Review of “Swamp Thing” (1982)

Back to the traditional Saturday pizza and bad movie nights. The dearly beloved has seen this one, but I had not. Swamp Thing is based on a comic book superhero, which accounts, in part, for the lack of helpless and intellectually challenged maidens and for the cabal of paramilitaries run by an evil overlord.

Plot:

In the opening scenes, one poor guy runs through the swamps somewhere in the American Southeast, chased down by guys in military gear. When they catch the poor man, they beat him and threaten him with a snake. Naughty, naughty paramilitaries.

*Fade to black*

Aboard a helicopter flying over the swamps is Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau), from the government.  She’s here to replace a missing worker on some project.

Once they land and disembark, Charlie (Al Ruban), her guide, introduces her to the project manager, Ritter (Don Knight). Charlie and Ritter argue about something or someone called Arcane. It’s just a rumor. In the meantime, Alice notices a sensor has malfunctioned. She introduces herself to the lead scientist, Dr. Alec Holland (Ray Wise) and his sister, Dr. Linda Holland (Nannette Brown). Alec says he’s trying to develop a plant/animal hybrid, with the animal aggression for survival.

No trouble on the horizon there!

Alec takes Alice on a tour of the swamp to repair the malfunctioning sensor. No sense wasting the trip. He comes on to the pretty girl. It was the sensor the missing worker was trying to fix when he was killed. Hmmm… Either it’s a rather dangerous sensor, or there’s some bad’uns about.

When they return, Charlie and Ritter chew out Alice for distracting Alec. Huh? A loud BANG comes from the lab. They run to find a jubilant Linda. She holds up her discovery: a Day-Glo green goo in a beaker that goes BANG when she splashes it on things. It also spurs rapid plant growth.

Alec is so happy he kisses Alice and sends her into the control room for Ritter. EWWW. Creep.

Nobody is in the control room, but she sees clear footage of Charlie outside as someone shoots and kills him.

Before she can raise the alarm, paramilitaries overrun the facility. Ritter steps forward—but wait! It’s not Ritter. The man rips a face mask off Scooby-Doo style to reveal his true face—ARCANE (Louis Joudan)!

Linda is shot and killed trying to escape. The bastards! Alex tries to hide the green goo, but spills it, igniting a fire in the building and setting himself on fire. He dives into the swamp to try to put the fire out. In the confusion, the paramilitaries seize Alec and Linda’s notebooks, but Alice stashes the last one.

Fire and some bubbles appear near the surface of the water where Alec dived in, trying to douse the flames. He does not reemerge…

Thoughts:

This flick was campy and silly, but it was also a lot of fun. Did it make sense? Not much. The swamp monster (Dick Durock) that arises from having Linda’s green goo explode on him and a dip in the swamp is superhuman, yet he remains Alec Holland, only more so. He’s in love with Alice Cable—oh, awkward—and saves her life several times. Not that she’s ungrateful, but she quite literally shoos him away afterward, because, you know. He’s a swamp monster. Can’t exactly bring him home to Mom.

Much of the dialogue is painful to listen to, but some things shine from amid the drivel. Becoming a swamp monster makes poor Alec something of a philosopher, though his speech is fragmentary. “Much beauty in the swamp, if you only look,” he tells Alice, who doesn’t care for the swamp one bit. She’s already ruined one pair of expensive boots.

When Arcane is menacing Alec at the facility, he tells him, “The best thing for you is not to have been born. The next best thing is for you to die soon,” and notes this is a quote from Nietzsche. You’d expect a bad guy to threaten someone with a Nietzsche quote. Technically, Nietzsche wrote this in his The Birth of Tragedy: “The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this — to die soon.” However, he’s quoting a Greek spirit and discussing a sort of philosophy of art.

There’s still the skullduggery of the paramilitaries and the evil Arcane to deal with. Rest assured the bad guys get the comeuppance in suitably gruesome and comic-book style ways, many of them flying into the air from airfoil boots into the swamp, accompanied by appropriated screams. They’re the lucky ones.

Nor is Alice Cable a shrinking violet, so to speak, making mincemeat of men’s delicate areas and getting in bruising fistfights with bad guys.

Though the film is rated PG, several sets of bare boobs show up, both in innocent settings while Alice is taking an alfresco bath and in the decadent headquarters of the evil Arcane. Apparently, the movie version available for DVD is the one intended for Europe.

Swamp Thing was nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for the 1983 Saturn Award for the Best Horror Film.

It began life as a superhero comic book in 1971, but has since been adapted into a short-lived TV series and an animated series. A movie sequel, The Return of Swamp Thing, was released in 1989.

As for recommendation, I liked it. I realize it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not something unjustly overlooked by the Motion Picture Academy. Still, with a glass of wine, a nice hot piece of pizza, a like-minded dearly beloved or friend, and a snoozing furball nearby, Swamp Thing could make for an enjoyable evening.




Title:  Swamp Thing (1982)

Director
Wes Craven…directed by

Writer
Wes Craven…written by

Producers
Benjamin Melniker…produced by
Michael E. Uslan…produced by

Cast (in credits order)
Louis Jourdan…Arcane
Adrienne Barbeau…Alice Cable
Ray Wise…Dr. Alec Holland
David Hess…Ferret
Nicholas Worth…Bruno

Released: 1982
Length: 1 hour, 31 minutes