Crystal Inferno (2017) – Review

Do you find elevators and elevator shafts fascinating? How much do you enjoy annoying kids yelling at each other? Have you seen Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno? Your answers to those questions will greatly impact your enjoyment of the disaster movie Crystal Inferno.

Unscrupulous building developer Lucas Beaumont (Nigel Barberr) cuts corners in the manufacturing of what would be one of the highest building in Paris, his evil henchman Eric Steele (Atanas Srebrev) kills a building inspector who threatened to report a bribe that was offered to her by Steele, and a little while later a company that was going to buy this newly constructed monolith hire structural engineer Brianna Bronson (Claire Forlani) to give the building a good once over. Beaumont can’t have this so he orchestrates a scam that implicates Brianna in an extramarital affair which forces her to leave the city to try and patch things up with her angry husband Tom Bronson (Jamie Bamber).  This of course results in the building never being inspected and the stage is set for disaster.  That the filmmakers apparently thought this set-up would lead to a good movie is the real mystery here.

 “Everyone, if you could please throw your copy of the script into the shredder we can start filming.”

If we let slide that the under code manufacturing of the building is a complete lift from the 70s disaster epic The Towering Inferno we are still left with the following plot not making a lick of sense. The first building inspector is murdered and buried in the buildings foundation but for some never explained reason a replacement was never sent to follow up on her findings, and then months later after being framed for infidelity by our villains Brianna flees Paris and yet the company that hired her to check out the building didn't bother to get a replacement for her either. Are building inspectors and structural engineers so rare in France that if one disappears or walks off the job you’re basically fucked and have to hope the building doesn’t fall down?

 

“Be careful, you don’t want to fall down that plot huge hole.”

What’s truly unfortunate is that this moronic and overly complicated set-up isn’t even the worst part of the movie as that would be our two leads and their idiot kids. Disaster films are no strangers to the divorced/estranged couple being brought together by whatever disaster they must confront (earthquake, fire, volcanoes and twisters have saved more marriages than a dozen marriage counsellors), but in the case of Crystal Inferno we don’t want them to get back together, in fact we’d be cool if both of them and their kids died horribly in the ensuing flames. The script tries to imply that Brianna is a strong modern woman who believes that even though she gave up her dreams to marry Tom she can still have a career and a family, but when her marriage is threatened by fake photos of her kissing a man on the streets of Paris all we get from her is a bunch of blubbering as she begs her husband to take her back, and he is a complete asshole about everything.

Note: Tom’s scummy divorce lawyer has his new office in the doomed building. Coincidence or does God maybe want every one here dead?

And how big of a dick is Tom? Well during this divorce settlement meeting he states, “She was selfish, unavailable, she was focused on her career rather than her family…and then the affair.” Are we supposed to be sympathizing with this jerk? In tears she fires back, “I did not have an affair! I have made so many sacrifices to prove to you that I love you. You, you are the one who is throwing this marriage away.” I’m not sure what is worse here; the asshole who apparently thinks his wife should be at home baking cookies or the woman who wants him back. Clearly all this corporate shenanigans and marital strife is about filling up screen time as a straight-to-video budget can’t afford much in the way of actual disasters, and this is also why about sixty percent of the movie takes place in an elevator shaft with a couple of annoying kids constantly yelling at each other.

 

Meet the brother and sister team from Hell.

And just why are brother and sister Ben (Isaac Rouse) and Anne Bronson (Riley Jackson) inside this particular elevator shaft? Well turns out that while their mom and dad were sitting down with their respective lawyers the two kids found the incriminating photos of their mom on their dad’s computer and quickly discovered they were faked, and this right after we heard Tom’s lawyer state that in six months’ time Brianna was unable to prove they weren’t real. So apparently two kids were able to figure out in six minutes what she couldn’t accomplish in six months, and thus our stock in Brianna character plummets further if that even seems possible at this point. She may be some brilliant structural engineer but I myself wouldn’t step foot inside a building she inspected.

 

This movie attempts to kill the Woman’s Rights Movement.

But what about the fire, isn’t this movie about a raging fire that our heroes must escape? Well whatever budget this film had not much of it went into the visual effects; we see a couple guys killed when the power grid overloads and explodes, a CGI air condition unit plunges from top of the building to smash through the atrium below, and then we get repeated shots of the building’s exterior to show us the “raging” fire. And by repeated I mean the fire never seems to grow at all during the entire running time of the movie; despite explosions and stairwells filling with smoke whenever the film cuts to an exterior shot it doesn’t look like the fire has spread one inch.

 

This is a nice shot but they use it about a half dozen times.

When any film is on a limited budget it can make things tough but when a disaster film is on a limited budget that can be well…disastrous. The only way to survive such a handicap is by having a tight script, excellent characters and a good cast, which this movie has none of. Aside from the two leads most of the cast are non-speaking actors that are badly dubbed and even the two kids in film have different accent.  The boy’s English accent keeps slipping out while the girl’s Californian accent is a terrible counterpoint, and with both Jaimie Bamber and Claire Forlani being from London, England we are left wondering why they cast one American actor to play the daughter with everyone else trying to fake American accents? Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to state that this family was from the United Kingdom? I don’t think even the most jingoistic viewer would have faulted this movie if the “heroes” were not American.

The film certainly does not portray them in any kind of flattering light as the dialog they are given is simply atrocious and repetitive. In fact the entire script can be summed up as follows…

Idiot Parent: “Honey, you have to try!”
Idiot Kid: “I can’t, I just can’t”

Idiot Firefighter: “You can’t do that, it’s impossible!”
Idiot Parent: “Those are my children, I have to try.”

Repeat those two exchanges for about ninety minutes and you've got the Crystal Inferno in a nutshell.

What is so depressing is that this movie is not even as good your average piece of crap from the SyFy Channel and the rare fleeting moments of a decent effect shots is constantly overshadowed by the terrible acting and awful script. I’m a bit of connoisseur of disaster films, good and bad alike, and this one is just too painful to even recommend to fans of the genre.

Stray Thoughts:

• We first meet the Bronson children as they toss a Frisbee back and forth, from about five feet away from each other.
• We first see Brianna doing some rock climbing at a gym; this is so we can buy her sliding down an elevator cable with only torn sleeves wrapped around her hands for protection.
• What exactly is Tom’s job that Brianna sacrificed her life for? We never find out.
• When the fire alarm goes off while they are in the law offices Tom ask, “Fire alarm, do we care?”  What a tool.
• Brianna tries to convince them to stay put because she believes the building’s safety features are enough to keep them from harm. Isn’t that something the antagonist in a disaster film is supposed to say?
• Beaumont tries to escape by helicopter but an explosion causes it to smash into the building. Why the pilot took off from the top of the building to then fly down next to the fire will forever remain a mystery.
• When the air conditioning unit fell through the atrium it ruptured a gas line that the fire department were unable to shut off, but it takes most of the film’s running time for one spark of the “raging fire” to ignite the gas.

 

The final shot of the movie shows us the true disaster, this family.

The Magic Sword (1962) – Review

When it comes to low budget science fiction films the name Bert I. Gordon is easily one of the most forefront as the list of "on the cheap" films he produced includes such "classics" as The Amazing Colossal Man, Village of the Giants and The Food of the Gods, but not only did he produce such films he also directed, wrote and had a hand in the special effects that brought them to life.  Despite the quality of the finished product you have to admit that is still pretty impressive.  In 1962 he turned his talents towards the realm of fantasy adventure films with The Magic Sword, or as it is sometimes known as The Seven Curses of Lodac, and make no mistake The Magic Sword is a bad movie with the costumes and props all looking like stuff stolen from the local high school production of Macbeth, but the film does have a certain charm to it and those who are fans of the “So bad it’s good” type films will consider this mana from Heaven.

The hero of the film is a Prince George (Gary Lockwood) who was raised since he was a boy by the sorceress Sybil (Estelle Winwood), an elderly magic user who worries that her foster child won’t learn a good trade because he spends all his time mooning over a girl that he’s been spying on through a magic pool. This one of those “Love at First Sight” stories and the fact that our “hero” is basically a Peeping Tom isn’t supposed to be held against him, but love hits a snag when while watching her bathe (see total peeper) he is forced to futilely watch her being kidnapped by some form of dark magic. Turns out that the evil sorcerer Lodac (Basil Rathbone) has a bone to pick with the current monarch because in the past his daughter was burnt for being a witch, and now in seven days the Princess Helene (Anne Helm) will be fed to a dragon.

 

“Back off, I’m Basil Rathbone!”

Sir Branton (Liam Sullivan) vows to find Lodac’s castle and free the Princess, he’s a bit of an arrogant douche so right off the bat we don’t trust him, but Lodac insures the King (Merritt Stone) that seven curses stand between any supposed hero and their prize and that no one has a chance of surviving the dark journey. The King tells Sir Branton that, “The man who saves Helene will have her hand in marriage and half my kingdom.” So basically your standard save the princess contract.  Of course Prince George had been listening in on the whole deal through Sybil’s magic mirror and he wants the prize for himself…cause you know, true love and all that. Sybil doesn’t want her dear boy running off to face Lodac because 300 years ago her father and brother were devoured by Lodac’s dragon and so she tries to distract George by showing him the presents she’d planned on giving him on his 21st birthday; the swiftest steed in the world, armor that no weapon can pierce, a nifty shield, and of course a magic sword.

 

“This sword I found at Spencer’s Gifts.”

This illustrates that being an immortal sorceress doesn’t mean you’re all that bright because no sooner does she show him his future gifts, ones she tells him are capable of defeating Lodac, he tricks her into the cellar and locks her in. Then along with six revived knights, who were the most valiant knights in the world until Sybil’s brother turned them to stone, George marches off to the castle to offer his services in the rescuing of Princess Helene. Sir Branton is less than thrilled with this development, not strange being he’s actually in league with Lodac and clearly an asshat, but he can’t come up with any reasonable excuses for not taking George and his buddies along so the merry band hit the road. The bulk of the film consists of our heroes (plus Sir Branton) encountering the various curses that Lodac has seeded their route with.

 

A giant ogre.

 

A treacherous swamp.

 

A beautiful maid who turns out to be an evil hag.

 

He even loses two men to…an evil spiral graph?

It’s during this journey that we learn that the traitorous Sir Branton, whose basically been leading our heroes from trap to trap, is working with Lodac because Branton has Lodac's magic ring which the magician lost and he wants it back desperately.  Branton had promised to return the ring if Lodac helped him win the Princess through this entire staged kidnapping/rescue plan. George leans of Branton’s treachery when he and the last remaining knights are lured into a cave where they are quickly sealed in by Branton, but being entombed alive isn’t the real danger here but the strange green apparitions that soon attack them could mean their doom.

 

These things look like escapees from The Haunted Mansion ride.

Things are even worse off than poor George realizes as dear ole Sybil tried to brew up a powerful spell to take out Lodac but instead it resulted in all of George’s magical weapons being depowered, his first clue that something is amiss is when he tries to use the sword to open the cave’s sealed entryway and it fails.  So George’s last remaining noble companions is forced to sacrifice himself so that our hero can escape. Go Team George! With success just around the corner George rushes to Lodac’s castle, finds Princess Helene, and makes for their escape from this foul domicile, but of course this was all part of Lodac’s plan and George had actually only managed on “rescuing” the hag he’d driven off earlier, who Lodac had since disguised herself as the fair Helene. The nice twist here is that this also fooled that bastard Sir Branton who upon getting his prize he hands over the ring to Lodac to only find out his prize is the hag, he whines to Lodac, “But we made a bargain.”

 

“I don’t bargain with mortals, I destroy them!”

In a moment of true evil badassery Lodac uses magic to put mount Branton's head on a plaque on the wall, but then he makes the standard villain mistake of not immediately killing the hero, instead he imprisons George so he can witness Helene being eaten by his dragon from the tower window. I’m betting that kind of thing is in the evil villain rulebook and if you skip that part and go straight to killing the hero you get kicked out of the killed of evil magicians or at least a nasty fine. Lucky for our hero Lodac also has the standard allotment of useless minions that accidentally a free a bunch of shrunken prisoners who quickly make their way up the tower to free George so that he can battle the dragon and save the girl. Now up till this point the costuming, make-up and effects have all been pretty terrible but the when we finally see the dragon it’s actually pretty impressive.

 

I wonder if Lucas stole this two-headed fire breathing dragon idea for Willow.

Unfortunately awesome dragon aside the ending of the movie is rather anti-climactic; Sybil finally remembers the spell and is able to re-magic George’s sword, who then just runs up and stabs the poor dragon once to kill it, Sybil then somehow manages to steal Lodac’s ring during all this and just when the evil sorcerer is about to unleash the seventh curse on George and Helene (which apparently is himself) Sybil turns into a panther and mauls him to death. We cut to the epilogue where George and Helene are being married and all those valiant knights have been magically restored thanks to the stolen ring…the end.

 

And they all lived happily ever after.

The Magic Sword is a bad movie, its dime store Halloween costumes and over-the-top acting exploding across the film’s modest eighty minute running time are a testament to that, but surprising this was also about the only Bert I. Gordon film not savaged by the critics. How was this possible you ask? Well this was a kid’s film and thus its low production values actually worked well for its intended market, and even older audiences could enjoy the goofy charm that pervaded the film.  I bet even children of today could fine this odd little fantasy adventure entertaining. This film is certainly no Lord of the Rings, heck it’s not even on par with The Sword and the Sorcerer, but you could have fun watching it if you go in with the right attitude.

Note: Gary Lockwood, a few years away from starring in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is given a “co-starring” credit along with Anne Helm who played the Princess. These are the film’s romantic leads but somehow they aren’t considered the stars of the film. No one apparently gets top billing over Basil Rathbone.

Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2018) – Review

The Brave and the Bold was a comic series that ran between 1955 and1983 which paired various superheroes in one-shot adventures, then in 2008 the Cartoon Network took this team-up formula and brought to it television in a more comedic format yet unfortunately it only lasted two seasons, but lucky for us the cancellation of that show was not the end as the greatest team-up was you to happen, Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and the Bold!

This is not the first time Mystery Incorporated crossed paths with the Caped Crusader for back in the 1970s they teamed up to match wits against The Joker and The Penguin in The New Scooby-Doo Movies, but this time out the Scooby Gang will find themselves mixed up in a mystery that contains a plethora of superheroes and supervillains. Can Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker), Shaggy (Matthew Lillard), Velma (Kate Micucci), Fred and Daphne (Grey DeLisle) possibly stand up to the likes of Killer Croc, Harley Quin and Two-Face?

 

Will Shaggy and Scoob get enough to eat?

The movie opens with Mystery Incorporated trying to uncover the mystery behind a series of robberies apparently committed by monstrous puppets, as evil puppets are want to do, and when the standard Fred Jones villain trap fails, is it is want to do, Batman (Diedrich Bader) shows up to save the day.  Unfortunately he's not there to help out but to take over “I go wherever puppet related crime rears its ugly head” and Batman tells the gang they should be hanging out at malt shops not loitering around condemned theaters.  Our teen heroes are not ones to be sidelined, even by someone as awesome as Batman, so they ignore the Caped Crusader and end up capturing Puppetto the Puppeteer all by themselves.  The real twist comes when it’s revealed that the culprits weren’t actually criminals but Martian Manhunter (Nicholas Guest) and Detective Chimp (Kevin Michael Richardson) in disguise. Turns out that the whole thing was a "set-up" to audition Mystery Incorporated to see if they deserved membership in an elite crime solving team, sadly it’s not the Justice League but something called The Mystery Analysts of Gotham which includes such mystery solving members as Black Canary (Grey DeLisle), Plastic Man (Tom Kenny) and The Question (Jeffrey Combs).

 

“So I guess this means no visits to The Watchtower?”

Being a tradition for new members to pick a case from the “Unsolved” cabinet the gang pick the sole unsolved case in Batman’s drawer (the other members seem kind of ticked that Batman only has one unresolved case) but the Caped Crusader shuts them down and refuses to even discuss why. Before anybody can get into they whys and wherefores of  Batman's reticence there is an alarm at a chemical factory and everyone rushes to scene of the crime where they find themselves face to face with a ghostly menace who calls himself the Crimson Cloak. This new villain seems to really have a bee in his bonnet when it comes to Batman and soon the Mystery Analysts of Gotham are fighting for their lives against a new and powerful foe. Will Scooby and the gang survive against a villain who can make even Justice League members run for cover? Is it possible this is a real ghost from Batman’s past? Or is it more likely that the Crimson Cloak is actually just old man Smithers the carnival caretaker?

 

“I will get away with this, despite those meddling kids!”

This is an incredibly fun animated movie with wall-to-wall references to the classic Scooby tropes from the 60s such Fred’s useless traps, Velma’s know-it-all manner, Scooby and Shaggy’s insane disguises and we even get the classic Scooby Gang hallway door-to-door chase, only instead your typical spooky mansion or haunted resort it’s in the heart of Arkham Asylum. There are some nice running gags like the Martian Manhunter constantly stealing Shaggy’s cookies and a really cool twist on Daphne’s character as she is no longer "Danger Prone Daphne" but is now shown to be quite smart and very brave.

 

No more being tied and gagged in closets for her.

The mystery itself is pretty cool with twists and turns and multiple unmaskings by Mystery Incorporated, which is all the more impressive when you take into account that for the bulk of the movie they are running from the law after being framed for the chemical factory robber. It’s not bad enough that they are dealing with a murderous ghost bent on revenge but Scooby-Doo and the gang also have keep one step ahead of Batman’s entire villainous rogues gallery, the Gotham Police Department led by an angry Harvey Bullock (Fred Tatasciore) and even their new friends from The Mystery Analysts of Gotham who seem to want them in custody.

 

Jinkies, could things get any worse for our young heroes?

That the world of Scooby-Doo and the world of Batman and The Brave and the Bold works so well together is a testament to how much director Jake Castorena and writers Paul Giacoppo and James Tucker must love these characters as one could consider this seventy-five minute movie to basically be a love letter to both Scooby-Doo and Batman. The voice cast is full of old and new talent, all doing a fantastic jobs here, but I must give a special shout out to Aquaman (John DiMaggio) who was my favorite recurring character in Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon and once again he steals any scene he is in.

 

“I shall call this the time I helped Batman defend a gang of juvenile delinquents.”

If you are a fan of either Scooby-Doo or the animated Batman shows I can’t recommend this movie enough as I laughed out loud and even clapped my hands like a giddy school boy at times, not something I’m prone to do while watching a movie, but by god was this thing fun.  You could almost play a drinking game of spot the references or obscure villain if one were so inclined. So rent, buy or steal…well don’t steal because then Batman would be on your case, and enter the technicolor streets of Gotham City as everyone’s favorite crime fighting dog and his friends team-up with some of DC's greatest heroes.

 

It doesn’t get much better than this.

The Shape of Water (2017) – Review

Do you like monster movies? How about films about outcasts? Perhaps cold war thrillers are more your bag or maybe it’s a fun caper films that hits you in the sweet spot. If any of those genres intrigue you than Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a must see because not only is it all of those things but it's also at its heart one of the best films I’ve seen about love and friendship.

One of the things I love about going to see a Guillermo del Toro movie is that you can never be sure if he’s going to give us a big action spectacle like Hellboy or Pacific Rim or a gothic faerie tale like Pan’s Labyrinth or Crimson Peak. In the case of The Shape of Water it is a bit harder to characterize because though its romance aspect is definitely in the faerie tale area there is a lot more going on in this movie.

The story follows the adventures of this sweet mute woman Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) who along with her friend Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) work as a janitors at a secret government facility in the early 1960s, a place that probably has you sign nine nondisclosure agreements and prefer that you don't mind cleaning up after torture. One day evil government agent Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrives with a new “asset” that he obtained (i.e. captured) and tortured in South America. This man is a violent intruder into this world and is a counterpoint to our heroine as a key element of this film is the feeling of being ostracized.  Elisa is mute while Zelda is an African American and they are both women in the 60s and then there is Elisa’s next door neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins) who is a closeted gay man, and all this makes her becoming attached to a being that is possibly the loneliest creature she has ever met feel absolutely natural.

To say this film is beautiful would be a gross understatement as del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen have not only created a visionary color palette, they easily use ever shade of green out there and then invented some more, but they also managed to turn the bleak world of the 1960s into a place where you could believe a magical love story between a humanoid amphibian and a woman was not only possible but darn right necessary.

I always wondered what the Gill Man from The Creature of the Black Lagoon saw in Julie Adams, sure she was a very beautiful woman but would busty brunettes be something a creature with scales would find attractive? On the other hand in The Shape of Water the relationship that develops between the Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) and this sweet but sexually mature woman seems completely natural.

It’s the silent love story between these two lonely souls that makes the film such a beautiful and lyrical fairy tale but one cannot overlook the fantastic supporting cast with Octavia Spence and Richard Jenkins doing their best to steal any scene they are in with Jenkins' random nonsequiturs being a particular highlight, “Cornflakes were created to stop masturbation. It didn’t work” and the two of them bring much of the humor to balance out some of the film's dark moments. The other stand out character would be Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) as the one scientist in the facility who finds the Amphibian Man to be wondrous being that maybe shouldn't be vivisected so that America can gain edge in the Space Race. It’s of course Michael Shannon’s repressed and angry government villain that is pro-vivisection and thus we get our third act “caper” portion that is somehow both believable and preposterous at the same time.

The film’s faerie tale feel let’s slide such questionable elements that in another film may have bothered me, such as why would a creature from the fresh water rivers of South America would need a salt water tank or the feasibility and structural integrity of flooded bathrooms, and thus I didn’t have the same problems that I felt harmed del Toro’s previous outing Crimson Peak even though it too had an equally heightened reality but its basic story structure was weak and was harmed by less than believable characters.  While on the other hand the cast of characters of The Shape of Water never once felt less than authentic no matter what bizarre events were unfolding.

If any film deserved all the Oscar buzz it’s getting than it would be Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water and not only is this a must see but one I recommend you try and catch it on the big screen because it is a visual masterpiece.

Man-Thing (2005) From Comic Book to Screen

One of the great mysteries in the history of film is how and why Marvel put into production a film based on the comic book monster Man-Thing, a character with almost no name recognition outside of comic book fans and as a title it hadn't been in publication for years, but even more mysterious was in the way they went about making it. With the success of Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies and Sam Raimi’s Spiderman films it seems strange that Marvel Entertainment would have teamed up with Artisan Entertainment (which was purchased by Lionsgate) to crank out a bunch of live-action films, television series, direct-to-video films based on their comic book properties as previous low budget adaptations such as the 1989 Dolph Lundgren led Punisher film and the 1990 Matt Salinger Captain America bombed so badly that they ended up being Direct-to-Video releases. So did anybody at Marvel expect this film to be any good?

Created by Editor Stan Lee and writer Roy Thomas in the early 70s Man-Thing was one of those weird creations that was more in the vein of the horror tales of EC Comics than what was filling up the pages of most Marvel comics of the time, Man-Thing wasn’t wearing tights or fighting costumed villains, and it even took a while for him to get his own comic as he spent his early years appearing in such titles as Savage Tales, Astonishing Tales, and Adventure Into Fear. Now Man-Thing would occasionally bump into likes of Kazar, Daredevil and Iron Man but The Man-Thing comic was about as far from its superhero brethren as one could be.

In Savage Tales #1 we were introduced to scientist Ted Sallis who was working in the Florida Everglades on secret government project to replicate the super soldier formula that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America, unfortunately Ted’s choice of girlfriends was rather poor and she ratted him out to agents of the criminal organization known as A.I.M (Advanced Idea Mechanics). Ted managed to destroy his notes and flee with the only sample of his serum but after injecting himself with the serum, in the hopes this would result in turning him into a superhero and help him survive against the A.I.M agents but instead he crashed his car into the swamp. The combination of the serum, the swamp, and magical forces inherit in the area transformed Ted Sallis into the shambling monstrosity known as the Man-Thing.

If some of that origin sounds vaguely familiar it’s probably because you either saw the movie Swamp Thing or read the comics based on it, and back in the day there were rumblings about a lawsuit between Marvel and Swamp Thing owner DC, but being both Swamp Thing and Man-Thing also share similarities to a 1940s comic book called The Heap neither company thought it worth getting into a pissing match over. And aside from their swamp based origins the two characters are quite dissimilar; Swamp Thing retained the intellect of Alec Holland while Man-Thing is an almost mindless creature that only occasionally has flashbacks of his former life as Ted Sallis, and where Swamp Thing traveled the world fighting villains and arcane forces Man-Thing mostly hung around his swamp with the odd trip to other dimensions.

 

“Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch!”

As superpowers go Man-Thing has easily one of the weirdest and darkest of powers; Man-Thing is an empathetic creature and strong emotions like rage, anger, hatred, and fear, cause him great discomfort and he relieves this discomfort by reaching out and taking hold of the offender in a very unpleasant manner.  Turns out that his body secretes highly concentrated acid that can burn human beings to ashes within a matter of seconds and now whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch. One important thing to understand is that he isn’t completely deprived of intellect, he once saved a baby that was tossed off a bridge by bringing it to a local doctor, but you won’t find him trading quips with any super villains as he is completely mute. His only real “job” is that of protecting this particular portion of the Everglades that just so happens to be the Nexus of all Realities. How much of awareness of this job exists in his muck filled head is up for debate but more than likely it’s an instinctual thing created in him at the time of his transformation.

Man-Thing sits along Swamp Thing as one of my favorite comic book creations but where I could see a Swamp Thing movie working (if handled properly) the idea of translating the pages of Man-Thing to a live action movie seemed all but inconceivable. How do you take a mute and somewhat mindless title character and hang a major motion picture on him? Well clearly giving a low budget production house a $30 million dollars and letting them run off to Australia to shoot it was not the way to go.

Like 1982's Swamp Thing the 2005 adaptation of Man-Thing was another case of a comic book movie being made where the filmmakers may have briefly glanced at the source material, throwing in a few names and references to assumingly placate the fans, but then completely abandoned almost every other aspect of its comic book origins. Now I know that a one-for-one translation of a comic book to the screen is impossible, they are two different mediums after all, but in this case director Brett Leonard and screenwriter Hans Rodionoff unmistakably threw out the baby with the bathwater. How bad and how far does this go off the mark? Well the film opens, after a brief shot of something monstrous rising out of the swamp, with a bunch of teenagers partying around a campfire, a boy and girl run off to have sex in a canoe, and then Man-Thing brutally murders the dude mid-coitus. Is this a comic book movie or a slasher film?

 

“KI KI KI, MA MA MA…MAN-THING, MAN-THING.”

I will not dispute the fact that at its core the Man-Thing comic book is more horror based than anything else but in this movie he may as well just be wearing a bloody hockey mask. The film’s 97 minute running time mostly consists of people wandering around the swamp until they bump into Man-Thing and who are then viciously murdered, and due to this formula the movie gives us a large roster of characters to knock off. We have evil oil tycoon Fred Schist (Jack Thompson) who is drilling on ground sacred to the local Native Americans, his idiot son Jake (Patrick Thompson) who is in charge of security, Steve Gerber (William Zappa) as Jake’s racist underling, Wayne and Rodney Thibadeaux (John Batchelor/Ian Bliss) as alligator hunting rednecks who look like rejects from Deliverance, and then there is Mike Ploog (Robert Mammone) a photographer/bigfoot hunter who thinks this swamp monster is his big break. And in what manner exactly does this Man-Thing dispatch his prey? It seems that he uses his writhing vine/tentacles to explode his victims from within.

 

It’s messy but very effective.

The problem I have with this part of the movie is that, and not put too fine a point on it, where the fuck is the “Whatever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch?” Anyone with even the slightest notion of who Man-Thing is knows that he kills by burning his prey and not exploding them from within via plant attacks. This is a complete failure in translating a character’s most notable trait, that’s like making a Batman movie and having the caped crusader murdering people with gunfire. It’s ridiculous. The interesting thing here is that there is a swamp creature that uses that type of attack…Swamp Thing!

 

Did the filmmakers pick up the wrong comic?

In the mid-80s writer Alan Moore was brought onto the then failing Swamp Thing series and with his story “The Anatomy Lesson” shook the foundation of the character by revealing that Alec Holland actually died back in that fiery lab explosion and that Swamp Thing was a creature birthed when the local swamp vegetation had absorbed Alec's mind, knowledge, memories, and skills and created a new sentient being that only believed itself to be Alec Holland. With this new knowledge, and no longer bound by human morality, Swamp Thing went on a revenge fueled rampage where those responsible for his “death” met rather horrifying fates.  In one instance a guy ate a BLT and Swamp Thing made the lettuce explode to tree size from within the dudes stomach. So yeah, this movie version of Man-Thing not only dropped the key ability he was known for but lifted a completely different one from his competitor.  I’m only surprised that Alan Moore didn’t sue them, but then again I guess he’s kind of gotten use to being screwed over in the movies.

 

"You got a purty lawsuit there, boy."

So just what is the plot of this movie you ask? Well as far as plots go this film doesn’t have much of one.  Kyle Williams (Matthew Le Nevez) arrives in town as the new sheriff, the previous one having gone missing in the swamp, and his first task is to handle the environmental protestors over at Schist Petroleum, and it’s there that he meets Teri Richards (Rachael Taylor) a school teacher and environmental activist and this movie’s completely unnecessary and useless love interest. Between making witty banter with Teri and dealing with the redneck locals the new sheriff has to track down Rene LaRoque (Steve Bastoni) an eco-terrorist who just may be responsible for Schist getting his mitts on the Native American land. He’s also pretty bad at eco-terrorism.

 

Blowing up an oil rig in the middle of your sacred swamp seems like a bad idea.

But what about scientist Ted Sallis who is tragically transformed into the monstrous Man-Thing? Well the origin story from the comic book is completely jettisoned in favor of turning Ted Sallis into the local shaman and Seminole chieftain who we learn disappeared, sometime before the movie started, and is accused of selling the sacred land to Schist and then running off with the money. Of course it turns out that LaRoque was responsible for the sale and that Schist murdered Sallis for trying to stop the deal, but now LaRoque is all about sabotaging Schist’s company because the Guardian Spirit of the swamp will keep on murdering until Schist stops desecrating the sacred swamp. That someone handed this script in and was paid for it is the most startling thing about this whole production. There isn’t a single believable character in this movie, they are either two dimensional stereotypes or simply too idiotic for us viewers to care about.

 

That these two survive is the biggest insult.

Not only is this movie a complete departure from the source material but even if you ignore everything they got wrong (which is pretty much everything) the film is also guilty of being incredibly boring as most of the film’s running time has us stuck with these group of morons as they wander and paddle endlessly through the swamp in the fucking dark. Visually it’s about as exciting as camping in your backyard, and the gory action that was added to get this thing an “R” rating only highlights how little this film has to offer.  When the film eventually comes to its stultifying conclusion we are only grateful that we can now do our best to forget we ever saw it.

 

"Whatever knows despair burns at the viewing of this movie."

Stray Thoughts:

• The two teens who exit the campfire to fool around is an obvious and sad nod to the opening scene in Steven Spielberg's Jaws.
• This new sheriff decides that his best option for finding LaRoque was to hunt for him at night in the swamp, which no sane person would ever do.
• Man-Thing kills innocent as well as guilty people in this movie so they took a tortured complex creature from the comics and just made him into a moss covered Jason Vorhees.
• One character is named after Man-Thing writer Steve Gerber and another after artist Mike Ploog but neither of these characters are all that flattering to these comic book legends.
• Most of the swamp locations are sets that look about as convincing as a high school production of Deliverance.

 

I’m not sure where that $30 million dollar budget went but certainly not here.

Swamp Thing (1982) From Comic Book to Screen

In 1971 writer Len Wein and legendary artist Bernie Wrightson created one of the most iconic and more interesting creations to ever grace the pages of DC Comics, Swamp Thing. Originally just a stand-alone horror story that appeared in an issue of House of Secrets it told the story of scientist Alex Olsen who is murdered by his jealous partner in a lab explosion because the man had the hots for Alex’s wife. Later a shambling muck encrusted mockery of a man would rise out of the swamp to get his revenge and save his dear wife from the clutches of the real monster. Much in the way of the classic EC Comics this story struck a chord with readers and DC wanted to capitalize on it quickly with a continuing story but neither Wein nor Wrightson were interested. Lucky for us the two eventually decided they didn’t have to continue with the character of Alex Olsen and his muck encrusted life but could instead create a new swamp monster to be an ongoing star.

Issue one of the new Swamp Thing hit newsstands in late 1972 where it kept a little of the origin from the House of Secrets issue but dumped the nasty love triangle and replaced it with corporate espionage. Alec Holland and his lovely wife Linda are scientists working in an out-of-the-way lab deep within the Louisiana swamps on a secret bio-restorative that could end world hunger by making plants that could grow in even the most hostile environment. A trio of corporate goons led by a man named Ferret show up at Holland’s door requesting to buy his formula for a private organization run by ruthless man known simply as Mister E.  Alex of course refuses and the goons leave as a patrol car approaches, but when the nefarious trio return and Alex again refuses their offer the men knock him unconscious and plant a bomb in the lab, he wakes up just in time to catch the full force of the blast and the mixture of chemicals that made up his formula, and wreathed in flames the poor scientist runs into the cool embrace of the swamp.

Linda is later shot and killed by Ferret as Alex, in his new form as Swamp Thing, arrives too late to save her, but the bigger failure in this tale is that of the character Matt Cable who was the government agent in charge of keeping the project top secret and the Holland’s safe. To say he dropped the ball on this one would be a colossal understatement. Cable quickly becomes this comic’s version Inspector Gerard as he wrongly blames Swamp Thing for the death of Alec and Linda and pursues the creature across the globe. Those familiar with the late 70s television version of The Incredible Hulk will remember the reporter McGee basically falling for that same assumption as for five seasons he tried to catch the Hulk who he believed was responsible for the death of David Banner and his wife.

What made Swamp Thing standout amongst all the superhero mags of the time was that though he could cross paths with Batman this title was very much a “monster magazine” and Swamp Thing spent his first dozen issues battling the likes of a Frankenstein monster, werewolves, witches and even an ancient evil right out of the pages of H.P. Lovecraft, but his most notorious and long-lasting nemesis was the vile mad scientist/sorcerer Anton Arcane. In a bid to achieve immortality Arcane spent years creating "synthetic men" in his Balkan castle, these Un-Men as he called them also worked as his servants/slaves and when Arcane became aware of the existence of Swamp Thing he sent these minions to retrieve the muck monster. Arcane’s plan was to give Alec back his human body while taking the Swamp Thing body for himself, and at first this seemed like a great idea to Alec until he overheard the madman planning to use the power of Swamp Thing to take over the world. Needless to say things don’t go all that well for Arcane as Alec gets his body back and the evil sorcerer ended up falling from the parapets of his castle to the gorge far below. Of course that isn’t the end of Arcane who would later return in a grotesque body that was cobbled together and resurrected by his Un-Men.

Swamp Thing is one of my all-time favorite characters and when I heard a major motion picture was being produced about him I was thrilled to death, but alas the final result didn’t quite capture the magic that oozed off the pages found in the work by Wein and Wrightson. I’m not sure what I was expecting but a movie about a globetrotting swamp monster battling supernatural forces would have been a hard sell to any studio and even harder to realize practically, especially if the studio behind it was Embassy Pictures which was most known for such low budget productions as The Manitou, Phantasm and The Fog. Enter director Wes Craven the man who at the time had brought the world The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, a talented man to be sure but not an obvious choice to helm a movie based on a comic book.

 

Regardless of the end product the poster was pretty nifty.

The 1982 movie called Swamp Thing could be classified as a prime example of an comic book adaptation where the filmmakers most likely flipped through some issues of the comics, taking a few notes and character names, and then kind of went off in their own direction paying little to no heed to the source material. Now the movie does hit the key points of the Swamp Thing origin story; scientist Alec Holland (Ray Wise) is caught in a fiery explosion in his lab when unscrupulous characters try to steal his formula and his burning body falls into the swamp only later to be reborn as moss encrusted mockery of a man.

A couple of character names from the comic books are referenced but they are so far off model to be hardly recognizable but one of the biggest changes, and actually a pretty interesting one, is the turning of the gender of Matt Cable into that of female government agent Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau). By turning Cable into a woman (the character of Linda Holland (Nannette Brown) is now Alec’s sister) the story is allowed to move quickly towards a nice Beauty and the Beast motif. Of course the Beauty and the Beast aspect did crop up in the comic books but that came much later and dealt with Abigail Arcane, the niece of the villainous Anton Arcane.

 

“A tale as old as time.”

As big as the change of Cable’s sex may be from the source material it's not as radical as movie's the depiction of Anton Arcane who in the comics was a decrepit looking old man, a scientist and master of the dark arts, whose goal for immortality led him to create various monsters until he set his sights on taking Swamp Things body for his own.  The version we get in the movie has Arcane (Louis Jourdan) depicted as being a cultured European, and rather handsome looking for an older gentleman, who is after Holland’s formula strictly for it profitability. So basically the filmmakers have taken the character of Mister E from the comic, who ran the mysterious organization knows as The Covenant and had hired Ferret to get the formula, and then stuck that motive onto Arcane. Gone is the medieval castle atop a dark Balkan mountain to be replaced by an antebellum plantation house located in the selfsame swamp.

 

Anton Arcane, the suave villain of the movie.

Note: One of Arcane’s mercenaries in the movie is named Ferret (David Hess) just so that we have some more evidence that Wes Craven or somebody involved at least looked at the comic.
The combining of Mister E and Anton Arcane is completely understandable as the first one is important to the creation of the hero while the second one is easily a more interesting villain.  I do miss Arcane’s more mystic roots but these are the kind changes one must expect when adapting a long running comic book series into a ninety minute movie.

The other key factor behind some of the changes made from the source material is of course the filmmakers limited budget. According to actress Adrienne Barbeau the original script she was offered differed greatly from the finished product and Wes Craven has made no secret that the Completion Bond people road him like a rented mule to keep the film on schedule and under budget.  Apparently the whole finale of the film was to take place in an underwater grotto which was quickly axed by the men in suits, but that is the nature of the beast when working on a low budget genre film.

As a director you may hope to end up with something wonderful like Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires but more often than not the result is going to end up closer to something like From Hell It Came. At a quick glance the first and most obvious example of the film’s low budget has to be the suit. The Swamp Thing suit built by the effects and make-up team was made out of simple rubber and wrinkled and folded noticeably whenever stunt actor Dick Durock moved, and gone is the massive broad chested figure of the Swamp Thing in its place is this…

 

Not the most imposing or striking figure in the world.

Changes due to budgetary reasons aside one of the more serious alterations from the source material is the nature of Alec Holland’s formula; in both the comic and in the movie its purpose was to end world hunger by making plants that could survive in adverse conditions (the movie did tweak things a bit by updated it from a bio-restorative formula to one that dealt with recombinant DNA), but in the movie the formula not only makes an orchid grow into the size of a bush and wooden floorboard sprout new branches it also turn people into monsters. In the comic it was being doused with the formula and his burning immersion in the swamp that changed Alec Holland into a vegetation based creature, but in this movie apparently just drinking the formula will turn you into a monster. Arcane gives a taste of the formula to his lumbering henchman Bruno (Nicholas Worth) and quickly the once giant brute turns into a rodent faced dwarf.  It is only later that Arcane learns from Holland why this is the case, “What Bruno took was what changed me; it only amplifies your essence. It simply makes you more of what you already are.” So Bruno being a bit of a simpleton his outer appearance changed to match his inner self.

 

Bruno looking like an outcast from The Island of Doctor Moreau.

What makes little to no sense is that Arcane than deduces that with his evil genius intellect the formula will make him into a creature even more powerful than Holland and so he drinks some of the formula himself. This guys was supposed to be a genius?  What an idiot, has he never heard of control tests? He has no idea if Holland’s “amplify your essence” theory is right, and far as anyone knows the swamp water that incubated Holland may have been a key ingredient thus Arcane’s decision to immediately try it on himself moves him out of the evil genius category into one composed of complete morons.

Now let’s go with the best case scenario and the formula somehow turns you into a big and powerful creature and not a rodent dwarf, you’re still a monster and not one who is going to be invited to many fancy dress parties.  In the comic book Arcane was in a frail dying body and his plan involved moving into Swamp Thing's body, a powerful figure that he realized could use to great effect in taking over the world, or at least the Balkans, and not just some role of the dice formula that could turn him into a boar…literally.

 

Is this better than looking like Louis Jourdan?

As plot points go not only is this out of character for a supposedly intelligent person but it also goes against his original motives of stealing the plant formula to become even richer. Sure a character can see new opportunities and change his goals but I can’t see being turned into a slavering beast being anyone’s endgame. Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing is not a terrible movie, and has certainly garnered some nice cult status over the years, but as an adaptation of the Len Wein/Bernie Wrightson comic book it falls drastically short. What would the end product have been if Craven had a bigger budget and full script control? We may never know what that version of the the film would have been like but though flawed the one we got is still worth checking if you are fans of either the genre or Wes Craven.

Note: A few years later director Jim Wynorski gave us The Return of the Swamp Thing and though it had a better suit for Swamp Thing it was a decidedly campier outing