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Veering sharply away from the visceral horror that put him on the map, Wes Craven followed up the game-changing The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes with the one-two punch of the silly, surreal Deadly Blessing and the comic-book adaptation Swamp Thing. An enjoyable enough romp if taken as an amiably lunk-headed action flick, Swamp Thing starts off with an effectively mounted first act that soon gives way to a lot of splashing around in the swamps, punctuated with some incongruously poetic (and oddly endearing) Beauty and the Beast-type moments, and liberally peppered with all the airboat crashes and cigar-chomping David Hess close-ups you could ever want. Add to that running tally Adrienne Barbeau doffing her wardrobe for some tastefully lensed skinny-dipping and an ultra-suave, Nietzsche-spouting turn from Louis Jourdan as villainous Dr. Anton Arcane and it all adds up to a surefire cult film in the making.

Swamp Thing is based on the popular DC Comics character and couldn’t be any more different than Craven’s previous film, Deadly Blessing. A departure into science fiction for the horror director and one of Adrienne Barbeau’s early genre films, it’s a Beauty and the Beast romance with some industrial sabotage thrown in for good measure. Just released to Blu-ray / DVD by Scream Factory, Swamp Thing is a great blast of nostalgia for kids of the 1980’s.

Dr. Alec Holland (Ray Wise) has been holed up in the swamps with his sister (Nannette Brown), working on a way to hybridize animal and plant DNA in an attempt solve the world’s hunger problems. Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) enters the picture as a government agent sent to investigate and report on his progress. The two quickly strike up a relationship, but their time together is interrupted when a...