By Lisa Fary
Before he was Leland Palmer or Satan, Ray Wise was Dr. Alec Holland. Only for like twenty minutes, then he becomes Swamp Thing and Dick Durock in a mud covered bee keeper suit takes over.
When John and I saw Swamp Thing on the On Demand free movie menu, it launched an argument about weather or not Adrienne Barbeau got her Barboobies out in the movie. John said she did; I said it wasn’t Adrienne Barbeau, but Heather Locklear. Turns out we were both right. Kinda.
OK, I was wrong. I was thinking of Return of the Swamp Thing which did star Heather Locklear and was bad. And not in a good way like Flash Gordon. It was bad in a bad way like Nick Fury: Agent of SHEILD.
Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing, starring Ray Wise and Adrienne Barbeau was also pretty bad, but it broke the pattern of bad movies by starting out pretty good and staying pretty good for forty-five minutes or so.
Barbeau is Alice Cable, a federal agent who’s been assigned to Alec Holland’s top secret science project in the swamp. Anton Arcane’s goons are skulking around in the swamp in an effort to get their hands on Holland’s glowy green formula. Of course, they do and there’s the accident that turns Holland into the Swamp Thing.
Ray Wise was charming as Holland (BTW, Pink Raygun is still your #1 result for search term “Ray Wise naked“), Barbeau kicked some goon ass and showed remarkable intelligence for a gal in a low-budget B-movie. Sure, she fell a few times while running, but she picked herself off, threw some punches and kept going. Swamp Thing himself was primal and contemplative. It was surprisingly good!
And then Barbeau got her Barboobies out and it all went to hell. John points out that it went to hell after the nude swamp bathing scene, not because of the nude swamp bathing scene.
After that, Swamp Thing degenerated in to cheap action flick and then degenerated further to cheap T&A flick, and still further to . . . well, stupid. Really stupid. There was a gnome and a sword wielding pigdog creature running around.
The movie got us talking re-make. I generally don’t believe in remakes or re-imaginings because they tend to be a cop out for genuine creativity. I also don’t buy into the idea that shiny and new is always better (i.e.. the coming High School Musicalization of Footloose or the remake of My Bloody Valentine). However, Swamp Thing is a great candidate for a movie reboot based on Alan Moore’s run on the comics. And I have the perfect guy to do it.
Ready?
Guillermo del Toro.
Think about Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy 2 for a minute. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Now think about a Swamp Thing movie like that. Awesome, right?
I’m not the only one thinking this, either. A blogger at the LA Times asked del Toro point blank to please make a Swamp Thing movie. The best part is that del Toro said that if he wasn’t tied up with The Hobbit, he’d be game. It’s not much, but it’s hope for Swamp Thing.
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
