Swamp Thing (1982)

It’s a bit of an odd choice for the character of Swamp Thing to be one of the first comic book superheroes to get his own movie, especially in the wake of the success of Superman and its first sequel. The producers did have the rights to make a Batman film, but concerns about the budget to do the project justice had them test the waters – the swampy waters – with Swamp Thing, which could be done much more economically.  Few outside of the comics world had hear of the character, and those that had probably couldn’t tell you the difference between Swamp Thing and his closest counterpart in Marvel Comics, Man-Thing, who debuted in print just two months prior to Swamp Thing in 1971. I mixed them up all of the time in those days.  Even more curious is that the character’s comic had been cancelled after a short 24-issue run from 1972 to 1976, where sales plummeted sharply after the departure of creator Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson after the first thirteen issues, so he wasn’t much of a presence even within comic book circles for six years prior to the release of the film.

Written and directed by Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream), the shock-meister who had delivered such low-budget chillers like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, gets his chance at a more mainstream wide release with Swamp Thing, a semi-horror premise borne from the pages of DC Comics.  Craven’s original take would be that the story would be dark and ultimately sad, but with genuine wit along the way.  However, after the vibrant and uplifting tone of the Superman films would prove successful, and given people’s notions of superheroes as somewhat campy on TV (“Batman”, “Wonder Woman”, “The Incredible Hulk”, etc.), the thought was that audiences didn’t want to have much emotional or intellectual depth in their popcorn fare. It is a comic-book premise at its core, with a campy attitude that will make some recall the less ironic tone of the science-gone-wrong films of the mid-20th Century.

Adrienne Barbeau (The Cannonball Run, Escape from New York) plays a government agent named Alice Cable, sent to the Louisiana swamps (shot in South Carolina) at the tail end of a top-secret experiment at a well-guarded laboratory housed in seclusion.  Dr. Alec Holland (Wise, RoboCop) leads the experiment that looks to combine plants with animals.  Louis Jordan (Octopussy) plays the lead villain role of the film, Arcane, who wants to take the product of the experiment for his own purposes, utilizing a well-armed troop of mercenaries to lay seize on the lab.  In the resulting skirmish, Dr. Holland becomes his own subject when he accidentally applies his potent solution to himself, left for dead in the murky swamp outside, only to morph into a giant man-like beast made of the swamp’s vegetation, possessing a keen intellect and the strength of ten men.  Needing the last notebook that Cable has in her possession, Arcane orders her caught at any cost, but the hulking green thing in the swamp won’t allow Cable to come to harm.

Because of the film’s influence with low-budget science fiction and horror of decades past, Craven manages to get away with cheap effects and costume work, the result of continuous cuts to the budget during the production that caused persistent rewrites, ultimately getting made for under $3 million overall.  The lack of budget is perhaps the biggest drawback of the film, which was made cheaply, and looks it a good deal of the time, especially in moments when it really counts.  This is especially true in the action sequences, in which stereotypical goons shoot machine guns that never hit their targets, culminating in them having to tangle in not very well choreographed combat against a man in an obviously rubber suit.  Perhaps a good deal of mystery as to how Swamp Thing looks might have been a better choice, but Craven would risk losing the humanity for the purposes of the romantic elements he planned for the character.

The film would seem like an example of diminishing returns, but the third act gets a second wind with the introduction of a teenager named Jude, played in no-nonsense fashion by a bespectacled Reggie Batts, a local kid from the area who Craven took a liking to, in a way that works will with the campier tendencies of Craven’s style.  The Swamp Thing also meets his match in a sword-wielding wolf-man creature, another obvious man in a full-body costume that is most certainly not Louis Jourdan, that he must battle in and around the swamp, though their battle is so short as to feel anti-climactic, and is somewhat dated by its slasher-movie false ending, though, to be fair, Craven was considered a slasher-film director in those days, and the tie-in is further solidified with the use of Henry Manfredini’s score, which is also strikingly similar in parts to his work on the first two films in the Friday the 13th series.

The themes of the film follow the examples of other misunderstood monsters, ones that are more an example of admirable human traits than the humans around them.  In this case, Swamp Thing is a representative of the natural order of things, seeing the beauty in the swamp, while Arcane wants to exploit that nature for his own empowerment.  By becoming one with the swamp, the creature is elevated to the defender of it, ridding it of the human pests that might serve to destroy the balance of thousands of years of growth and symbiosis.  The end of the film would suggest that the former scientist accepts his role as the thing from the swamp, rather than think he might go back into the lab to search for a cure at any cost.

While Swamp Thing isn’t going to be deemed as a truly good film by most, there is that watchable goofy charm to it, and there are moments when the film actually works, thanks to some decent character acting, as well as Craven’s ability to find humanity underneath the schlocky premise.  This is especially true in the burgeoning romance between Thing and Cable, which has imagery of her being carried by the hideous man of the swamp a la Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, a suggestion of Bride of Frankenstein, and of the exploitative damsel in a cleavage-emphasizing nightie and bound in dank chains relying on the beast to save her, a la King Kong. It’s not the film Craven set out to make, but he saves it from sinking to the bottom of the barrel.

Production problems abounded.  Given the shoot in and around the swamp, the cast and crew were constantly having to deal with some nasty creatures around them – bugs and snakes and gators — not to mention the bacteria-filled water near poisonous plants that they were perpetually immersed in.  The water was especially bad for the rubber suits and make-up, causing them to have to be reapplied and repaired on a continual basis, and the days were hot and humid, which didn’t help.  The budget always getting gutted would also not help morale, with perpetual rewrites and an accelerated shooting schedule that caused the inability to shoot crucial scenes in multiple takes. The crew threatened to walk out several times, having to endure long days with little pay in an extremely unappealing environment.  The death of Louis Jourdan’s son during the production also kept him from interacting much with the rest of them when he didn’t have to come deliver his lines.

Swamp Thing is too uneven in its delivery to give a recommendation to most people, but also so odd that it merits recommending to some who like offbeat action films, especially done in a daringly campy style.  There isn’t really much one could go with the material except for Swamp Thing to perpetually have to find ways to save Alice from harm, which isn’t terribly interesting to see happen repeatedly.  Even Wes Craven himself had admitted that the film is pretty bad, feeling at the time that he’d never work again.  However, some critics have championed the film, including, most notably, Siskel & Ebert, who gave it two thumbs up upon its release, calling it a good film of its kind. (Note: don’t watch Siskel & Ebert’s review of this until after you see Swamp Thing, as they show clip from a key moment at the end of the film that many would consider a spoiler)

The film didn’t perform especially well at the box office, but did find a much more welcome reception on the home video market, where it would prove to be a lucrative rental, gaining enough of a following to warrant a much campier sequel in 1989.  Despite that growing audience, DC’s “Swamp Thing” comic would be on the verge of cancellation, but future esteemed comic author Alan Moore would end up retooling the character and turning the title around just a few of years after the release of the film into the theater, with his work in DC’s revamped title, “Saga of the Swamp Thing”.  Guillermo del Toro had wanted to remake the film for many years, and essentially morphed some of those ideas into his Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Craven would also hit another groove around the same time with the release of his most well-known film, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

— There is a slightly longer version released in Europe that offers a bit more nudity, including in the bath scene with Adrienne Barbeau.

— Followed by The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)

Qwipster’s rating: C+

MPAA Rated: PG for brief nudity, violence and language (would be PG-13 or perhaps R today)
Running Time: 91 min.

Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Dick Durock, Louis Jourdan, Ray Wise, Reggie Batts, Nicholas Worth, David Hess, Don Knight
Director: Wes Craven
Screenplay: Wes Craven (based on the comic book by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson)