- Title: Swamp Thing
- Year: 1982
- Rating: PG
- Director: Wes Craven
- Writer(s): Wes Craven (comic: Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson)
- Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Louis Jourdan, Ray Wise, Dick Durock, David Hess, Nicholas Worth
When a horrible accident transforms Dr. Alec Holland into a half-man, half-plant juggernaut, he uses his strength to protect the woman he loves, and defeat the power-hungry maniac who would use his secret formula for evil.
Rewind . . .
. . . and Swamp Thing is the stuff of long, rainy Sunday afternoons and grilled cheese sandwiches in front of the TV. I can still picture the VHS tape — curling label kept in place by scotch tape, security tab busted out, the titles Swamp Thing and Every Which Way But Loose printed with childish precision in blue ink. My father and I must have watched it twenty times when I was a kid, in those preteen years before so many other distractions began to pull at my attention. Swamp Thing, for some reason, was a readily agreed upon mutual favorite of ours, low-budget campfest that it was, and it had something for us both. For me it had monsters and gunplay and a fun scifi premise. For Dad it had monsters and gunplay and a fun scifi premise and Adrienne Barbeau running around the swamp in a tight t-shirt. It was a comic book movie long before such things became ubiquitous, and it was unapologetically brainless fun.
Swamp Thing, based on the long-running DC comic, takes the no nonsense approach to story, and moves quickly once we get past the creepy intro shots of the bayou. Barbeau, a government agent of an unspecified sort named Alice Cable, arrives in the swamp to see how some super-secret research is going, while at the same time scene cuts to a cadre of lurking mercenary types indicate that trouble will soon be in the offing. Cable meets Dr. Alec Holland, played by Ray Wise, who endears himself to her through some botanically-themed flirting. Holland is working on a formula to end human hunger (and we are told that be the year 2001, even bloggers won’t be able to feed themselves), but his formula is seen to have some other, weird properties — namely rapid plant growth and regeneration. Just at this eureka moment, the mercs bust in and destroy the hidden research base, and bad rich guy Arcane (Louis Jordan) takes Holland’s research notes. Holland, trying to resist, ends up dowsed with his own formula and set on fire — he runs off into the swamp and isn’t seen again.
Until, that is, he returns as an eight-foot tall plant man to kick some ass.
And so we get motorboats and machine guns and grenades, stunts involving men and explosions flying all over the place, and a big guy (Dick Durock) in a green rubber suit lunging and roaring. It’s great, good guy vs. bad guy b-movie fun, and doesn’t ever pretend to be anything more than that. Cable herself alternates between superchick and damsel in distress, throwing punches and blasting away with an assault rifle one minute, and tripping over her own feet the next. Arcane is deliciously evil, Jourdan’s effete and urbane performance elevating him into a world class jerk. The whole thing works as well as it could, and stretches the resources it has to create the best looking movie you can get for three million bucks — probably the cost of the trailer rental for a supporting actor in a modern Hollywood production.
Fast Forward . . .
. . . and nobody looks down their nose at comic book movies anymore, least not the suits in movieland who all know that superheroes, monsters, and scifi action equal big bucks. Wes Craven himself has gone on to enjoy a lot of success with his Scream franchise and other films, building on the success of his breakout 1984 hit A Nightmare on Elmstreet, but Swamp Thing doesn’t really fit in with his oeuvre of teen scare movies. The tradition of low budget movies of this kind still survives in numerous made for TV and direct to DVD releases, but now the rubber monster suits are as likely to be replaced with equally as dodgy CGI. Maybe some ten year old kid out there now will, in a few decades, write with fondness about all those syfy channel original movies he managed to watch in his own misspent youth.
Maybe, but I doubt it.
In rewatching Swamp Thing for the first time in what had to be twenty years I wasn’t really under any illusions that I was revisiting a genre classic. While I was somewhat pleasantly surprised with how entertained I was by it over-and-above the strong rush of nostalgia that informed my viewing, I didn’t come away with the feeling that this was a movie that deserved to be studied or passed down and impressed upon a new generation. And that, frankly, is just fine — because no amount of classic status could really measure against my own personal appraisal of the film, and those rainy Sundays with my Dad.
But it is a fun movie done in an effectively workmanlike style, and seems more of a throwback to the old creature feature films and 50s double-feature fodder, than an early outlier of the modern superhero movie. It’s much better than equivalent films of the era, and hits a pretty good balance between camp and thrills. While the later part of the movie does seem to fall apart a bit and feels a bit flat, the great opening sequence has already done its job of investing the viewer in the outcome of the flick, and the environment of the swamp itself is filmed with a higher degree of artistry than one would expect. For those of us that remember it from childhood, I think Swamp Thing can happily occupy the niche of guilty pleasure without having to aspire to true cult classic status — and, really, that’s better than most rubber suit monster films can ever hope to aspire to.
- Nostalgia Rating: Monstrous Huge
- Rewatch Potential: Low, lest the tint of nostalgia fade in the cold glare of the present.
- Wilhelm Scream?: Yes, when Swamp Thing throws a mercenary off a boat.
- Unexpected Cameo: Well, not exactly a cameo, but I had totally forgotten that Leland Palmer was the Swamp Thing!
- Verdict: Though perhaps only truly appealing when seen through the lens of nostalgia, Swamp Thing should satisfy aficionados of b-movie camp, and may be of interest to fans of modern comic book movies as well.
What I Learned: That there’s a monster within us all and, if you’re really bad, yours will have a pig-dog head and wield a sword.
Top Marks: Jude. Played by Reggie Batts — who has appeared in no other film before or since according to IMDB — Jude is a minor character that steals the show. He’s a scrawny kid with coke bottle glasses and a squeaky voice that, apparently, runs a crummy convenience store on an old swamp road. He becomes Cable’s only ally, beyond the Swamp Thing itself, and helps hide and transport her around the swamp in his boat. Batts’ weird deadpan performance isn’t stellar in terms of believability, but his off-center line delivery and natural charisma make him instantly likable. Even after a space of twenty years I found myself quoting his lines, and I can still see why, as a kid, I always looked forward to the point in Swamp Thing when Jude showed up for the first time.
If (When) It’s Remade: There was a sequel made in 1989 that ratcheted up the camp and goofiness, but I didn’t rewatch it for this review. There was even a television series that I don’t think I ever so much as caught a glimpse of. A remake, done in the vein of a modern superhero film, could certainly either be very effective or abysmal. I would certainly love to see a Swamp Thing that was more than a man in a rubber suit, and I’m sure a lot of creativity could be deployed to bring us a monster that seemed like a real man-plant hybrid. Talk of a remake has bounced around for a long time, and it looks like a 3D version (sigh) may be in the offing for the immediate future. Fingers and fronds crossed that it doesn’t suck.
Final Thoughts: Wow, what a difference between the PG of yesteryear and that of today. I’ve been seeing that in a lot of movies, particularly pre-1984 movies (when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came along and inspired the need for a PG-13 rating in the states), and the levels of violence and, in particular and especially, nudity in these earlier films would probably not fly today.
This review is part of an ongoing series entitled Movies of a Misspent Youth, that looks at all the great fantasy, science fiction, and horror films available to the generation of kids growing up in the boom years of the 1980s. For more in this series, please visit my Film & TV page.
