Movie Reviews : Swamped With Camp, ‘Thing’ Runs Aground

In “The Return of Swamp Thing” (citywide), the film makers strike a historic blow against censorship: the first instance ever of sex between humans and vegetables in a PG-rated movie. Their audacity knows no bounds.

“Dynasty’s” Heather Locklear, looking pouty, blond and busty, stares at Dick Durock in his full “Swamp Thing” regalia--an outfit full of squiggly green growths and bulging, broccoli-like deltoids--and gives him her best come-Heather smirk. Startled, the Thing protests: “It wouldn’t work. I’m a plant.” The darling girl pooh-poohs his qualms: “That’s OK. I’m a vegetarian.”

Not content with this attempt to nudge its way into the Hall of Fame of Dumb Camp, “The Return of Swamp Thing” also offers Louis Jourdan, as the evil Dr. Arcane, doing a bored recitative of “Gigi’s” title song to a parrot; a sleaze-ball seduction scene when two near-psychotic mercenaries woo each other by showing off their battle scars (“Grenada!” “Haight-Ashbury!”), and another where chortling mad scientists mutate human victims into cockroach-headed freaks.

The movie’s source is the much-praised Len Wein-Bernie Wrightson horror-adventure comic and Wes Craven’s 1982 movie adaptation, where Jourdan and Durock also appeared. Its strategy: special effects, ham and wisecracks. The plot: The heroic Swampy, victim of a ghastly accident that turned him from a mild-mannered research scientist into a walking vegetable stir-fry, stalks the swamp. He battles baddies, mercenaries and rampaging mutants and kills the icks, and eventually falls for the stepdaughter (Locklear) of his depraved archenemy.

But though the producers (Michael Uslan and Ben Melniker, also of the forthcoming “Batman”) and director (Jim Wynorksi, of “Big Bad Mama II”) try to keep the old zap-zap comic-book mood and style, they lose all the original’s intensity.

This Swamp Thing is not a wounded, tragic romantic, a combination of the Phantom of the Opera and a Caesar salad. He’s a Jolly Green Giant, fighting for truth, justice and Heather Locklear; goofing off with cunning little kiddies; popping up like the Lone Asparagus whenever danger threatens.

The producers and script writers had a lot of good material to work from in the Wein-Wrightson comics and the later ones written by the brilliant Alan (“Watchmen”) Moore. But they’ve run aground. This is the same dopey save-the-princess-and-kill-everybody revenge plot we always get.

“The Return of Swamp Thing” (MPAA rated PG--despite violence, ickiness and intra-species activity) is enough to drive you back to the comic book stand. Or even the swamp.