As far as comic book movie remakes go, DC’s slimy Gothic horror hero the Swamp Thing seems to have been left behind, forgotten in the superhero craze of the 80’s. Perhaps it’s that the swamp has lost it’s mystery, or perhaps we’ve found other monsters to fear. Whatever the reason, long before Wes Craven became a big name director with Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, he gave the world a beautifully campy, randomly poetic Swamp Thing.
Before I go any further, it is important that I explain to you the Bad Science Drinking game. Having flaws in your science is obviously not going to make your film bomb at the box office and quite a few major blockbusters have been built on the shaky foundation of poorly researched science. Filmmakers take a lot of liberties with science in movies in the name of drama, sometimes to a bewildering extreme, but we will not scoff or hang our heads! We will not pick on the carcass of the script like trekkies. Oh no! Instead we will raise our glass in a salute and call ‘Bad Science’ and drink deep of it’s entertainment wealth.
The film opens on the 80’s hair style and permanently angry facial expression of Adrienne Barbeau being helicoptered into the middle of the Louisiana swamplands. Her character Alice Cable, altered from the male role of agent Cable in the comics, is there to replace the previous agent who has unfortunately been eaten by an alligator. Upon arrival Cable notices a problem with one of the sensors and heads out with biochemist Doctor Alec Holland to check it out. When they get there, they discover that it’s broken, but instead of taking it back to be fixed they just kind of toss it into the swamp and walk away. Who needs security sensors anyway?
Back at the lab Doc Holland is working on combining plant and animal DNA so he can create hardier plants, that or mess people up in the game 20 questions. According to the Doc, we’ll all be starving by 2001 so it would be great if we could have corn to grow in the US – take a moment to revel in the irony of that statement. The Doc’s sister has mixed up a batch of glow-stick juice from an organism living in possum fur and it turns out this stuff is explosive. To demonstrate her discovery in a very scientific fashion, Dr Linda Holland STICKS HER HAND into the stuff and flings droplets on the floor where they explode. Moments later, anywhere the droplets hit the wooden boards on the floor, the wood comes back to life growing branches and pine needles.
The evil Dr. Anton Arcane shows up with an awesome full-on Scooby-Doo mask-ripping-off reveal. Horror veteran David Hess plays the head goon of the Arcane gang. Arcane demands the formula that he couldn’t possibly have known about because it was invented four seconds ago. In the struggle, Linda is shot and killed and Alec tries to escape with the glow-stick juice. David Hess, beats him up and Alec falls tossing the formula so that is explodes all over himself and sets fire to the lab. Alec runs out into the night, his body ablaze. Damn you security sensors!
It’s at this point that we can enjoy the first of many Batman-TV-Show styled wipes. This first wipe is a wavy line, but there are promises of star-wipes for your enjoyment later on. The swamp thing makes his first appearance when Hess tries to drown Cable so we can get our first look at the rubber suit. The monster, designed by Bill Munn (Return of the Living Dead), has a decidedly Michael Jackson like nose, and apparently underwent massive refitting before production began when they replaced stuntman Bob Minor with Dick Durlock. Ray Wise only does the swamp thing in dialogue close-ups and for that he only wore the head. The costume originally had a phallic root, but that was removed to achieve a PG rating. Sorry girls.
The plot dissolves into much running back and forth in the swamp and Adrienne Barbeau, who I’ve always thought of as the poor man’s Sigourney Weaver, does a lot of damsel-in-distressing and even faints at one point. Barbeau is aided in the second half by Jude, a teenage boy that looks a lot like Urkel, and Louis Jourdan does an entire scene with his shirt off – nobody needs to see saggy man-chest. Nobody.
At this point, if you’ve been playing the Bad Science Game correctly you will be too drunk to care that one goon becomes a pig-man and Arcane transforms himself into a pig/dog creature with a sword for the final battle. The film is not as violent as previous Craven films and has a real understanding for frankenstein horror. There are also fantastic glimpses of the birth of Craven’s talent for directing the image, which is why watching the early work of a master is always so deliciously revealing.
