Love in Bloom

Adrienne Barbeau exchanged meaningful gazes with the half-man, half-plant creature in “Swamp Thing,” but Swampy goes much further with Heather Locklear in Miramax’s “The Return of Swamp Thing,” which sprouts in theaters this Friday . Get ready for an inter-species romance, warns director Jim Wynorski.

The animal/vegetable coupling comes when Swampy (played by a leafy Dick Durlock) pulls a small yam-like tuber off his body and offers it to Locklear to eat. Next thing you know, they’re in a trance--and Locklear finds herself in the arms of a handsome man. When the altered state ends, she asks Swampy sighingly, “Was it real?”

At one point, Swampy apologizes for the messy look of his swamp, explaining that he’s a bachelor. When Locklear muses that he could become her boyfriend, he’s taken aback: “Boyfriend? You said it yourself--I’m a plant.”

Responds Locklear: “That’s OK. I’m a vegetarian.”