SWAMP THAAAAAAANG!!

As we’re tracking the history of cinematic superheroes over in my main articles series about them (last time, as of this writing, we’d discussed Superman: The Movie with a brief stopover to look at superheroes on the small screen) we also have to acknowledge that cinema isn’t just the big, Box Office successes that everyone remembers and watches over and over again. Cinema is also made up of all the little films that barely anyone remembers, the Box Office flops that came and went and failed to capture the wonder and imagination of audiences abroad. For every Superman: The Movie, there’s a Swamp Thing.

Released in 1982, Swamp Thing was written and directed by Wes Craven. Yes, that Wes Craven, of The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and, most famously, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Swamp Thing was not Craven’s first film, but it was his first big step outside of the horror genre that, up until that point, had treated him quite well. It also was a massive Box Office flop that performed so poorly upon its initial release that Craven found it hard to get work, living off savings for two years before finally getting the make that Freddy-starring franchise. And, until 1999, it was also the last time Craven ever went outside the horror genre again.

Not that there aren’t elements of horror in this film. Frankly, for 1982, I can’t think of many other directors that I would have tapped instead of Craven to make a Swamp Thing film. The concept is, essentially, a body horror superhero, a guy turned into a giant plant man who freaks out at his own existence but finds himself compelled to fight against those that would do damage to the ecology of the swamps. He’s like Poison Ivy, except a dude and not nearly as attractive. You want a horror director for this kind of film, one who can handle body horror and since both John Carpenter (The Thing) and David Cronenberg (Videodrome) were busy that year, Craven was a smart person to hire.

Unfortunately that didn’t really work out in the end. It’s hard to know what exactly happened during the production of the film to turn out something like this. The film isn’t good, by any stretch, feeling like an overly long episode of a bad television show. Maybe Craven wasn’t the man for the job, not having a good handle on the kind of material he was making (even if he was proud of the film at the time, and especially proud that he was able to turn it out on time and on budget). Whatever the case, the resulting film is an absolute mess of a movie, rendered all but unwatchable by modern sensibilities.

The film focuses on Alec Holland (Ray Wise), a scientist working with a government team out in the swamps of South Carolina. Holland believes that he can make a serum from the life in the swamp that can create hardy, powerful plants that could grow anywhere. When new team member Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) comes to the research base, Holland takes a shine to her and shows her around everything they’re doing. She even helps motivate him to put the finishing touches on the serum, making an explosive substance that, once the smoke clears, grows the plants he always envisioned. It’s a miracle.

Unfortunately for Holland and his team, mercenaries working for Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan) come to the base and kill everyone, including Holland’s sister, Linda (Nannette Brown). Cable is the only member of the team that escapes unscathed, while Holland gets covered in his own serum and runs, flaming and screaming, out into the swamp. The serum doesn’t kill him, though, instead turning him into the Swamp Thing (Dick Durock), a massive, green, giant of a man who feels connected to his swamp and has a desire to protect it. He starts fighting the mercenaries, looking for a way to stop them from getting the serum’s formula, and only with Cable’s help will he be able to save the day.

Credit where it’s due, this film does stick to the basics of the Swamp Thing origin story. While some details are changed (comic book character Matt Cable is turned into Alice Cable to give Holland a love interest) the basic notes are all there. Magical plant serum, Holland gets covered in it, becomes Swamp Thing, goes on a rampage against eco-terrorists. That basic outline works and the film is at its best when it sticks to those beats and lets the comic book action play out. Seeing a big dude in a green rubber suit battle bad guys is enjoyable, to a certain extent.

The biggest issue with Swamp Thing is that its tiny little budget ($2.5 Mil which is pathetically small when you compare it to the likes of Superman: The Movie in 1978, made for $55 Mil, or Batman ‘89, made for $48 Mil) doesn’t really let the film tell a good superhero story. Yes, Wes Craven did crank out this film and stick to his budget, but that comes with all the compromises you’d expect from trying to cram a superhero film into a micro-budget schedule. Swamp Thing should be a larger than life character who causes massive amounts of enjoyable destruction, but in the film he does, in fact, look like a dude in a sad rubber suit.

I think, with a larger budget, Craven could have at least kicked out some really good action. The ideas are there, with the Green Guy rocking around, chasing down bad guys and, off-screen, tearing them apart. What we need is for all the off-screen death, done because the production clearly could afford much in the way of practical effects past the rubber monster suit, to happen on screen instead. We need to see him killing dudes, getting his swamp justice on, while airboats and pontoons explode around him. To make a Swamp Thing film that felt thrilling, the budget needed to be at least four times the size of the one Craven was given, if not even larger. The budget hampers the film and makes it feel smaller and less interesting than it should have.

At the same time, though, it doesn’t feel like Craven was especially good at the parts between the superhero sequences. Ray Wise is the only actor in the film that delivers a solid, believable performance, and he sells the shit out of the chemistry that should exist between Holland and Cable. It’s a good thing he can, too, because Barbeau seems completely lost (and frankly pretty over it) in this superhero cheapie. She’s flat and uninteresting, and her character never really develops or becomes fun at all. She is, essentially, our protagonist (especially once Holland becomes the Swamp Thing and shuffles to the background for much of the film) and you never care about her at all.

You can blame some of this on the actors, sure, but bad performances do also reflect on the director. It’s their job to get the best they can’t out of the performers in front of the camera, and Craven rarely does that in this film. These are C-grade actors giving C-grade performances and Craven was happy with what he got because he had to deliver a mercenary film on a budget. Shoot, cut, roll to the next scene. He got what he wanted, a film on time and on budget, but at the same time he also delivered a film that never rises above (despite the fact that he also wrote the movie).

Start to finish, this film is just a mess. I really wanted to like it, knowing that it was a low budget, early work from a horror icon and you have to grade it as such. Even with those caveats, though, Swamp Thing just isn’t fun. It was a flop when it came out and it only warranted a sequel after VHS sales somehow pushed the studio to try again. That doesn’t redeem this film (curious movie buyers in the 1980s were willing to grab anything that looked vaguely interesting) and I have a hard time thinking how anyone now (especially any fans of the character) could have love for this 1982 disaster.