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Big Dick Durock reprises his role as Swamp Thing (who has more elaborate, Stephen Bissette-inspired makeup this time), and Louis Jourdan, looking disgusted, comes back as the evil Arcane. The plot has Swamp Thing falling in love with Arcane's stepdaughter Abby (Heather Locklear) while Arcane once again plots to capture Swamp Thing so he can develop a "restorative formula." Why he wants to do this is unclear, since he turned into a lion monster and died the last time he did it. A really bad subplot involves two cloddish little boys who want to take a picture of Swamp Thing and sell it to the papers for $10,000.

Fans of the comic book could justify enjoying Wes Craven's original back in the early '80s — you could enjoy it as a fun monster-movie bash that had comic-book spirit (if not the spirit of the Len Wein/Berni Wrightson comic) — but this sequel, coming as it did after Alan Moore's critically acclaimed, award-winning run on the comic, looked really sad. It has a great credits sequence (panels from the comic, with Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Born on the Bayou" rocking out over them), but after that, it's the sort of turkey that makes you glad no one ever tried to make a film out of Marvel's similar Man-Thing. Oh, wait, they did, and it was even worse. Sorry. Must've repressed the memory.

Despite its direct-to-video fate, the movie was followed by two TV series -- one live-action, the other an environmentally correct cartoon. Oh, and I'd really like to know whose bright idea it was to cast the no-talent Heather Locklear as Abby so I can fart on his dinner.

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originally posted: 04/05/07 08:34:52
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