luna 2 crashed on the Moon — the first man-made object to do so.

On October 2, Rod Serling’s THE TWILIGHT ZONE premiered on CBS.

On November 18, MGM released BEN-HUR in Technicolor. It went on to win eleven Academy Awards, a world record until 1998, when TITANIC equaled the record.

On December 1, the Antarctic Treaty declared Antarctica to be a scientific preserve, free of military activity.

1959 was also the birth year of chanteuses Sade, Sheena Easton, Irene Cara and Marie Osmond; actors Kyle MacLachlan, Tom Arnold and Hugh Laurie; rapper Flavor Flav; gender-bending pop star Pete Burns; basketball player Magic Johnson; rock star Bryan Adams; comic musician “Weird Al” Yankovic; Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson; and murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries, the Time Machine of Terror!, or TMOT! resembles a giant, old-fashioned brass alarm clock with bat wings, and is invisible to anyone outside of the machine (it came with a tracking device in case I forget where I’ve parked it).

When I arrived in 1959, I decided to check out the Professor’s “Year of the Leech” reference by visiting THE LEECH WOMAN. This black-and-white potboiler concerns an amoral doctor who wants to learn how to make elderly women young and beautiful again. An incredibly old African woman offers him the information he’s looking for, provided he’ll help her to return to her tribe.

The sleazy doctor zips off to Africa with his aging, alcoholic wife in tow as a human guinea pig. He learns that older women can become young again if they drink a mixture of rare orchid pollen and male pineal-gland juice. Unfortunately for the doc, he soon becomes the pineal colada that restores his wife’s beauty.

Her newly restored loveliness, however, doesn’t last long, and so she has to kill and kill again to keep the glandular cocktails coming.

THE LEECH WOMAN didn’t feature any actual leeches, so I decided to hop over to ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, which really does live up to its title. Man-sized leeches abscond with various citizens of a bayou town and hide them in a secret cave, so they have something to slurp on whenever they feel a little puckish … or suckish, as the case may be.

I continued to hop from movie to movie, hoping to discover the secret behind the Professor’s comment….

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE features a storyline similar to that of ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. An enormous, horrific, tentacled, thoroughly Lovecraftian spider-creature seizes local yokels and plasters them to the walls of its cave with webbing, so it can suck out some of their blood every now and then.

THE KILLER SHREWS takes place on a remote island where a science experiment has gone haywire, creating enormous, ravenous shrews that need to eat several times their bodyweight in food every day just to stay alive.

THE BAT is named after a masked killer who slays anyone standing between him and a fortune hidden in a mysterious mansion. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL also presents us with a greedy fortune-hunter hatching a dastardly plot in an evil edifice.

In HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, an insane author kills a series of innocent victims so he can write best-selling books about the mysterious murders.

In THE BLOODY BROOD, wicked beatniks also kill the innocent for kicks … in BLOODLUST, a mad millionaire hunts down humans for his twisted amusement … and in A BUCKET OF BLOOD, a deranged beatnik artist murders folks and turns them into valuable works of art. Dig that crazy cadaver, daddy-o!

How right the Professor was! 1959 was indeed the Year of the Leech. In movie after movie, predatory creatures and maniacs slaughtered victims for nourishment, profit or sport. The conservative world of the Fifties was trying to convey a message, and that message was “HELP!” Traditional values were being sucked dry by an advancing wave of vampiric hedonism.

Happily-ever-after just wasn’t part of the picture in 1959 horror movies. In THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, a lovely, starry-eyed young woman meets and marries a handsome, successful young man, only to discover that he is in fact … an alligator person. Goodness, what will the neighbors think? At least she found out before they had kids!

Even the wholesome concept of following in daddy’s footsteps was shot in the head in 1959. In RETURN OF THE FLY, a young scientist decides to pick up where his pappy left off — and becomes a ghastly insect-headed freak, just like the old man.

There was no one a person could turn to for solace or security in 1959. You couldn’t even trust the medical profession — just look at that despicable doctor in THE LEECH WOMAN. He wasn’t the only fiendish physician to grace the silver screen that year. You’d think a pathologist would want to keep people alive, but in THE TINGLER, the medic in question gleefully allows a helpless mute woman to die so that a centipede-like monstrosity can spring into being. Nice bedside manner, doc!

The movies of 1959 clearly depict the tail-end of an era in crisis. No more dads smoking pipes as they read the daily paper by the fireplace. No more moms in aprons baking apple pies. No more sons and daughters studying in libraries and sipping malts through bendy straws. Kiss those sweet images goodbye, because the Sixties soon ushered in an era of free love, long hair, and recreational drugs that conservative types found as frightening as any giant leech.

When I returned to the present day, I visited Professor LaGungo’s shoppe and told him of what I’d learned during my trip to 1959. He listened to what I had to tell him and then said, “Actually, my comment had nothing to do with any of that. By ‘leech’ I was referring to the 1959 movie, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, because everybody says it sucks … you know, like, um … a leech … my little joke….”

He paused, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. Finally he said, “Anyway! Let me show you some goodies that came into the shoppe about an hour ago…”

– End –

MARK McLAUGHLIN is part Greek, part Irish, part French, all terror. He is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of numerous story collections, including MOTIVATIONAL SHRIEKER, PICKMAN’S MOTEL, and TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM.

To find out more about Mark’s work, visit www.myspace.com/monsterbook, www.skullvines.com, and/or enter McLaughlin into the search engine at www.horror-mall.com.

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