Post by stefancrosscoe on Jan 28, 2018 10:44:21 GMT
"Much beauty in the swamp, if you only look."
Deep into the unfriendly swamps of Louisania, the brilliant doctor Alec Holland (Ray Wise) is finally closing in on his lifelong dream of coming up with a permanent solution to end world hunger, however his talent and reputation have caught up with the crazy and filthy rich scientist Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan), who wants to steal the idea and use it for his own cruel and dangerous ideas of a better tomorrow.
Having just had a very successful experience of re-watching Escape from New York (1981) and especially the lovely Adrienne Barbeau, so I decided to move on to another film of her's, the Swamp Thing.
Yeah, I know, horror? But it does come with some very familiar horror names and lots of cliches, as you got Wes Craven, David Hess, rubber suited monsters, people getting killed, nudity, a damsel in distress who is often very clumsy and have a way of always stumbling or falling whenever being chased by the baddies, a mad scientist and his lab, and lots more which I think suits more the horror genre section than the super-hero or sci-fi boards.
Anyway, I really enjoyed re-watching again this fun filled little b-movie which combines sci-fi, adventure, romance, action and yes also horror in a rather effective way, and of course having never read any of the comics I can't really say anything about how it "lives" up to them, but for what its worth, I had a blast seeing it again after all these years.
I remember that I first got a caught of it on late night cable in summer of 2005, a very fitting film to see that time as it was painfully hot and steamy weather that summer and this film seemed to be "perfect" to fit that kind of climate and since I could not get any sleep, I decided to give it a go.
A few years later I bought it on region 1, little did I know that because of some hysterical mother having had her son watching something as "awful" and "unatural" as a perfect pair of boobs, the american DVD version had to be re-released with a 2 or 3 minute edited "PC friendly" version, and I was very disappointed that I got the wrong version, but thankful the scandinavian or international cut was not "destroyed" by those hysterical women and I finally tracked down the real version of it a few years later on.
Sure, the difference is probably not all that much, the violence is not exactly very gory but it do contain some glorious scenes of Adrienne and her two, uhm talents and also some other stuff during a party scene later on with a few other ladies. No way in hell I was gonna settle for anything less than the real deal.
I am always surprised that stuff like that can still happen, as it is not that long ago and because of a few angry mums and suddenly all hell breaks loose.
All in all, Swamp Thing is a fun ride of a sci-fi/adventure/horror film that features a very neat looking enviroment, some memorable characters and lines and of course Adrienne in a stunning nightgown and Louis Jourdan as the eccentric lunatic of a madman Arcane.
The film later on got a "sequel" The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) once again starring again Louis Jourdan, but this time he is up against Heather Locklear, but where Adrienne Barbeau was both likeable and sexy ass hell, Locklear is somewhere down between cute but so cute it becomes annoying, still she did look great in the pink nightgown.
Dick Durock returns again as the Swamp Thing and does a fine job with the little he got to work from, but the tone is just too lighthearted (but then again it was a Jim Wynorski film), however I did enjoy the locations and scenery which i thought was very well done but the film was not very good.