Official Score = 3 Devils[/caption]Before Wes Craven (Scream) did, A Nightmare Elm Street (1984), he did, The Last House On The Left (1972) with Sean S. Cunningham (Friday The 13th)
With all of that in mind, just before really delving in to the world of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Wes Craven was working on a fun little movie called, Swamp Thing (1982).
Written and Directed by: Wes Craven. Starring: Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog), Louis Jourdan (Octopussy), Ray Wise (Dead End), David Hess (The Last House On The Left), Nicholas Worth (Darkman), and Dick Durock (Death Journey).
Now the reason that I mention all of this is because, even though Sean S. Cunningham was not attached to Swamp Thing, it turns out that Wes Craven may have been inspired to borrow some of the stuff from Sean Cunningham, that they used while working together as well as separate! Included in this batch is David Hess who played, 'Krug' in, The Last House On The Left, and Harry Manfredini (A Secret Space) the person who composed the music for Swamp Thing, also composed the music for Friday The 13th (1980)... And despite the fact that the music was almost exactly the same in both movies, they worked real nicely in both movies!
As for the story, Swamp Thing tells the story of an Agent by the name of Alice Cable (Barbeau) who on her first day being transferred to an undisclosed secret government project that is deep inside some swamp land that is out in the middle of no-where is about to have the worst day of her life!
You see the project, which is being conducted for the government by, Doctor Alec Holland (Wise) is being done to try and create plant life that will grow anywhere, in any temperature, on any surface anywhere on the planet!
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Dr. Alec Holland (Ray Wise) and Agent Alice Cable (Barbeau) during Cable's first day at the research site![/caption]As it turns out though there is a wealthy Doctor by the name of ‘Doctor Arcane’ (Jourdan), who will stop at nothing to steal Doctor Holland’s research for his own nefarious reasons…
In the end Doctor Arcane sends his henchmen, which are lead by the evil, ‘Ferret’ (Hess) to steal the formula… The only problem you see is that Doctor Holland is consumed by flames during the raid on his lab and heads in to the swamp, never to be seen again… or does he?
After all of this, Alice Cable will have to work to make sure that notebook that she stole during the accident stays with her and doesn’t fall in to the hands of Doctor Arcane and his goon squad, and helping her in all of this is a boy, and a mysterious Swamp Monster that seems to be following her like he knew her!
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Alice Cable with, 'Swamp Thing'![/caption]Now the interesting thing about this movie, is that I am pretty certain that this movie was inspired by, The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) with Julie Adams (Slim Carter), and I am pretty certain that this movie was partly the inspiration for the creation of the TV series, Beauty And The Beast with Linda Hamilton (The Terminator).
In the end though what makes this movie great is that it was a fantastic monster movie that despite being a Horror/Sci Fi movie, it also has an element of Romance in it, with the interesting dynamic between Cable and the monster how she fell in love with the man and stayed in love with the monster!
http://youtu.be/ZDP9otOTaHI
