Dripping With Wit and Wisdom

The least one can say about “It Came From Terror Swamp!”--yes, we’re talking about a play--is that its creators, Steve Marca and Williams Robens, know their ‘50s B-movies.

Gleefully thieving bits and pieces of everything from “Them!” to “Creature of the Black Lagoon” to “Invaders From Mars,” their camp-inspired company cunningly named Opiate of the Masses has produced a fairly witty, goofy but unmistakably smart spoof of all things from the Eisenhower era.

Although it isn’t in the class of the Charles Ludlum/Charles Busch school of ultra-camp, it’s infinitely more fun than the thousandth “Rocky Horror” midnight screening.

Besides, anything that gives humidity a bad name deserves some applause.

We’ll explain. It seems that in the deep bog outside Johnsonville, Fla. (run by ultra-fatuous Mayor Johnson, played by Frank Simons doing his best George C. Scott sendup), a malevolent force has emerged--a kind of mega-humidity that makes human flesh drop from the bone like so much overcooked chicken. It may have some connection with world-class “humidicist” Dr. Krondopolis (also Simons, doing his best Patrick Magee sendup). He vanished into the swamp some years ago, leaving his daughter Susan (tongue-in-cheek Alina Phelan) bereft and alone. The humidity crisis really bugs stalwart moist-air expert John Brockton (Mark Gantt, uneasily playing a mix of Indiana Jones and John Wayne), and grisly events in Terror Swamp send him and Susan on the hunt.

Of course, this being the ‘50s, the humidity isn’t invisible but a crazed, white creature (Genemichael Barrera’s costuming makes it look like something that wandered in from a David Bowie concert, circa 1970).

There are beatniks, thuggish cops and, in the show’s most outrageous stroke, a parade of ethnic stereotypes from serious Indian Red Joe (Kenny Messer) to Giuseppe the happy Italian (Robens) to Siam Sam (Barrera), whose mysterious potion does the trick on the humidity monster.

But Marca and Robens, as both writers and directors, are wise while crossing PC boundaries to spin ‘50s racism around. For example, Red Joe is given his moment to put all the events into context. And John is no innocent hero, but a bossy, mean-spirited chauvinist who orders Susan to serve coffee and calls Sam a “yellow devil.”

The politics begin to push this show nearer the realm of the San Francisco Mime Troupe than you’d expect, and it even throws a large bone to Shakespeareans in the crowd with a rousing lampoon of the St. Crispin’s Day speech from “Henry V.”

Unlike the Bs that inspired it, “Terror Swamp” goes on too long, with flagging energy in Act II. But Marca and Robens and their Opiate, which previously spoofed “The Poseidon Adventure,” have come upon a formula for lively stage comedy that appeals to our popcorn side while keeping the brain synapses fired up.

BE THERE

“It Came From Terror Swamp!” Ventura Court Theatre, 12417 Ventura Court, Studio City. Saturdays, 7 and 10 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends July 30. $15. (818) 754-1787. Running time: 2 hours.