Road to Justice: Swamp Thing

Swamp Thing
Directed by: Wes Craven
Starring: Ray Wise, Dick Durock, Adrienne Barbeau, Louis Jourdan
Released: 1982
Watched: September 24th, 2015

Thoughts Before: Having never watched this I'm not sure what to expect. Actually, writing this led to me finding out Wes fucking Craven wrote and directed this. So I guess this is in memorial to him. I assume this is going to be a corny monster movie, I saw the suit by accident earlier. I'm not expecting much.

Thoughts After: While not very good, this was way more entertaining than either of the Superman movies we've watched recently. It had that MST3K feeling to it, where we were non-stop making fun of the movie while watching it. The plot is a little silly. Alec Holland is a scientist studying some swamp plants and making some kind of weird science formula, mercenaries attack his lab, he gets lit on fire and runs into the swamp to extinguish the flames. Pretty similar to his actual origin. The mercenary group is my least favorite part honestly. Led by some guy who wants so badly, but fails so hard, to be Rambo, they mostly act as a group of bumbling buffoons, which isn't terribly entertaining to me. They end up capturing the forced love interest and Swamp Thing manages to save her. He looks terrible. Like Toxic Avenger bad. He's also incredibly uneffective, consistently throwing everyone instead of actually stopping anyone. It doesn't make sense as this is labeled as a horror movie, so I was kind of expecting a bit more of that. Especially from Wes Craven.

Ultimately, some evil guy, Arcane, is revealed to be leading the group. His reveal is one of the silliest things. Earlier in the movie there's this newly added dickhead team mate to the science team. He shows up leading the mercs, and seriously pulls off a mask to reveal he's actually the evil leader. Who hadn't shown up, and this is revealed pretty early in the movie. I dunno. It was a pretty terrible reveal that completely fell flat. Anyway. He's come to steal Holland's formula and become some kind of super... creature? I guess. I don't know. He seemed hellbent on becoming all powerful, and for some reason becoming a sort of swamp monster appeals to him. After Swamp Thing and his love interest have frolicked for a while his group kidnaps them. He drinks the formula and transforms into some kind of wildhog swamp monster thing? His suit also looks horrible.

Swamp Thing manages to break out with the help of one of the mercs who had previously transformed from the formula. He became a furry midget thing instead of a strong monster for no real reason so they imprisoned him too. After helping the good guys escape he just kind of disappears into the swamp, I assume. Anyway, the evil monster grabs a sword and the two "Things" fight it out. Arcane Hog stabs the lady in the heart, which angers Swamp Thing, leading him to knock Arcane out. He rips off some of his body-moss and manages to heal his gal pal. The other monster sneaks up behind him, but Swamp Thing gets the upperhand, and finally kills someone. As he returns to the swamp his lady calls out to him, but he tells her to leave, and to share their story.

It's pretty generic, and the action is pretty awful, and I would never really recommend this movie, but... It's not that bad. Certainly if you're the mood for some simple B-movie fodder it might be worth looking for this one. But if you're looking for a solid Wes Craven film, you should probably avoid this. I'm so not excited for the sequel coming up in a few weeks.

Bonus Round: I wasn't able to find anything directly Swamp Thing related, so we went with DC Showcase The Spectre as the side dish for Swamp Thing. I mean, they're kind of related? They've crossed over dammit! Anyway, this is pretty decent. The DC Showcase series is all pretty good, just quick little shorts following some exploits of specific characters. This a pretty cut and dry Spectre tale. Some crooks have murdered a man, Jim Corrigan hears about the case so each night he finds the criminals as the Spectre and kills them in crafty and ironic ways. Like possessing the movie monsters one of the guy's makes, or using some stolen money to cut one of them to death. It turns out the mastermind behind the plot was the murdered man's daughter, Corrigan's girl. No mercy is had for her by the spirit of vengeance. This was pretty entertaining for someone familiar with the character, and quickly catches people who don't know about him up to speed really fast. Plus it isn't even an origin! This is how it's done. Like I said, I really enjoyed most of the DC Showcase cartoons. This won't be the last to be showcased here. So lame.