Captain America may blow up screens this weekend, but here's a review of another comic book movie from years ago.
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| "Hi. I'm swamp ass. Pleased to meet you!" |
The comic book version of Swamp Thing has had varying
amounts of success over the years and has been revived and rebooted several
times. Wes Craven decided to try his hand at a movie adaptation in the early
80’s but unfortunately doesn’t capture the feel of the comics.
This film came out before the acclaimed Alan Moore reboot of
the comic series and is based upon the original vision of the series creator, Len
Wein. Wein’s Swamp Thing has a campier feel and doesn’t have the horror
elements that were introduced in Alan Moore’s version. This translates over to
the film adaptation as Wes Craven basically makes a Creature from the Black
Lagoon update with Swampy as the “man in the rubber suit.” It could have been a
fun throwback if done right but Craven focuses too much on stunts and action
set-pieces and downplays the monster aspect of the story. The action scenes are
cheesy and the editing is somewhat sloppy. I think Craven is more in his element
with horror films as opposed to pure action films.
There is an interesting romantic side plot between Swamp
Thing (Dick Durock) and his love interest Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau), but
they don’t spend enough time developing it and as a result it falls flat. They
gloss over the origin story of Dr. Alec Holland’s transformation into Swamp
Thing which seems counterproductive since this is the first film in the series.
Swamp Thing’s make-up and suit look good
in wide shots but up close it looks too fake and rubbery. It’s not horrible but
it could have been more convincing and makes the film even cheesier than it has
to be. The main villain Arcane (Louis Jourdan) is hilariously bad and his
make-up is absolutely terrible—seriously, it literally looks like they slapped
a dollar store wolf mask on a guy and called it a day.
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| "God damn! White folks be wasting a perfectly good breast like that?! |
I wish Wes Craven had made this film after the incredible
Alan Moore run of the comic because I think he would have done a much better
job if he had made it a horror film. Action films just really aren’t his forte
and it shows with terrible choreography in this movie. It does have a few Wes
Craven touches (humorous side characters) that keep it from being completely
abysmal but as a comic book adaptation it fails on almost every level.
- Michelle Kisner