SWAMP THING (1982) D.C. comics inspired monster mash

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by Wes Craven based on D.C. Comics "Swamp Thing" by Len Wein & Berni Wrightson.

STARRING  - Ray Wise as Alec Holland,  Dick Durock as The Swamp Thing,  Adrienne Barbeau as Alice Cable,  Louis Jourdan as Anton Arcane,  David Hess as Ferret,  Nicolas Worth as Bruno (Tommy Madden as Little Bruno),  Nannette Brown as Linda Holland,  Reggie Batts as Jude.

PLOT - Alice Cable is sent to work on a top secret bio research project after one of the scientists working there is killed. The project is located out in the swamps and is headed by Alec Holland, a genius researcher. The overall aim is to create a hybrid lifeform capable of surviving in extreme conditions. So far, Holland has managed to create a formula which seems to be the first step in achieving this goal. However, trouble is looming in the shape of evil industrialist Anton Arcane and his private army of mercenaries. 

Arcane seeks to steal the formula and use it for his own ends. To that effect Arcane and his men attack the laboratory. In the process Holland is accidentally doused in the formula and screaming and burning he runs towards the Swamp and falls in. His flaming body sinks beneath the murky waters...

Arcane's men kill the entire staff of the research station and ransack the laboratory, only Alice escapes with her life.

On the run, lost in the swamps, Alice fights for survival. Arcane's men eventually catch up with her and are about to carry out thier orders to kill her when from out of the swamp rises an awesome and horrifying figure...Alec Holland has been mutated by his formula and is a man no longer, he is now a muscular walking vegetable/man hybrid, Alec Holland is now the Swamp Thing and Anton Arcane and his men better watch out because he's looking for vengence...

DIALOUGE  - Swamp Thing  - "What Bruno took was what changed me; it only amplifies your essence. It simply makes you more of what you already are."  Arcane - "Bruno's essence was stupidity."

PERFORMANCES  - The character of Alec Holland/Swamp Thing is actually portrayed by two actors. Alec Holland, the man, is played by the always reliable Ray Wise. Wise plays Holland as an eccentric dreamer, a man who is at peace with himself and has an affinity with the beautiful Everglades around him. He's only in it for the first half hour or so but he builds a humble and interlectually energetic character who is the groundwork for what is to come in the story later. Holland is quite literally the soil from which the Swamp Thing grows. After his transformation into the Swamp Thing, the character is played by Dick Durock. At first, you think he's just going to be a man in a rubber suit running around the swamps in a Creature from the Black Lagoon style rampage, but Durock brings a sense of quiet nobelness and serenity to the role. The creature formally known as Alec is still a gentle being at heart, still in tune with the Everglade swamps around him, he's just now physically powerful enough to throw a motor boat into the air and fight a small army of mercenaries. The performance also has a haunted quality to it, The Swamp Thing is in the process of mourning his friends and colleagues and his own lost humanity. Durock certainly rises above the usual man in a rubber suit limitations and creates a tragic character that remains faithfull to his comic book roots.

Adrienne Barbeau plays Alice, she too gives a heartfelt performance and works well alongside both Wise and Durock. You'll believe a woman can actually fall in love with a giant walking, talking vegetable. Alice still sees the man beneath the monster, the man he once was. Its nicely done and Barbeau's performance serves to link and cement the two incarnations of Alec/Swampy into one believable whole.

Louis Jourdan makes for a great villain in the shape of Anton Arcane (he could only ever be a bad guy with a name like that). Arcane is a completely O.T.T creation and pretty much adheres to every supervillainous stereotype there is. He's arrogant and ruthless, quite happy to throw his own men under the bus to further his aims. He's the type of villain who will tie you up and then explain his schemes for world domination before killing you in some overly elaborate way. He's the type of villain who spouts monologues about the "game of chess" he's playing with his enemies to anybody who is forced to listen. In short, he's a pretentious arsehole. Jourdan is clearly enjoying camping it up immensely and really sinks his teeth into the role.

An honorable mention must be made for David Hess playing Ferret, Arcane's right hand man and leader of the band of mercenaries. Where Arcane is camply evil, Ferret is just plain brutal. He thinks nothing of punching and slapping a defenceless scared woman and there seems to be the suggestion of a sexual side to his violence. Ferret is clearly getting his rocks off whilst terrorising Alice. It's the type of creepily predatory role that Hess is known for best (he played rapist murderer Krug in Craven's earlier Last House on the Left) and as a result Ferret is a character that will make the viewer cringe whenever he's onscreen.

SFX - The Swamp Thing creature is a classic "man in rubber suit" monster and for the most part he works OK. The suit looks better in long shots or when he's filmed with more subdued lighting, when you can see the Swamp Thing in bright daylight you can make out the creases and seams on the suit which does take you out of the film sometimes. A good aspect of the design is that Durock's face is largely unencumbered by prosthetics, this allows him to act and emote with his facial expressions, vital for giving the Swamp Thing that element of humanity which is a big part of the character's appeal.

Less successful is the other monster suit in the movie. At the end of the film Arcane drinks the formula and is transformed into a wolf like monster. The result is...well...just take a look at it...

This googly eyed joke shop Halloween costumed freak is the big bad, the final enemy to be overcome, the arch nemesis that the entire movie has been building up to... and he looks like shit.

This monster completely undermines the work that Jourdan puts in to make Arcane a good villain. The actor inside the suit (I don't know if it was still Jourdan by this point or not) clearly can hardly even see where he's going, this leads to a final, clumsy looking clash between good and evil as the two monsters duke it out in the Everglades.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Surprisingly, for a film that was marketed as a family movie, you actually get a scene featuring Adrienne Barbeau topless. This seems a strange choice considering the demographic the film was otherwise aiming for. With this and the somewhat rapey implications of the character of Ferret, you can tell that Wes Craven hadn't quite got his exploitation movie roots out of his system yet.

Apart from the shooting of Linda Holland, most of the killings happen off camera although Ferret gets a skull crushingly good comeuppance courtesy of our boy Swampy. Much of the violence is of The A-Team school of men being thrown from exploding speed boats in slow motion and failing to be maimed or killed in any significant way. Its appropriately comic book stuff.

RATING  - Swamp Thing isn't Wes Craven's best film, but it's certainly not his worst either. It's largely a fun comic book adaptation with a lot of heart and soul and whilst it's not entirely faithful to the original source material, it at least captures its spirit.

There are some strange tonal shifts that make the film feel disjointed at times (the topless scene especially), Craven clearly didn't feel one hundred percent confident with pandering to a more mainstream audience and his grindhouse sensibilities do have a tendency to slip out in places.

Overall a decent stab at a comic book adaptation if you can overlook some of the dodgier special effects work. 3 and a half mutated Ray Wise's out of 5. Worth a look.