When you look at the list of early superhero movies, there are a couple of obvious choices like Superman and Batman, but then there are a few completely random ones like Howard the Duck and Swamp Thing. And those two oddballs really only got made because a couple of rich, eccentric people wanted to make those movies, not caring about how popular or profitable those characters could be. Howard the Duck took flight because of George Lucas, and Swamp Thing rose from the bog of obscurity thanks to Benjiman Melniker, a rich, eccentric lawyer who bought the movie rights to his two favorite comic book characters — Batman and Swamp Thing. Batman was the much better choice, but it took forever to get it going. Swamp Thing, however, was able to be made in the early year of 1982 because it had a budget of only $3 million.
Wes Craven was brought in to write the script and direct Swamp Thing. Craven was known for his horror films, but he didn't become really famous until Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream a few years later. Since he had writing and directing duties, it is safe to assign most of the blame of this movie to Craven. I did hear that he was frustrated with the increasingly dwindling budget, but that doesn't excuse this movie for not making a lick of sense. I do have to admit, however, that this movie was at its best when it acted like a horror film. But this movie suffered from not knowing if it wanted to be a horror, superhero, action, romantic or tragic film. It was all over the map in terms of tone and genre. It also borrows heavily from Creature of the Black Lagoon, Star Wars and Rambo. It kind of tried to be everything and ended up nothing. And that's basically what this movie made in the box office. According to Wikipedia, the worldwide gross was less than $300,000.
The movie started off oddly with a few paragraphs of text basically telling us the origin of Swamp Thing. This confused and intrigued me. It would be a pretty bold move to contain the entire origin just in the text and start the movie running with Swamp Thing fully realized. But that didn't happen. The first half hour of this movie showed us everything that those introductory paragraphs told us. Unfortunately, those paragraphs kept things rather vague, leaving out some nice details that were quite confusing and muddled when the actual movie began.
We follow the story of Alice Cable, played by Adrienne Barbeau, who reminds me a lot of Sigourney Weaver (it would have been awesome had she been here instead). Cable has been flown in to a mysterious research facility in the middle of the swamp. She's from Washington, and her job is to shut down(?) this project run by Alec Holland because its facing a lot of security issues and staff members keep leaving. I don't know, I'm mostly guessing here. Nobody really knew what Alice was supposed to do, and she sure didn't know what anyone was doing out there nor who anyone was. Eventually she meets Alec Holland, who explains that he has put an animal nucleus in the cell of a plant, and he hopes to create stronger, more aggressive plants that can survive in the desert and such. He also briefly mentions a rival scientist named Anton Arcane, who hopes this research can lead to immortality.
Well, Alec and Alice instantly fall in love with each other because they're the stars of the film. Luckily it doesn't take long for Alec to make a breakthrough in his research. He creates a glowing green formula that makes plants instantly grow. Just then, a bunch of men, who look like they're straight from Vietnam, break into the lab and start killing everybody. Then the chief of security randomly rips off a mask to reveal himself to be Arcane. This was such a cheesy effect — they had the first actor start to peel some plastic off his face, then they did a quick cut to the second actor holding a mask in his hand. It was such a horrible effect and it made absolutely no sense. Why did Arcane have to disguise himself with what would have been an extremely realistic mask? And how long did he pretend to be that other guy?
Anyway, a fight breaks out, and Alice somehow manages to secure Alec's all-important final journal. Alec, meanwhile, gets pushed into a big vat of his new formula and somehow catches on fire. Completely covered in flames, he runs through the lab and jumps into the swamp, and everybody assumes he's dead. This was actually the best part of the movie. A stunning, haunting visual with a fiery figure running out into the dark, foggy night. Unfortunately, everything went downhill from there.
Alice is somehow able to hide all through the night, but then is found in the morning. Arcane instructed his men to burn the lab and kill all survivors. But when they find Alice, they decide to not use their guns or knives and instead drown Alice in the swamp. Well, this is the perfect opportunity for Swamp Thing to show up and save the day. And he looks awful. Just completely terrible. Never once did he not look like a guy in a suit. And to make things worse, the guy in the suit (Dick Durock) was a completely different actor than the guy who played Alec Holland (Ray Wise). Wes Craven may have complained about his shrinking budget, but he also reportedly wasted a lot of it by filming every scene with Wise in the suit first, then reshooting everything with Durock. Apparently Wise wasn't tall enough. But that still doesn't excuse how awful the suit looks. Since it needed to spend a lot of time in water, it had to be waterproof. But this made it look like a scuba suit or raincoat. They haphazardly threw a few vines on him when they really needed to cover him completely in seaweed. They also made the mistake of filming every single scene in the day. The swamp looked great at night with the fog and everything, plus it would have helped disguise how awful this suit looked.
The next half hour or so of this movie is an extremely long and excruciatingly boring series of chase scenes. Many of these early superhero movies (like Howard the Duck) struggled to convincingly shoot any real action scenes, so they often resulted to simple chase scenes. And that's all we got here. Over and over again. Alice is caught by the bad guys, then saved by Swamp Thing (who actually kills a lot of people in this movie, but luckily Arcane has an infinite supply of men), and then the whole process repeats itself. At one point, Alice manages to get to a phone to call her supervisor, but it turns out he was Arcane all along! Wait ... so Arcane sent Alice to shut down Holland's lab and then he broke in anyway ... but then he disguised himself as the chief of security ... but then ... Oh, never mind! I can't start to apply logic to this movie? I mean, this is the movie where Swamp Thing constantly calls Alice by her last name, Cable, even though he's apparently madly in love with her.
Anyway, Alice comes across the most worthless and worst-acted character here — a black boy named Jude. He does absolutely nothing in this movie, and then is killed by Arcane's men. But then Swamp Thing brings him back to life. Sure, why not? I've never read any Swamp Thing stories, so I have no idea what his powers are supposed to be like. Anyway, the endless chase scenes continue with Arcane's men reporting to their boss how strong and smart Swamp Thing is. They had to say that because never once during this movie did he do anything that made him look particularly smart or strong. Well, I guess he did absorb a few gunshots, but that made sense since he's supposed to be made of plants and shooting a plant doesn't really do anything to it.
Well, the chase scenes finally end when Swamp Thing gets his arm cut off, and a whole bunch of guys throw a net over him and Alice. They are taken to Arcane's mansion, where he uses Holland's missing journal to make his own version of the formula. He first tests it on one of his goons, Bruno, but it oddly turns him into a strange little midget. This was actually the freakiest scene of the movie, when the henchmen starting gasping, gurgling and screaming during the transformation. Director Wes Craven definitely showed some brilliance in brief little moments, but sadly this movie fell apart as a whole. So yeah, Arcane, for some reason, decides to put Bruno in the prison cell with Swamp Thing and Alice. Arcane demands to know why the formula didn't work, but Swamp Thing said it did work. The formula amplifies what your essence already is. Sure it does! Because nobody said anything remotely like that until this moment! So since Alec Holland loved the swamp so much, he became a swamp monster. And as Arcane says, since Bruno's essence was stupidity, he turned into a stupid little worthless monster. But Bruno actually doesn't become stupid. If anything, he acts smarter after his transformation and helps our heroes escape.
So Arcane leaves our heroes to give himself the formula, believing it will amplify his own genius. Alice then tells Swamp Thing that he thrives off the sun (more of an assumption than observation) and she tells him to reach for the sunlight. He does, and is able to regrow his arm, and with the help of Bruno, they all escape. Arcane, however, turned into a really stupid-looking wolf-warthog-monster-thing that actually makes the Power Ranger villains look good. Arcane then grabs a sword because ... well, I guess he really wanted to use that sword that's been hanging on his wall. He then chases after Swamp Thing and Alice and engages in the final showdown in the swamp. It is a very slow and terrible fight. It was two guys wearing cheap costumes that they could barely move in standing in knee-deep water, which only made it even harder for them to move. At one especially odd part, Alice jumps in front of Swamp Thing, apparently to protect him. Umm, he's an indestructible plant monster. You should hide behind him. Naturally, Arcane kills her, but then Swamp Thing kills Arcane and then revives Alice.
The movie ends with Alice telling Swamp Thing that he can continue his research, but he says, "With these hands?" She says, "I'll be your hands!" But he says, "No. You need to heal and go tell our story. And I need to protect the swamp." Every thing he said makes no sense. Alice needs to heal? You just healed her! She's fine! Alice needs to tell their story? Tell who? And why? Who would believe her? And you need to protect the swamp? From who? What danger is it currently under? Sure, Arcane and his Rambo impersonators were running around making a mess, but they're gone now. What is Swamp Thing going to do? Well, we'll find out in the low-budget Return of Swamp Thing, which came out seven years later.
Final score: 0
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