Neither Nor

1) David Hess hamming it up

Granted, this slab of schlock doesn’t leave much room for capital-A acting (let alone small-s special effects), but Hess’ horny henchman routine (a perhaps intentional riff on his more depraved turn in Last House on the Left) in Rambo couture is pretty swell.  It’s a shame Swamp Thing had to crush his head, and that after getting kneed in the jewels and disembarked from his own boat by Adrienne Barbeau.

2) Louis Jourdan: Instant Class

Even in those clunky 80’s specs, Louis Jourdan can’t help but lend some cosmopolitan savoir faire to these proceedings.  And it probably doesn’t hurt that the same emotions that come with being a put-upon evil mastermind are similar to those that come with acting in a film well beneath your talents.  Though I can maybe see why he took the role, apart from the paycheck: he gets to introduce himself to the audience by peeling off a mask & then gets to quote Nietzsche not 60 seconds later. And if any man can bring gravitas to a pig-man transformation, and it’s not Vincent Price, then it’s Louis Jourdan.  (That transformation sequence, for what it’s worth, gave pre-teen me a few jolts; even now, though it’s aged about as well as I have, it’s pretty effective.)

3) The OTHER transformation sequence

You know, the one where the hulking semi-well-spoken Bruno (played by Nicholas Werth), in his smart white turtleneck, after getting a well-deserved bucket o’ praise from his evil mastermind boss, sips on some magic Swamp Thing juice, convulses, drools, turns twenty shades of gray, falls under the table, and pops back up about two feet shorter, a hundred pounds lighter, and with added rat-like body hair?  Who needs to worry about mass displacement?

4) Craven’s many comic-y screen wipes

A round-the-clock wipe, a KABOOM explosion wipe, and of course a handful of pro-forma straight left-to-right wipes.  But, best of all, a curtain / water wave vertical wipe.  Because SWAMP! Someone should’ve screened this for Ang Lee before he started working on Hulk.

5) Reggie Batts: the John Cazale of swamp creature B-movies

Not many kid actors get to have an “I’m too old for this shit” back-and-forth with Adrienne Barbeau in their first (and only?) movie role.  And, to his credit, when Jude is concussed / bloodied / fucked up off-screen, and the canoe containing his prone body floats back into view, I sighed wistfully.  Only because I forgot about Swamp Thing’s magical healing peat moss.

6) Craven’s demure capitulation to T&A fans

Because why feature the attractive and world-wise Adrienne Barbeau in your crappy slap-dash monster flick without having a scene where she bathes nude in a pond while the camera watches through some vines?  (I wonder how many zinesters were up in arms over the lack of fealty to Abby Cable’s comic book hairdo?)

7) The Coke machine in the gas station

Spotting the anachronisms in old movies is a nice way to make me feel older than I am, but this film’s inclusion of a glass-bottle-dispensing Coke machine that’s almost as old as my parents is an especially nice touch, as I’m pretty sure it was an anachronism when the film was made.  A nice way for Wes to tell the viewers that we are officially out in the boonies, though the swamp also goes a long way in fleshing out that concept.  At least punching malfunctioning hardware will never go out of style.

8) Young Ray Wise

Move his career back or forward ten years, and I’d guarantee he could’ve been a leading man, albeit one for an eccentric outside-the-box type of director (like, oh, I don’t know, David Lynch).  Still, he’s got charisma oozing out of his pores for the ten minutes he gets in this flick, cavorting with Adrienne Barbeau and talking about the wonders of mole-carried single-celled organisms.  (& put me down as someone that wishes the final scene was actually a swamp wrestling match / sword fight between Wise & Jourdan, instead of two stunt guys in crappy costumes.)

9) The swamps!

So while 95% of Swamp Thing is an irredeemable yet lovable mess (unless you’re one of those genre apologists willing to accept its many, many flaws), the use of honest-to-goodness swamp lands (or a reasonable marsh-like facsimile) is appreciated.  I would think that, given the lack of verisimilitude paid to the monster makeup (& the film as a whole), a set from the Universal Studios backlot would’ve been more appropriate for this kind of flick.  But if you got it (and it’s paid for), might as well flaunt it. I can only hope that some Swamp Thing / Craven apologists read this and give me a good talking-to.

10) That scene where Swamp Thing tears the roof off the thugs’ truck, and the roof goes flying off on wires at a totally different trajectory and speed than the tear-off suggests

Double golf clap all the way across the sky.