Swamp Thing’s Theology of the Moss

Caleb: As someone who’s had a decades-long love affair with both DC Comics and Wes Craven movies, I can’t believe it took me this long to watch 1982’s SWAMP THING in all it’s rubber-suited, orchid-loving glory.

Blake: It is sometimes en vogue in recent film criticism to randomly pick an obscure or forgotten selection from a director’s filmography and declare it “the best” or “a great, lost treasure.” Most of the time these attempts are done to gain some cool points with the in crowd and bathe in the online attention that the trolls (and normal people if we are honest) will inevitably bring. Swamp Thing is not that film for Wes Craven. And I adore Wes Craven.

Ian: Well. That’s a “no,” if ever I heard one.

Trevor: What is Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing (1982)? Is it a forgotten classic? I will leave that question for you to decide, Caleb. However, what the flick most definitely is: a pulpy sendup of the creature feature genre. In all the muck though, there is a theology of the man-made-monster. Beneath the brackish waters, there lurks one to revenge and to recreate. Cutting through the cattails, the beast stalks his beauty to rescue her from her enemies.

Ian: I don’t disagree! But what’s the view down at swamp level of what’s going on in this movie?

Caleb: SWAMP THING (a title you are aesthetically bound to CAPITALIZE) is about cocky, but benevolent biochemist Alec Holland (Ray Parker) whose government-backed research in some unnamed swamp in the American Southeast will lead to the “plant for the 21st century.” If he can figure out how to combine plant and animal DNA, he can create a hybrid, uh … thing … resilient and productive enough to feed “the 6.5 billion people on the planet in the year 2001.”

Ian: Very timely.

Trevor: For those of you who are Twin Peaks fans, you will immediately recognize Dr. Alec Holland as Leland Palmer.

Ian: Swamp walk with me!

Trevor: Coincidentally, in this earlier appearance, he also assumes the role of a sexually predatory character with his sight set on Alice Cable (here portrayed by the inimitable Adrienne Barbeau) and finds himself undergoing transformation — although a benevolent rather than malevolent one. Another similarity with Twin Peaks is the recurring motif of doubling or dichotomies: the Holland siblings, nature and science, man and monster, plant and animal. That is where the similarities end.

Ian: You got that right…

Trevor: There is a difference between camp and cringe. For all its flaws though, Swamp Thing (1982) enfleshes the reality that creation is not dualistic but conjoined. In short, it is fundamentally anti-Gnostic. 

Ian: Which goes to show how an object always means more than what its author intends. Because I promise you Wes Craven was not thinking, “How do I stick it to Gnosticism in this B-movie?”

Trevor: Embodied existence and the goodness of the material world is affirmed from the opening shots of the swamp. While not evil itself, the swamp is cursed, as I can tell you from living in the hell that is Florida (all I saw onscreen were the Everglades).

Ian: I, for one, am glad you’re acknowledging the truth, Trevor.

Trevor: And although the movie quickly reframes Holland’s romantic advances to Cable as being consensual rather than creep, our early look for the scientist is a skin-crawling one. Corruption, though, is not inherent to either human desire or to human domain, but the curse condemns the land to goons who invade and steal Dr. Holland’s cure for world hunger.

Caleb: Holland’s — I’ll be generous — “plan” goes off the rails when said goons, rival narcissist and philosophical blowhard, Anton Arcane (Louis Jourdan) employs a paramilitary force to steal the formula (for evil, capitalist profit-y reasons!) and kill Holland (instead, accidentally exposing him to a chemical/swamp-water stew that turns him into the eponymous SWAMP THING) and his new assistant, Alice Cable.

Ian: Man. How perfect is that name for a villain? “Anton Arcane.” Just say it out loud.

Blake: Perhaps the only saving grace of the film is the relationship between Cable and Reggie Batts’ Jude, the surly, young black teenager who apparently runs a convenience store on his own.

Ian: I repeatedly wondered where his parents or manager or, shoot, anyone else was as Jude defied child labor laws and wandered about the swamp with an adult stranger …

Blake: It’s their banter and burgeoning friendship (and only this element) that makes this movie bearable to watch. As I was accosted by a rubber seaweed man growing another arm by means of photosynthesis, I kept thinking about all the ways Alice and Jude could have been the protagonists of a perfectly enjoyable buddy road trip film. Or perhaps a slightly more salacious, 80s take on Harold and Maude. All things that would have made for better (and less painful) viewing than synthetic lichen guy battling a seeming troupe of redneck revolutionaries in the swamps of the South.

Caleb: If this all sounds rote, well, it is. But there are a few standout elements: Harry Manfreddi’s (of Friday the 13th fame) ominous score, some wackadoo wipes and fades —

Ian: Those were something, all right.

Caleb: — and like Blake has touched on, the inadvertent and wise-cracking teen side kick, Jude.

Ian: While we were watching this, I was stunned that Blake and Trevor both singled out Jude and lines of his for praise: that is itself a marvelous work of grace. That just doesn’t happen, but here we are, in the upside down kingdom of Swamp Thing.

Caleb: And that’s just it. For me, you just can’t top the Christ imagery of SWAMP THING being chained to a giant X, regrowing himself in the sunlight, then taking a glittering sword to defeat a now transformed Arcane-beast, all while rescuing his white-gowned love, Cable. Did Craven take Jesus’ “I am the Vine” saying a little too literally? I have no idea. But James Mangold’s upcoming reboot has big eco-theological shoes to sprout into.

Ian: I suppose it isn’t entirely impossible; Craven was a graduate of Wheaton College. I know you boys know that, but let the Mbird reader understand. I see that hand, Trevor.

Trevor:  In a movie of disguises, more shocking than any of the creature costumes is when Harry Ritter (Don Knight) peels off his face and stands unmasked as the villain Dr. Anton Arcane.

Ian: I feel like unmasking should be shocking, but in this instance a character we’re set up to dislike is revealed to be a person we’re super not supposed to like.

Trevor: Combat ensues and in the ruckus Dr. Holland explodes in flames while trying to salvage his miracle formula. To extinguish the fire, Holland submerges himself in the swamp, and the fire and water both symbolize purification and judgment. His sacrifice is an altruistic one.

Blake: No.

Trevor: Great, here we go again…

Blake: The thought that crossed my mind was how Swamp Thing really needs to be a villain. No one has ever actually felt for that character. Most people just see him as veganism gone horribly, horribly wrong. What this movie really needed was a Dean Koontz rework. Have incredibly vanilla, barely-drawn versions of Alice and Jude and have them escape from the creature from the green lagoon while suffering from their own bouts of pareidolia and sociopathy. Once they defeat Ray Wise — because we all know he is the real villain here — they come to learn more about themselves in the process. 

Ian: What I want is more escape stories where what the protagonists learn about themselves is that there isn’t that much self to learn about or discover. And I’m actually one hundred percent serious about that. And such an approach could be interesting juxtaposed against the vitality and character of the swamp and even its guardian, the Swamp Thing.

Blake: This may all sound boring to some, but it’s still better than most Stephen King.

Ian: [James Brown-esque scream] My man! [high fives Blake]

Trevor: Resurrected by the water as Swamp Thing, he risks life and limb for Cable and eventually has to regrow his arm by reaching for the light, which reveals the goodness in the grotesque. If it were still as clear as those marsh waters, the ending washes away all mud. Not-Vecna—

Ian: Ok, that’s solid gold right there!

Trevor: Not-Vecna heals a dying Cable with his regenerative green blood. When she revives, she asks to continue his work and pledges to be his hands, but he commissions her to tell their story. Finally, she entreats him one last time to let her come, and he promises he will return. What is Swamp Thing (1982)? That I still cannot tell you. But what is Swamp Thing? He is the swap thing who took our place. He descended into the hell of the bog. He is the doctor who became a monster for us. His blood gives us life, and we are his hands, told to tell his story until he returns.

Ian: We done got Jesus juked by Trevor! While that was in jest, make no mistake that imputation can be read into this by the most uber-zealous of Reformedbros. I think, however, that the controlling theological concept that Craven can’t escape is love. Alec’s love for the swamp’s ecosystem is evident from the beginning, but his attachment to Cable is what empowers his sacrificial posture on her behalf and against Arcane’s incursions into the swamp he loves. The Swamp Thing’s mission is love manifest in action, a unilateral action on behalf of Cable, Jude, and nature itself. You’ll notice that almost everything Cable does only worsens her plight; Swamp Thing’s efforts apocalyptically break into and break apart the schemes of mortals. Science might have made him a monster, but love made him something else, something better, in spite of the fear and repulsion his appearance provokes. My ultimate takeaway, though, is that Craven really missed an opportunity by not having X record a themed cover of the Troggs classic as “Swamp Thang.” That is the summer hit not that we deserve, but that we need.

Thanks for tuning in, everyone! Be sure to come back next week where we’ll talk about 1979’s Tourist Trap.