Category: Reviews

Quarantine (2008)

Directed by John Erick Dowdle [Other horror films: The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), Devil (2010), As Above, So Below (2014)]

A remake of the Spanish movie [Rec], Quarantine is a movie I’ve seen before. I likely thought it was okay, but that’s really all it is. I can’t say I actually liked the original more – it’s been a while since I’ve seen [Rec] – but I can say that Quarantine strikes me as competent, and little more.

Found footage is always an interesting style. It works for this movie – things move at a quick pace, but on the flip-side, due to the shaky camera, it’s pretty difficult to see some of the horrors that go on. Well, mostly – there was a young girl who was sick, and possibly with the same infection others have, but she didn’t actually display any violent tendencies until the very moment that the camera-man focused on her, because that didn’t feel forced at all.

Of course, the story is decent. Shows the evil of the government decently enough. Well, technically, you could make a case that the government has every right to enforce a quarantine on the building, but they gave the people trapped absolutely zero explanation, and went on television claiming the building had been evacuated, so no one can seriously blame the people inside the building for fighting to find a way out. The government’s reaction was wrong, just as the government’s reaction was wrong in The Stand (and it’s worse in that case, as the whole thing was the government’s fault to begin with).

I can’t say I remember a lot about [Rec], but I do remember the ending seeming to bring some type of potential religious origin into it, which is entirely avoided here. Theoretically, that’s something that I’d agree with, but I’d need to see [Rec] again before I can actually say what origin of the disease I liked more. This one doesn’t go deep into it, save a room some characters look through at the end, but it all seemed plausible, which is more than what I can say for religious origins.

Only three performances really matter, being Jennifer Carpenter, Steve Harris, and Jay Hernandez. Hernandez, of course, is a familiar face, having been the star of Hostel, and though he’s not the most important character here, he’s nice to see. Steve Harris (The First Purge) played the camera-man, so we rarely saw him, but his voice was occasionally soothing, and while Jennifer Carpenter (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) was a bit hysterical at times, who in her situation wouldn’t be?

Honestly, I don’t know if there’s a lot more to say about this one. It’s just an okay found footage movie with very little in it that stands out. That finale, while tense, wasn’t enough to make up for the somewhat annoying shaky camera we had to deal with for the previous hour, and while Quarantine’s not a bad movie, I’d struggle to say it’s actually good, or even all that preferable to the original movie.

7/10

Intruder (1989)

Directed by Scott Spiegel [Other horror films: From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999), Hostel: Part III (2011)]

I’ve seen Intruder once before, and remembered it being a pretty solid slasher for the late 1980’s. Seeing it again, it is indeed one of the best of the late 80’s, and Intruder really has a lot going for it.

It’s not perfect – the biggest issue is that with all the characters (Jennifer, Linda, Bill, Danny, Joe, Tim, Bub, Dave, Randy, and Craig), only a couple really get much in the way of personality. The average side characters of Friday the 13th had mildly more personality than most of the characters here. Luckily, the gore was good enough to sort of offset this, but it was noticeable.

Elizabeth Cox did decent as the lead character. I mean, she’s no Amy Steel or Heather Langenkamp, but she did well. David Byrnes (Witchcraft 7: Judgement Hour, Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh) is a good example of what I’m talking about – okay performance, but very little in the way of character until the finale. Eugene Robert Glazer and Dan Hicks (Elder Island, Evil Dead II) did well as the bosses of the store.

Most of the night crew, though – Ted Raimi (The Attic Expeditions), Renée Estevez (Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers), Billy Marti, Burr Steers, Sam Raimi, and Craig Stark – don’t really add that much. Sure, Marti’s character seems like he’ll be more important, and Burr Steers does have an oddly fun personality, but for the most part, these people are all just here to be victims of a mysterious killer.

Oh, I should probably also mention that Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead) appears for a minute or so at the end, but he doesn’t do that much, and isn’t relevant to the story in any way, so whateves.

Speaking of the story, I appreciate the idea of a slasher set in a grocery store. I spent five years working a Meijer (a Michigan-based company that operates in six states – think of it as a higher-class Wal-Mart), and I also liked the idea of a killer knocking people off in a large store, where people can go unnoticed for long periods of time. Now, the store in Intruder isn’t some type of supermarket, but it’s still a fun idea, which brings us to the kills.

Naturally, you get your normal kills, such as someone stabbed with a big knife or a butcher knife slamming on someone’s head. Someone gets impaled on a meat hook, while another gets their head crushed in a bailer. Another guy gets their head slammed into one of those pointy receipt holders, and perhaps most well-known, there’s a band saw mishap which looks very much on the painful side. The effects for that scene weren’t necessarily great, but the idea behind that scene worked beautifully.

I do think the final scene, though, with that dramatic scream, was just a bit on the hokey side.

Intruder is a simple slasher with a prime goal of showing off decent kills. While the characters sometimes lack personality, the story is still pretty solid, and there’s plenty of suspenseful scenes and interesting camera angles here to keep things fresh. I enjoyed this one when I first saw it, and I still think it stands out quite well today.

8/10

Inexchange (2006)

Directed by Zach Parker [Other horror films: Proxy (2013)]

I barely knew anything about Inexchange before watching it, but the little I did know pulled me in immediately.

See, this low-budget film was made at Ball State University, a university in Muncie, Indiana, and more importantly, where I went to college. The first scene of the movie shows the statue Beneficence, which is right across from the Student Center (and diagonally across from Elliott Hall, where I dormed for two years). Later in the movie, there’s a scene near Frog Baby, outside Bracken Library. I couldn’t tell which dorms they used to film in, but I did noticed a scene in the Teacher’s College, where I had a handful of classes.

This personal connection doesn’t necessarily make the movie better, but it does lend a very relatable feeling to it. It helps that the movie follows an awkward student as he’s bullied and mocked, only for him to get his revenge by making a deal with a mysterious, supernatural figure (who looked quite a bit like Candyman, as he wore the same type of coat). I was never bullied in college, but I did feel out of place (as described in my review of Last Night in Soho), and I felt for Sean Blodgett’s character.

Sean Blodgett made for a pretty solid lead. He got the awkward personality down fantastically, and it was nice to see his budding relationship with Tiffany Marie Wilson’s character (despite it not going exactly how he wanted). Wilson, for her part, played her role pretty well, and seemed a decently likable character. Both Todd Richard Lewis and Bradley J. Gunter did great at playing a pair of bullying dicks, and Andrew W. Burt shined as the mysterious blindfolded figure.

The ending wasn’t anything surprising, but what was surprising, and pleasantly so, was the score throughout, which had a dark, occasionally ambient, vibe to it. Not only was the music solid, but toward the end, there was a pretty good use of editing, showing someone having intimate relations for the first time and, at the same moment, a guy getting tied up with barbed wire and splashed with corrosive acid. Overall, the gore here isn’t the focus so much as the psychological issues that Sean Blodgett’s character goes through, but there are a few scenes here that were good.

I can’t say that Inexchange is that special a film, but the fact it was filmed largely at Ball State does make it a more interesting one for me, and while the story’s not exactly what I’d call original, it’s still a decently-made film for the budget they had. It’s not special, but even so, I didn’t have a bad time at all with this one.

7/10

Shinshaku Yotsuya kaidan: kôhen (1949)

Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita [Other horror films: Yotsuya kaidan (1949)]

Now this is what I’m talking about.

Shinshaku Yotsuya kaidan: kôhen, best known as The Ghost of Yotsuya: Part II, follows the first part and continues the tragic stories of those involved. I was lukewarm toward Part I, because it felt largely like a drama, with little in the way of what I’d consider horror. Here, though, the action is amped up, and there are some really great sequences here.

The whole finale, for instance, was great. Not only was it action-packed – a lot of fights taking place in a house that’s burning down – but there was some great emotional resonance from Ken Uehara’s character, especially taking into consideration what the crowd was saying the following moment (another stellar scene). And even a bit before the finale began, we got revealed a twist that I certainly didn’t see coming from Osamu Takizawa, and I loved it.

Osamu Takizawa is probably the star here. His sleazy portrayal of a man who will do anything and everything to get ahead is great, and his manipulations of Ken Uehara, Haruko Sugimura and Aizo Tamashima were classy. Ken Uehara does fantastic also, suffering from a guilty conscience most of the movie following what he did in Part I. The ending, as I said, really brought a lot to his character, moral and otherwise.

I did think both Kinuyo Tanaka and Daisuke Katô would be more involved with the story, but while they do appear from time to time, they’re not really that entwined with everything going on, aside from Tanaka’s failed attempt to speak with Uehara. Oh, and the same could be said for Hisako Yamane – save a few sequences, she was pretty much invisible, despite the fact that everything Uehara’s character did in Part I was so he could get married to her. I did like seeing Chôko Iida come back, and Aizo Tamashima got some prominent time on screen, which was nice.

I still don’t think the movie’s amazing, though. Sure, Uehara’s character had some visions and acted insane a lot of the time, but I sort of expected more supernatural phenomena as opposed to a guilty conscience playing tricks on someone (à la The Bells or The Avenging Conscience). It’s possible that there were supernatural events going on, of course, but it was more subtle than you might expect.

Still, The Ghost of Yotsuya: Part II was better than the first part, and I also really do find the ending quite good. Overall, I’d say it’s a better-than-average movie, but not one that I’d revisit often. For early Japanese horror, though, this was fun to watch.

7.5/10

Mississippi River Sharks (2017)

Directed by Misty Talley [Other horror films: Zombie Shark (2015), Ozark Sharks (2016), Santa Jaws (2018)]

I’ve seen Mississippi River Sharks once before, and it’s a movie I doubt I’ll watch again. It’s not exactly terrible – while terrible Syfy shark movies do exist, most can usually be entertaining – it just lacks anything that really allows it to stand out. That, coupled with both atrocious CGI sharks and a bothersome character, makes it so this one just isn’t really worth that much.

The story is pretty much like every other atrocious shark movie, only there’s not much here that’s that memorable. Trailer Park Shark was worse than this one, but at least that had character (albeit awful character). Swamp Shark was more stable than this, and Jersey Shore Shark Attack, while still a worse movie, had personality of it’s own. I didn’t really get that sense from this one, and it’s not a Syfy original that I think will be all that memorable.

Naturally, the special effects are terrible. I mean, just terrible. The sharks look shit, the kills are shit, everything is just awful in this movie as far as the effects go. It’s nothing new – when it comes to awful CGI in movies, who do you trust more than Syfy? – but it’d be nice to see Syfy actually try when they make a shark film, as opposed ot make it look as terrible as possible for the lulz, which I imagine has been their business plan since 2-Headed Shark Attack came out.

Cassie Steele (The Dorm) made a fair lead, and reminded me of Jordan Hinson’s character in Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators (only better, as I liked where Steele’s story went). Tahj Vaughans (Backwoods) was largely inoffensive, but didn’t really add that much. On the other hand, Dean J. West, whose character was almost entirely there for ‘comedic effect,’ got real old with his hero worship act of Jason London really quick. London (Sutures, Greed, The Rage: Carrie 2) himself was a bit annoying, playing a generic actor from a string of bad shark movies (sound familiar?), and didn’t work with me.

Others who were at least decent include Miles Doleac (the guy who directed the pretentiously annoying The Dinner Party), Marco St. John, and Jeff Pearson (The Inherited). I wish that Doleac had more to do throughout the movie, but his character was one of the few straight ones. St. John was over-the-top ridiculous, but in a fun way, unlike both London and West. Admittedly, Jeff Pearson’s character never had a lot to do, but his straight-laced nature spoke to me.

Overall, though, Mississippi River Sharks doesn’t have that much to offer. Sure, it’s marginally better than some Syfy shark movies, but it’s still not great, and it doesn’t feel special, or noticeable, in any way whatsoever. Definitely a below average film, and not one that I think I’ll visit a third time.

5/10

The Last Performance (1929)

Directed by Pál Fejös [Other horror films: N/A]

I can’t remember much about the first time I watched this late silent movie. I know I watched it in October, and those are always busy months for me, so I likely forgot a lot of it just a couple of days after watching it. Seeing it again, I do think I’ll remember it better, but it’s not a movie I think is that great.

No doubt it’s okay. Conrad Veidt (The Hands of Orlac, Eerie Tales, The Student of Prague, Waxworks, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Man Who Laughs) is a staple of silent horror, and he does well here. Likewise, Mary Philbin (The Phantom of the Opera, The Man Who Laughs) is another recognizable face, though her character here isn’t great. Leslie Fenton (The House of Secrets) and Fred MacKaye were important to the story, but neither performance was a standout.

The story – a hypnotist and magician gets revenge on a woman who left him for another man – is pretty much what you’d expect from a movie of this era, and while the sword trick was fun, the ending here just didn’t do it for me. I guess it makes sense – Veidt’s character was a magician, and thus used to being a showman – but the repentance he displayed struck me as odd.

It should also be said that the version I watched was about an hour long. According to IMDb, there’s a version that’s an hour and 8 minutes long – what those extra eight minutes possess, I don’t know, and I also don’t know if the full version is available, but I am aware that what we’re seeing here isn’t the full story. That said, it all makes sense, which I can’t say for Genuine, so that’s at least good.

The Last Performance isn’t a bad movie, it’s just not something that I think will come to mind when it comes to silent horror. Of course, it may partially be due to the fact the horror here is somewhat light, but unlike The Mad Genius, it’s not difficult to see.

Overall, The Last Performance is okay, but nothing more, and when it comes to silent horror, definitely not memorable enough to really warrant a mention, in my view.

6.5/10

Nightmares (1983)

Directed by Joseph Sargent [Other horror films: Jaws: The Revenge (1987)]

Nightmares is an anthology that I’ve always been fond of. Which is actually somewhat surprising, given I only really like two of the four stories. Like most anthologies, it’s uneven, but even so, the good outweighs the bad here.

Of the four stories (‘Terror in Topanga,’ ‘The Bishop of Battle,’ ‘The Benediction,’ and ‘Night of the Rat’), I think two of them shine, being ‘Terror in Topanga’ and ‘The Bishop of Battle.’ Because of my affinity toward the Bishop of Battle, as a character (‘I am the Bishop of Battle. I am the master of all I survey,’ is a quote I use too much in real life despite surveying little), and the killer special effects, I’ve always said this story was my favorite, and it still is.

‘Terror in Topanga’ takes a more classic look at thrills, and while it’s the shortest story of the bunch, I think it’s pretty damn effective. If you’ve seen Urban Legend, you might know where the story is going, but that doesn’t mean it packs any less of a punch. It opens the film with a lot of promise, and while not all of the stories fulfill that promise, it still makes one hell of a first segment.

My biggest qualm with ‘Night of the Rat’ is how the rat looks. It reminds me of The Food of the Gods – just a normal rat that’s enlarged and superimposed in the scene, and it just doesn’t look great. Honestly, the story’s not too shabby before then – though I wish that Albert Hague’s character was more involved – which is good, as this story’s around 35 minutes. Up until we actually see the rat, it’s not a bad time at all.

More than anything else, I find ‘The Benediction’ annoying. A priest loses his faith, fails to get any answers to his questions by others in the church (big shock, I know), and on his way to a new life, gets attacked by what seems to be a demonic truck. That scene in which the truck flies out of the ground is pretty cool, but as someone who isn’t at all religious, I was rooting for Lance Henriksen’s character to make a clean break from the cloth (of course knowing he wouldn’t).

As it is, despite not caring for the story, Lance Henriksen (The Horror Show, The Manger 2, Pumpkinhead) might be one of the best performances here, and certainly one of the most emotional. Cristina Raines (The Sentinel) wasn’t the most likable character, Emilio Estevez (Maximum Overdrive) certainly wasn’t likable, and Veronica Cartwright (Alien, The Birds) tended to annoy me a bit (despite the fact she was right about the problem her husband was facing).

Others who stood out, no matter how small their role, including Albert Hague, Anthony James (Burnt Offerings), Richard Masur (The Thing, It), Tony Plana (Slayer), and of course James Tolkan (Back to the Future) for voicing the Bishop of Battle.

And on the Bishop of Battle, again, those special effects (computer generated enemies from an arcade game) were quite cool. To the modern-day eye, they may not look like much, but I found them charming, and like I said, I’ve always rather liked this story. Some classic hustling of a Latino gang, some classic arcade action – it’s like the whole of the 80’s rolled into a single story, and it’s beautiful. Plus, it has the Bishop of Battle, master of all he surveys.

Overall, it’s true that Nightmares is mixed insofar as the stories go, but as much as ‘The Benediction’ and ‘Night of the Rat’ don’t do much for me, I really enjoy the first two stories, so based off that, I do think this movie is a bit above average.

7.5/10

Tentacoli (1977)

Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis [Other horror films: Chi sei? (1974), There Was a Little Girl (1981), Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1982)]

Commonly known in the USA as Tentacles, Tentacoli is a movie that could have been better. As it is, it’s not a bad time, but it can be a bit dry, and perhaps there’s not enough action to bolster it.

I first heard of this film in a rather unconventional way. See, I’m a big music guy – I listen to pretty much everything (save blues and jazz), and some of what I listen to is quite out of the mainstream. There’s a band called Tentacle PornMonster, sort of a pornogrind/goregrind mix, and their song ‘The End Of The Tentacle Orgy On The Beach’ starts off with a trailer for this movie, finishing off with calling it the ‘most gripping suspense you will ever experience.’

Since that point, I’ve wanted to see it, and some years later, I did. I can’t really remember much about what I thought about Tentacoli the first time I saw it – certainly I recall the regatta sequence – but while I find it a decent time, I can’t say that there weren’t quite a few times when the film wasn’t that engaging.

There’s no doubt in my mind the best scene is the aforementioned junior regatta. A bunch of young kids go out on a yacht race, but something else (and by ‘something else,’ I mean a giant octopus, not Marjean Holden) wants to join in on the festivities. It’s a good sequence from the beginning parade with the jaunty music to the flash-freezes used throughout, followed by the action in the water and the tragic premature conclusion of the regatta. It’s good stuff.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this was the music. There was a bunch of funky music throughout the film – it was sometimes suspenseful, it was sometimes jaunty – and it was always fun. I’m not sure why Italy’s movies of the 1970’s and 1980’s has more noticeable music than the United States counterparts, but in my personal view, they do.

Bo Hopkins (Night Shadows, Sweet Sixteen, A Crack in the Floor) was pretty good. I liked his relationship with the whales, and in fact, his little speech to the whales toward the end was pretty emotional. John Huston (The Visitor) was fun, though he doesn’t really have anything to do in the latter portions of the film. Henry Fonda was okay, but his character never got the comeuppance he was due, not by a long shot.

Others, such as Delia Boccardo (A Black Ribbon for Deborah), Claude Akins (The Norliss Tapes, Monster in the Closet, Where Evil Lives, The Curse, Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo), and Shelley Winters (Poor Pretty Eddie, The Mad Room, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, The Initiation of Sarah, The Devil’s Daughter) all did decent, but none of them added that much to the movie as a whole.

I think the biggest problem with this, aside from it sometimes being a bit dull, is that the finale, the final battle between the giant octopus and two killer whales, just isn’t that engaging at all. I mean, it’s about five minutes of them fighting underwater (as one can expect) while Hopkins’ character tries to escape the fray and survive. It just wasn’t an interesting finale, and I think it probably could have been done better.

Naturally, this is, in many ways, a rip-off of Jaws, but in typical Jiggy fashion, I do tend to enjoy it more. Partially, as I mentioned in It Came from Beneath the Sea, it’s due to the fact I enjoy octopi, and the octopus here was pretty fun when he popped up.

Even so, I can’t say the movie is great. It’s entertaining at times, but other times it can be a bit of a struggle to sit through, and the fact it’s an hour and 42 minutes doesn’t help matters. Some sequences were really fun, such as the regatta, but overall, I tend to find this around average.

7/10

The Beast Must Die (1974)

Directed by Paul Annett [Other horror films: N/A]

Though the idea behind The Beast Must Die is largely fun, I don’t think the execution really does the idea justice. Portions are solid, even tense, but more often, I tend to find myself somewhat bored with the presentation.

I did appreciation the addition of the werewolf break, though – see, this is a whodunit, and we’re directed, as an audience, to try and figure out who the werewolf is, and toward the end of the movie, a 30 second werewolf break is given to us, so we can make our final selections.

It’s the exact type of thing I’d expect out of a William Castle movie. Apparently the director of this one, Paul Annett, wasn’t too keen on the idea, but he got overrode by the producer. It’s nothing that really changes the movie any, but it’s sort of fun, and had the film overall be a bit more lively, it might have made for a solid addition.

The story here is decent, though. Based on a 1950 short story titled ‘There Shall Be No Darkness,’ written by James Blish, the movie revolves around a group of people being brought to a country mansion by a rich businessman, and as he suspects one of them is a werewolf, he hopes to figure out the identity and kill the beast.

Like I said, the plot’s fun on the face of things. And again, there are some decent scenes, such as a werewolf (which pretty much looks just like a wolf) attacks a man through a skylight, or a tense moment in which Calvin Lockhart’s character is facing down a charging werewolf at night in the forest. Still, I found much of the material here somewhat dry, and I’m pretty sure I felt the same way when I last saw this one.

Calvin Lockhart makes a solid, somewhat tense, lead. He’s not an easy character to understand, but Lockhart’s character is decent. Naturally, Peter Cushing (Captain Clegg, Scream and Scream Again, The Abominable Snowman) is great to see, and his character, an academic of werewolves, is fun. Though his screen time was limited, Anton Diffring (Circus of Horrors, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, the Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who story Silver Nemesis) was nice to see, and he was perhaps one of the best characters here.

Others were decent here. Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out), Marlene Clark (Ganja & Hess, Black Mamba), and Michael Gambon (the guy who ruined Dumbledore) were all fine. I can’t say that either Ciaran Madden or Tom Chadbon (Duggan from Tom Baker’s Doctor Who story City of Death) made much of an impression, but they didn’t take anything away from the movie.

Again, the issue here is that the movie just feels so dry at times. It’s never a terrible time, but it’s just not always that engaging. I don’t doubt The Beast Must Die has a lot of potential, and I know the movie has it’s fans, but it’s not a movie I personally find that great, despite the fun whodunit element to the plot.

6/10

Swamp Thing (1982)

Directed by Wes Craven [Other horror films: The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Stranger in Our House (1978), Deadly Blessing (1981), Invitation to Hell (1984), The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Chiller (1985), Deadly Friend (1986), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989), The People Under the Stairs (1991), New Nightmare (1994), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), Scream 3 (2000), Cursed (2005), My Soul to Take (2010), Scream 4 (2011)]

While not your typical horror movie, Swamp Thing comes with a comic book feel to tell the story of a scientist tragically transformed into a beast, and using his newfound abilities to save the woman he loves, despite knowing that few could love him back.

Like I said, this Wes Craven movie has a comic book feel, and given this is based on a comic book character, that makes sense. I am a comic book collector, though I collect only Marvel – while I’ve read plenty of DC comics (primarily Batman, but various other things too), I never got into Swamp Thing. The main reason for that, I’d guess, is that I’m already a giant fan of Man-Thing, and in my mind, there’s no doubt which character I find more interesting.

Plus, Man-Thing has tendrils.

Truthfully, while I knew Swamp Thing’s name was Alec Holland, that’s about all I knew about his character. I didn’t even know he could talk (or at least can talk in this movie – since I’ve not read much Swamp Thing material, I have no idea if he can talk in the comic books), so that came as a surprise.

Despite not really having a working knowledge of the source material, there’s no doubt the movie is fun in a sort of campy, comic book way. I always enjoy a good swamp setting, and as one might expect, Swamp Thing has a beautiful swampy setting throughout. The story is decently tragic, though there’s also elements of optimism in the fact one of Swamp Thing’s abilities is to heal others, which is put to good use twice.

I didn’t know that Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog, Open House, Someone’s Watching Me!) starred here. She was a nice face to see, and I also felt her performance was particularly strong. I also didn’t know Ray Wise (Dead End, Jeepers Creepers 2, The Butterfly Room) was in it, but he was fun, and playing his character’s sister was Nannette Brown (who only had one other small role in the atrocious My Boyfriend’s Back), and I rather liked Brown’s character for the time she’s on screen.

Louis Jourdan (Ritual of Evil, Count Dracula, Fear No Evil) isn’t a name I know, but he made for an okay villain. More interesting to me was David Hess (Body Count, House on the Edge of the Park, The Last House on the Left, Smash Cut), who, surprise, I also didn’t know was here. Hess made for a pretty awful person, so he’s on point, and does well with it. Reggie Batts was decent comedic relief, and I found him a fun addition.

The special effects were pretty solid. I mean, I don’t think Swamp Thing looked great, but his character’s design never seemed that interesting to me to begin with. No tendrils, see. Still, he looked okay. The other effects were decent too, save the monster-thing at the end, which I thought looked rather awful, and also not a great route for that specific character to take.

Swamp Thing is probably a fair movie for fans of the comic book series, and I’d dare say that it’s a better movie for Swamp Thing fans than the 2005 Man-Thing movie was for Man-Thing fans. It’s not something I find great, and the fact Wes Craven directed this strikes me more of a curiosity than anything else, but it’s a decent time.

7/10