Horrorfest 2015: Cravenfest - Swamp Thing

Craven takes a stab at the super hero genre BEFORE it was cool with 1982's SWAMP THING. Really it's half super hero flick/half creature feature. I've always been curious about this movie ever since I was a kid and for whatever reason someone chose to put a SWAMP THING cartoon show on TV. You could tell from the video store box art that this was not necessarily a kid-friendly property, but there was a cartoon show and action figures anyway. Go figure.

Ray Wise kinda stars as a scientist who is developing a technology to merge plants and animals in an attempt to create a being that can live under extreme conditions. His lab, hidden deep in the swamp, is attacked by some soldiers of fortune hired by another scientist (Louis Jourdan) and his soldiers for hire, who thinks the technology holds the key to eternal life. In the attack, the lab is destroyed and Wise is splashed with chemicals, set on fire and ends up at the bottom of the swamp.

When he emerges he is… Dick Durock! And Dick Durock is… SWAMP THING!

Adrienne Barbeau is also there doing something governmenty. And she runs afoul of the bad guys, so Swamp Thing has to rescue her. But she's freaked out by Swamp Thing, even though she kinda like him when he was a human. So Swamp Thing's tortured, like the Phantom of the Opera.

A young actor named Reggie Batts basically steals the show when he unexpectedly shows up as the tweenage employee of a bayou convenience store who ends up helping Barbeau and Swamp Thing save the day.

The whole thing is ridiculous. There are some cool swamp chase scenes and eventually even a little bit of gore when the bad guy mutates himself into a monster. Barbeau even takes her shirt off! You can definitely tell having an innovative director like Craven on hand elevated the proceedings a little bit, embracing the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON elements instead of running from them.

Maybe the greatest asset of the film is the location – like the desert in THE HILLS HAVE EYES, the very swamp locations themselves are impressive enough, without even considering the fact that it must have been a pain in the ass to shoot a whole move in them. This flick benefits hugely from being knee deep in muck its entire running time, instead of settling for cheap looking sets.