BlazeLime
Strong and Moving!
Stellead
Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
AlienatorX
In a remote lab in the middle of the deepest swamps of Florida Dr Alec Holland is a scientist working on the theory that plants may provide the secret to eternal life. Unfortunately the villainous Dr Anton Arcane is after the secret and during a raid on the lab Dr Arcane and his goons accidentally set Alec aflame with the formula where he runs into the swamp and dives in. Only to return a couple days later at The Swamp Thing: a plant monster with the mind of Alec Holland. This movie feels like 50s monster movie mated with a superhero films and you know what? It works. The effects are top notch, the fight choreography is top, it's dark, it's energetic, it's weird, the acting is really really good (Anton Arcane is played by Louis Jourdan, Gaston from Gigi), this movie is one of the best examples of a B-movie done A.
utgard14
In his swamp-based laboratory, scientist Alec Holland develops a formula that stimulates plant growth (or something like that). When evil Arcane and his mercenaries try to take the formula, Alec resists. In the ensuing fight, he's set on fire and jumps into the swamp water. When he emerges, he's transformed into a hulking creature unlike any ever seen before. Oh yeah and there's Adrienne Barbeau naked.I was a teenager when I first read Alan Moore's Swamp Thing comics. I quickly became a fan and sought out the Len Wein and Berni Wrightson comics that preceded Moore and enjoyed them, as well. When I found out that there had been a Swamp Thing movie made years before, directed by Wes Craven no less, I eagerly rushed out to the video store and rented it. To say I was immensely disappointed would be an understatement. The intelligence, creativity, and atmosphere of the comic stories was replaced by cartoonish characters and TV-quality action, not to mention a man in a rubber suit. The bulk of the story is the bad guys chasing Adrienne Barbeau around the swamp. Not that watching Adrienne Barbeau run (and bounce) around in a wet t-shirt is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, her topless scene is the best part of the movie. Reggie Batts is also fun as the kid who helps Barbeau. He gets the movie's best lines. Louis Jourdan is the limp-wristed villain Arcane. Ray Wise is likable enough but disappears early, replaced by stuntman Dick Durock in the Swamp Thing suit. To his credit, Durock does surprisingly well emoting behind the costume. The action scenes barely qualify as such. Mostly just Swamp Thing throwing around guys in army surplus outfits. The special effects are cheap. Harry Manfredini scores the movie and just reuses music from Friday the 13th.It's not a very good movie but it is watchable. There's a certain camp quality about it, I suppose. Perhaps if I had never read the source material I might view it differently but I can't imagine ever thinking it was more than a middling B movie. Fans of Craven and 'Boom Boom' Barbeau will want to give it a try. Followed by a crappy sequel with Heather Locklear and a TV series that wasn't terrible for its time. Hopefully the day will come when Swamp Thing will get a proper movie adaptation that captures some of the creativity and magic of the comics. For now, we'll have to make do with this.
Michael_Elliott
Swamp Thing (1982) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Wes Craven's adaptation of the DC Comic isn't the greatest thing out there but I think there are enough campy moments to make it worth sitting through. Dr. Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan) is in the swamp trying to come up with a new chemical that would help vegetation grow when his new assistant (Adrienne Barbeau) arrives. The doctor comes under attack from a group wanting the formula and he's turned into the title character who must fight for the assistant he has fallen in love with. SWAMP THING was released with a thud but overtime I think people have somewhat warmed up to it. There's no question that the film falls short of being a "good movie" but considering what Craven had to work with I think it turned out okay. Craven has stated in interviews that he took the picture because he wanted to work with stars, the studio and with a budget. I can understand this but I think one of the problems with the picture is that there's really no look or style to it. I think Craven was so worried about creating a Hollywood picture that he really made a film that doesn't look like his and even worse is that the picture has a poor look to it. I think the action scenes are all poorly shot, executed and they've just got a cheap, fake look to them. I thought they were all poorly staged and there's just not any excitement or energy to them. Another problem is the music score by Harry Manfredini. Each time I hear a score from him after Friday THE 13TH it's a copy of that film's score. The borrowed cues from that just don't work well with this picture and it just sounds like it should be for a different movie. The performances are pretty good with Jourdan and Barbeau both doing fine work and their chemistry together works well. It was fun seeing David Hess with Craven and Nicholas Worth makes for a good villain. I did think the locations were good, the costume was cheap but effective and there's no question that the film has its own charm that comes from some of the campy moments. I think SWAMP THING could benefit from a remake but this film here holds up fairly well as a piece of 80s silly action.
tomgillespie2002
Sat somewhere between Wes Craven's disturbing yet interesting The Last House on the Left (1972), and his uber-popular, icon making A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), is this low budget adaptation of a semi-popular DC comics character, Swamp Thing. During this shift from gritty, cinema verite style of Last House, to the more fantastical, "polished" Nightmare, Craven seems to have been trapped within the confines of a television aesthetic. This films action sequences often feel like (and look like) an episode of The A-Team (1983 - 1987). Craven did work on a few TV shows during this period also, so I'm guessing that this film probably had technicians (and particularly), and a similar budget to a TV movie.Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) arrives in the swamps where secret science experiments are taking place. Doctor Holland (Ray Wise) heads the team researching a chemical that has an effect on organic life. Unfortunately, a group of "villains" want the formula for evil purposes (one of the hoods, Ferret, is played by star of Last House, David Hess). After an explosion, Dr Holland disappears, only to turn up as human/plant hybrid monster of the films title.This is a pretty lacklustre film. As I mentioned, it has that oh-so distinctive TV aesthetic. It is not altogether bad. It has some fun, and funny moments, and the make-up/costume for the Swamp Thing is not too bad for the time. It makes good use of its source, in the sense that it uses it's comic-book devices such as dramatic editing, and sequences where the screen is masked with action shapes. However, this technique was used to greater effect in the same year in George A. Romero's and Stephen King's underrated Creepshow (1982 - a film that also starred Barbeau - who was married to John Carpenter at the time) that used EC horror comics as it's source.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
