Go Retire Psychiatrist

I watched the whole 1982 movie, “The Swamp Thing” and I hope you appreciate that, because most of it was pretty tough to sit through without yawning. Sena saw parts of it (we have two TVs) because, well, she likes to flip channels.

And flipping channels is what could make you miss the best parts of the film, meaning the scenes in which Jude, the gas station attendant (played by Reggie Batts) has the best lines.

Anyway, the major players are Jude (Reggie Batts); Arcane (Louis Jourdan); Dr. Alec Holland (Ray Wise); Dick Durock (Swamp Thing); Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau).

Even the Sven Squad had trouble sitting through this movie, so I’m going to say at the outset that this is not even a parody, which could have saved it by pushing it into the “so bad, it’s good” bucket. It’s based on an early 1970s comic of the same name, which came after I outgrew the 3 big cardboard boxes of old Superman comics (sadly, not old enough to be collectible) somebody gave me when I was a kid.

Dr. Alec Holland develops an elixir that combines chemicals that make people turn into beings which have traits of both plants and animals, sort of like most politicians and top-level bureaucrats. He accidentally mixes the stuff with Duke’s Mayo (and why not Miracle Whip?), which Sena prefers to Miracle Whip which she never buys no matter how much I beg, blah, blah.

That leads to a miraculous interaction of bog chemicals and kale which explodes into a fiery salad which would be very nutritious if it didn’t tend to blow your face off. References to plants get a little out of hand after that, e.g., Cable and melons, for example.

Arcane is after the formula of the elixir and although his name could suggest that he possesses special knowledge available only to a few, he’s really just a narcissistic, sadistic criminal bent on getting more power from spinach than Popeye ever got. He’s the boss of a ragtag bunch of paramilitary goofballs which can’t fight their way out of a paper bag, much less overpower the might of the Swamp Thing.

Most of the movie could have been turned into a Walker Texas Ranger vs any bad guy who can’t dodge a flagrantly telegraphed roundhouse kick cage match between the paramilitary goons and the Swamp Thing—who gets his arm whacked off by a guy with a machete, but the arm doesn’t regenerate in broad daylight, yet grows back very slowly in a skinny ray of light shining through a crack in the prison in which the Swamp Thing and the melon lady are held prisoners.

Let’s pause for a focus on the real star of the show, which is Jude, a black teenager wearing goggle-sized eyeglasses who runs the gas station in the middle of the swamp where he sells algae stick snacks and deadpans lines which make you forget you’re watching a B-movie. Jude becomes Cable Melon’s sidekick and rides a boat with a voodoo doll sticking up which he unaccountably never uses to send the paramilitary goons into a wormhole vortex where they can be eaten by the interdimensional critters from the Bigfoot planet and who are pretty sick and tired of beef jerky.

OK, so as not to drop any spoilers, we’re going to cut to Jude (Reggie Batts), who has the spectacular line in the movie when the Swamp Thing brings him back from the dead and Jude gets a close up look at him:

“Oh shit; there goes the neighborhood.”

That is the whole reason you should watch this movie. The only other thing I found on the internet with Reggie in it is a short YouTube of an interview of Reggie from a production, “Hey, Jude”, and it has great cuts from the film, including the one with that line, which should be iconic partly because of the reference to upwardly mobile African Americans and the phenomenon of white flight when successful black people start to move into the suburbs where the white folks live.

However, Jude doesn’t save the film, which overall is otherwise pretty cringeworthy and I give a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 2/5.