October Horror Season 2: Day 8

Monster week begins with 1982's "Swamp Thing" directed by Wes Craven.



Now, I had watched the 1990's TV series as a child and was told this was a horror movie so I expected a campy genre piece trying to play it serious.  What I got was actually a pretty good precursor to the show.  What I didn't get was a horror movie.

The story was surprisingly engaging for early 80's "Science Gone Wrong" cheese, and the cheese factor was actually quit low.  They didn't play too much beyond what they were able to do, and thankfully didn't even TRY to explain the science...that shit just worked.  The swamp thing suit was actually pretty good, era considered; and there were very few points where the though that this was a dude in a green painted wet suit really got in the way.  Arcane's post-formula form was pretty retarded looking, though.  No real save there, it looked like a retarded man-bear-pig fighting swamp thing with a broadsword.

Aside from the bright 80's camp of the whole thing, there's really nothing to set it up as a bad movie, actually it's a decent old style action flick.  For my money the best swamp thing is still the 1990's live action TV show.  Both movies, and the series are available streaming on hulu.

Day 9's movie will be:  Wolfman, unless the DVD doesn't come in time...in which case we'll watch "Zaat" with Mystery Science Theater 3000.