Oozing in Bad Taste
Life often imitates art. Basically if there is anything, remotely successful—someone will try and rip it off sooner or later. There are those who proclaim that Marvel based this muck monster off of DC’s Swamp Thing and vice versa but the truth of the matter is that it’s an example of strange synchronicity that both companies published stories about shambling swamp monsters created from a man killed in a swamp and rising as a mass of vengeance obsessed vegetation within a month of each other.
In truth, both characters were based upon a much older creature known as ‘The Heap’ who had a short run way back in the 1940s as a villain. That monster didn’t last too long, but clearly it managed to inspire his more heroic successors.
DC’s Swamp Thing has had a bit of success having spawned a couple of movies and a few television series, so apparently someone thought it worth the opportunity to finance this low budget film. Why they did, I have no idea though. This film screamed low quality, limited budget, and poor actors. Overall, there is little to redeem this failure of a film which is just oozing in bad taste.
Diverging from the more heroic tone of DC’s Swamp Thing, the director instead decided (and rather poorly in my opinion) to remake the concept into a horror film with the aforementioned Man-Thing as the monster going around killing people as messily as possible.
The storyline is somewhat trite and predictable with a smarmy businessman who is raping the swamp with his oil drills and a mysterious rash of bizarre murders taking place. The new sheriff at first doesn’t believe in the old stories and legend of the ‘dark waters’ and a guardian spirit, sensing that a more human element is at work; good old fashioned greed. But more and more hints pop up throughout the film that there is more than it appears.
I also couldn’t grasp why so many people felt traipsing along in a swamp at night was a good idea. Lucky for them it was always a full moon out. About the only real surprise was the near-obligatory teenage sex scene at the beginning of the film instead of the middle. Considering the opening scene, I was surprised at there was no other nudity in the rest of the movie which instead decides to focus on a bunch of other characters (most of whom you’re thankful that they’re fully dressed) who get themselves killed in rather horrific ways in the swamp.
I have to say that the actors were underwhelming. They simply lack the natural charisma to attract the audience’s attention. It doesn’t help that they have wooden dialogue and little emotive expressive abilities.
The special effects were rather dull for the most part. They decided to pull some strange camera effects, flash forwarding, rapid movement, and strange colors here and there with high-pitched music to apparently heighten the drama or something. I personally didn’t think it worked too well.
The Man-Thing was a bit more impressive, but I found the mass of squiggly tentacles sprouting from it’s back to look more silly rather than menacing or terrifying. I also found the dead ‘corpses’ looked a bit on the faked side and some of the death scenes such as the climax where the greedy businessman gets what’s coming to him to be more strange than terrifying.
For example; the Man-Thing apparently pumps oil from one hand and into the other which is driven in the chest of the bad guy to cause him to spew oil out of his mouth. The people who get killed also start shaking uncontrollably in a speeded up blur like someone being fast-forwarded on a video tape.
Like from whence the Man-Thing came, Marvel should have pulled the plug and dumped this drek in the swamp to molder.
RATING: 1/2 STAR (Unfortunately ComicVine will not allow me to either give out 1/2 STARS or 0 STARS).