I can hear you out there. You’re saying, I wish Umberto Lenzi made another movie in Florida right after Nightmare Beach. And I hope its a ripoff of The Hitcher but about a rich kid in an RV and that it’s so scummy that I feel like a Silkwood shower still wouldn’t make me feel clean.
Good news, friend. There’s Hitcher In the Dark, a film that crosses off every horrible thing on your deranged bucket list.
Mark Glazer wants to have sex with his dead mother.
If that upsets you, seriously, move on to another review.
He’s driving around in his rich daddy’s RV and picking up female hitchhikers to assault, murder and take Polaroids of. That’s when he runs into Daniela (Josie Bissett, who somehow moved on to the tamer — if that’s possible — Melrose Place), who he turns into a living version of his mother. And thanks to a cocktail of Stockholm Syndrome and Italian movie making magic, she starts to fall for our killer.
Originally, this movie ended with Mark getting away with it. But hey — they added on a little end where Daniela finally gets her revenge.
Amazingly, someone released this on a three pack with Hell High and The Majorettes. I can only imagine how people felt being confronted by this movie.
DAY 23. A DAY AT THE BEACH: Be sure to bring your trunks and your tanning butter.
You can say that Umberto Lenzi’s films are trashy, sleazy paens to mayhem and gore. I won’t disagree with you. There’s Cannibal Ferox, a movie that tries to take that genre further and deeper than even I thought it could go. It worked, as its advertising proclaims that it’s “the most violent film ever made” and “banned in 31 countries.” Then there’s Ironmaster, where George Eastman wears a lionpelt on his head and murders his way through a ripoff of Clan of the Cave Bear that’s a million times better than the movie that inspired it. And then there’s Ghosthouse, a slasher haunted house film that’s baffling in its ridiculousness and willingness to get weirder and weirder as time goes on, as just as much time is given to discussing chili and the question “Who is more popular in Denver, Kim Basinger or Kelly LeBrock?” than exploring the House by the Cemetery and watching teens get colorfully pulped into oblivion.
In short, Lenzi is the kind of filmmaker that makes me tear up and yell things at my TV like, “Genius!” and “I love you, Umberto!” Nightmare Beach — also known as Welcome to Spring Break — is his take on the slasher in Miami, halfway around the world from home, celebrating sin, sex and stabbings.
That said, Lenzi for years denied that this was his film.
Supposedly, he had a falling out with the producers and wanted to be taken off the film as he found it too similar to his film Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. Screenwriter James Justice, working under the screenname Harry Kirkpatrick, took over but convinced Lenzi to remain on set as an advisor. Now, knowing what we know of Italian horror, a name like Harry Killpatrick sounds like a fake Americanized name for the director. Lenzi would continually say, “My contribution consisted solely of providing technical assistance. Welcome to Spring Break should be considered the work of Harry Kirkpatrick.”
However, in his book Italian Crime Filmography, film historian Roberto Curti would claim that Lenzi really did direct the film and refused the credit when the film was done. After all, Lenzi and Justice would work with the same producers to make Primal Rage (with this movie’s writer Vittirio Rambaldi directing and heroine Sarah Buxton showing up, too).
No matter — I love this movie. Yes, the kind of love that I’ve only reserved for Lenzi’s films, where I ignore how patently insane the dialogue is. Actually, I love these films because of that. This movie is everything that you want from a slasher and so much more.
Diablo, the leader of the Demons motorcycle club, is about to be executed for killing a young woman. He confronts his accusers, like her sister Gail (Sarah G. Buxton, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead) and Strycher (John Saxon!), the cop who put him away for good. He tells that he’ll see them all in Hell because he’s innocent and plans on coming back to kill all of them.
A year later, it’s Spring Break time in Miami, which brings football players Skip Banachek (Nicholas De Toth, who left acting for editing, working on movies like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He’s also the son of Andrew De Toth, who was behind the camera for House of Wax and Crime Wave. He also had an amazing eyepatch, which he needed after he was attacked by a group of young men as he scouted locations in Egypt. They thought he was military leader Moyshe Dayan. He was also married to Veronica Lake, who was just the first of his seven wives) and Ronny Rivera (Rawley Valverde, who has gone on to a career in real estate) to the beach. Ronny is a pip, saying amazing things like “How would you like her to do squats on your tool?” and “You wanna bump short hairs?”
While all the sex and drinking of Spring Break is happening — this movie becomes a teen comedy like Porky’s for a bit — a masked biker has been offing people left and right. This slasher isn’t content to just use simple weapons. No, he’s custom-built his bike to include an electric chair that fries people just like Diablo. So he’s totally the killer come back from the dead, right?
Of course, Ronny is fated to get in a fight with the Demons and get killed by the biker, just as Skip is due to hook up with Gail. Why does she find him so attractive? Because while everyone else is out and about pouring water all over t-shirts and throwing up all over themselves, he’s refusing beer and being sullen. Seems like perfect mating material, right ladies?
That’s when Nightmare Beachi takes a page out of Jaws, with the town council covering up the murders and pinning the blame on Diablo while the real killer has been running free. This point is hammered home when a jokester puts a fin on his back and swims directly at some partying teens, leading a cop to just open fire without warning.
So it is Doc Willet (Michael Parks)? Strycher? Or Reverend Bates (Lance LeGault, Col. Decker from TV’s The A-Team and Elvis Presley’s stunt double in plenty of movies), whose daughter Rachel is out of control? Or Mayor Loomis (Fred Buch, who shows up in Caddyshack, Shock Waves, Porky’s II and The New Kids)?
Nobody is safe, because the killer even takes out Diablo’s girlfriend Trina by blasting her headphones with electricity, sending her eyeball straight out of her head. So is it Diablo? After all…his body is missing from its grave.
I’m not going to tell you who the killer is, other than to tell you that if you watch enough giallo, it all makes sense. After all, that’s kind of what this movie is, along with the added slashtastic gore that this era demanded.
While shot in Miami, this film boasts plenty of Italian connections. Claudio Simonetti did the score, the aforementioned Vittirio Rambaldi wrote it and his dad Carlo did the special effects. Supplementing the fine score are appearances and soundtrack songs by the bands Kirsten, Animal (whose song “Rock Like an Animal” lives up to the idea that every metal band needs a tune that references their own name), Derek St. Holmes (who played on Ted Nugent’s first solo albums and in the band MSG) and Ron Bloom, Rondinelli, Juanita and the band Rough Cutt, whose members included Jake E. Lee (Ozzy’s guitarist after Randy Rhodes, Badlands), Amir Derakh (Orgy), Paul Shortino (Quiet Riot) and Craig Goldy and Claude Schnell, who both played in Dio. If you liked how Demons mixed metal into the film, then you’re going to bang your head throughout this movie.
No moment in this movie that is boring. It’s like doing drugs with the band backstage and then getting to sit in, then go backstage and they offer you your pick of groupie. It has no morals, it knows no laws and all it wants is to ensure that you have the best time possible.
William Lustig took the profits from 1977’s Hot Honey to make this guerilla shot piece of sleazy, slimy slasher brilliance. The other money came from half of star Joe Spinell’s salary from Nighthawks and British producer Judd Hamilton came up with the rest of the money (around $200,000) with one condition: his then-wife Caroline Munro would be the heroine.
Originally, her role was to be played by Daria Nicolodi, but she was unable to go to New York for filming because she was still filming her scenes for Inferno in Italy. Supposedly, Susan Tyrrell and Jason Miller were both going to be in the movie too.
Just to give you an idea of how outlaw this movie was, for the scene where Frank Zito — the film’s titular maniac — kills Tom Savini in a scene inspired by the Son of Sam, Savini had a cast waiting filled with blood and leftover food. He blasted it with a live shotgun, threw it in the trunk of assistant Luke Walter’s car and they all drove off. No permits. No asking for permission. No prisoners.
PS — That body that gets its head blown off? Its name was Boris and it also shows up in Dawn of the Dead. After this movie, According to Savini, it was locked in the trunk of the car used in the shotgun scene and both were sunk in the East River.
Maniac is nothing without Spinell, whose rantings and maniacal look lend this movie its soul, as gross and covered with muck as it may be. He was abused by his prostitute mother and has turned his rage into a need to destroy women. He does so in all manner of ways, always ending up by scalping them and placing their hair on the mannequins he keeps in his squalid apartment.
This movie is everything horrible that everyone ever told you that horror movies were. It has no redeeming qualities or pretentions to art. It’s as rough as it gets, like Pieces if that movie wasn’t so funny.
Believe it or not — this is a positive review.
I’ve always held off from watching this movie but I’m glad I did. Spinell was nothing short of brilliant in everything I’ve ever seen him in and this one just keeps that trend going. I love him in Cruising, Nighthawks and the Rockyfilms.
The only strange thing to me is how Anna (Caroline Munro!) is willing to be in the same orbit as Zito. It’s a small point. After all, they did three movies together (Starcrash and The Last Horror Film are the other two).
Abigail Clayton, who plays a victim named Rita, was an adult actress who successfully moved into mainstream roles. Sharon Mitchell also shows up as a nurse, as does Carol Henry (Bloodsucking Freaks), Hyla Marrow (also in Lustig’s Vigilante), Rita Montone (who was in Bloodsucking Freaks and The Children) and Kelly Piper (Rawhead Rex and Vice Squad),.
Maniac was a green movie, as it recycled two big things from past films: you can spot the headless corpse of Betsy Palmer from Friday the 13th in Zito’s hovel and the helicopter shots were taken from Argento’s Inferno.
This was remade in 2012, but I still haven’t seen that yet. I kind of don’t want to ruin the power of this movie, a film so strange that it’s not even sure of the fate of its main character even as the film draws to a close.
You can watch this on Vudu and Shudder. Also, Blue Underground — Lustig’s company — has an incredible 3-disc version of this that is the last word on the film, at least until we can beam movies directly into brains.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Craig Edwards is an award-winning blogger as well as a self-proclaimed Media Guy and a consumer of pop culture for a lot of years. He also writes a great blog called Let’s Get Out of Here! I’m so happy that he’s decided to share his top ten slashers with us, as I value his insights on film.
1. Halloween (1978): It may have had progenitors, but this is where John Carpenter worked cinematic alchemy and made the elements come together in their supreme form. My mom took me to the theater to see this as a kid, and I’ve loved it ever since.
2. Friday the 13th (1980): This first entry will cover for the whole series – which is my favorite slasher franchise. It can’t take the number one spot on this list though, because Halloween is the better movie.
3. My Bloody Valentine (1981): I was sorely disappointed seeing this in the theater as a kid because all of the gore I’d seen in Fangoria magazine had been cut out by the MPAA. But this was always a solid slasher, even minus the red stuff. A subsequent DVD release with the gore restored just showed it as one of the finest slashers to come out of the 80’s.
4. Scream (1996): There will always be some debate about which was more integral to the success of this slasher that revitalized the genre after a period of dormancy – was it Kevin Williamson’s script or Wes Craven’s direction? Of course, the answer is that it’s both; the sum of which is better than the two elements taken separately.
5. The Mutilator (1984): This low budget slasher was made just two hours from where I live – in Atlantic Beach NC. I will admit that at least a part of my affection for it is that love of it for being local; getting the opportunity to watch it at the beach house it was shot at last year in the company of seven people who worked on it has cemented it as one of my favorites.
6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1973): The raw documentary power of Tobe Hooper’s movie would make it a contender for this slot – but knowing now just how hard the shoot was for the cast and crew makes me thankful it was ever completed at all. That it also is such a terrific movie is just the cherry on top of the head cheese sundae.
7. Terror Train (1980): In terms of pure quality, this is probably the weakest movie on my list. Boy could it use some more graphic gore in the kills. But this is a fondly remembered slasher from my youth – and it has an irresistible setup. Consequently, it will always hold a spot for those reasons.
8. Hatchet (2007): Adam Green puts every bit of his love for the slashers of the 80’s onscreen with this delightfully graphic throwback which also has a wonderful cast and atmosphere to spare.
9. Intruder (1989): I never got to see it back in the day, but catching up to it in recent years – and getting to see it uncut – made me wish I could have found it earlier. Gleefully nasty and with another corker cast – including director Sam Raimi acting and brief appearances from Bruce Campbell and Emil Sitka (supporting Three Stooges actor).
10. Psycho (1960): I don’t think Alfred Hitchcock’s shocker of a film is often categorized as a slasher – but that is certainly what it is. It’s an A-1 classic, and if you’ve never taken the time to watch it – you definitely should.
Imagine, if you will, a movie with the termenity to steal large chunks of Halloween while also taking most of its soundtrack — and some ideas — from The Omen and The Exorcist. Then you’d have Jing hun feng yu ye, or as we would say in America, Devil Returns.
It is as amazingly ridiculous as you’d hope it would be.
Our heroine Mei-hsun Fang called for the wrong cab. Its driver is a wanted robber and serial rapist who attacks her and leaves her to die. But she survives and her testimony puts him in front of a firing squad. Even though she can see his death in her dreams, he hasn’t left her memory and she begins to fear that the life growing in her womb isn’t from her husband, but from that killing machine.
Her attempt to have an abortion ends with the nurse attacked and the doctor being violently hurled from the operating room and out a window. By violently, I mean that this is a Hong Kong movie where life is cheap and stunts are painfully real.
What would you do now? Throw yourself down a flight of stairs? How about throwing yourself down the stairs accompanied by Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene?” Could it be because the second part of that song was also used in Jackie Chan’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow?
Well, that doesn’t work either and the baby is born. Mei-hsun is so fearful of the child that she refuses to name it. And when no one is around, the baby torments her, crying non-stop. Luckily, an exorcism turns the child to the side of good.
The killer is enraged that his son is no longer evil, so he returns back to the world of the living, wiping out everyone in his path, from the nanny who suggested the exorcism to a young couple.
Finally, the movie settles into straight-up Halloween ripoff mode, except you know, with the Asian twist of the murderer being covered in wine to banish his evil spirit before he’s shot several times.
This movie plays with the issue of motherhood and the changing role of women within Chinese culture pretty well until it decides that someone needed to see an Asian version of Jamie Lee stab those knitting needles into the eyes of a killer all over again.
Of course, this is also a movie that takes large bits of its story from When a Stranger Calls and Black Christmas, so you can’t fault it from stealing as much as it can.
However — can these movies claim to have a scene shot in a karaoke parlor where the singer outright brutalizes every single man in the club with her lyrics that take down each one of them as they try to laugh it off? Nope. They cannot. It’s moments like this that make this movie shine.
As you watch this clip, you may notice that my copy of Devil Returns isn’t a high-end boutique blu ray release. No, it’s a shoddy VCD downloaded off the internet, featuring hardcoded Asian and Chinese subtitles, while each line of dialogue is spoken in both Cantonese and Mandarin. The strange feedback from all of this information overload makes this movie somehow even better as a result. It’s also a grainy mess, transferred from VHS to a CD-R, with no care whatsoever for quality. Magical.
DAY 22. SEASON OF THE WHICH?: A film set around a holiday. No Halloween though, it’s a challenge!
La Noche de Walpurgis (released in the United States as The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman and in the UK as both Shadow of the Werewolf and Werewolf Shadow) was the fifth time that Paul Naschy played the doomed lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky.
Written by Naschy and directed by Leon Klimovsky (The People Who Own the Dark, The Dracula Saga), this film seems like it came from another planet, perhaps because so much of it is in slow motion. It also kicked off a horror craze in Spain that maniacs like me are still enjoying to this day.
After the last film — The Fury of the Wolf Man — Waldemar Daninsky is brought back to life during his autopsy. After all, you don’t remove silver bullets from a werewolf’s heart and expect him to treat you nicely. He kills both for their trouble and runs into the night.
Meanwhile, Elvira and her friend Genevieve are looking for the tomb of Countess Wandessa de Nadasdy. Coincidentally, as these things happen, her grave is near Daninsky’s castle, so our dashing werewolf friend invites them to stay. Within hours, Elvira has bled all over the corpse of the Countess (Patty Shepard, Hannan, Queen of the Vampires), who soon rises and turns both girls into her slaves.
But what of the werewolf, you ask. Don’t worry — he shows up too, after we get our fill of the ladies slow-motion murdering people in the forest. Also, as these things happen, Waldemar must fight the Countess before the only woman who ever loved him, Elvira (Yelena Samarina, The House of 1,000 Dolls) finally kills him again.
There’s also a scene where our furry friend battles a skeleton wearing the robes of a monk in the graveyard. Some claim that this scene inspired Spanish director Amando de Ossorio to write Tombs of the Blind Dead just a few months later.
Daninsky’s lycanthropy is not explained in this one. Was it the bite of a yeti that made him howl at the moon? Is he a college professor or a count? Who cares!
If you’ve watched enough slashers, you’ve reached that point where you say, “There’s no way they’re going to show a bandsaw tear a woman’s head off her body.” But when you really title a movie Die Sage des Todes, or The Saw of Death, and you’re Jess Franco, you go for it.
Seriously — turn back now all that aren’t ready for an incestual slasher that takes no prisoners.
Miguel has a disfigured face, a horrible secret and just got out of being in a mental asylum for five years after stabbing a woman. Now, he’s been released into the loving arms — too loving, hence that secret — of his sister Manuela, who operates Europe’s International Youth-Club Boarding School of Languages. Now, Miguel has his eye on Angela, an attractive student at his sister’s school.
We full-on learn Miguel and his sister’s secret shame, as when the two begin to kiss, she reminds him that the last time they went this far, people died. No one can ever understand them and it can never happen again.
Between the disco dancing and constant murders, this European resort town stays hopping. Perhaps the best sequence is the aforementioned bandsaw murder, which ends with its lone witness, a kid who has to be less than ten years old, getting run over by the killer too. Life is cheap — and in this movie, it’s cheaper than it ever has been before.
I kind of adore that the producers told Franco that Pink Floyd was going to do the music for this. In what universe would that happen?
Of course, this didn’t just end up on any video nasty list. It’s one of the category 1 films that was actually prosecuted for obscenity. If any movie on that list deserves it, it’s this one.
Severin has re-released this on blu ray, selling it with this line: “just when you thought you’d seen it all, Franco shocked the world by delivering surprising style, genuine suspense and a cavalcade of depravity that includes incest, voyeurism and roller disco.” If you aren’t ordering this right now, what’s wrong with you?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I’ve reached out to some of my favorite people, websites and personalities to ask, “What are your ten favorite slashers?” Notice I didn’t say the ten best. I said your ten favorites. That’s because I want to know the what’s and why’s of this bastard genre of horror. Slasher Trash posts more about this genre than anyone I know and you can read more on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,Letterboxd and on the site, SlasherTrash.com!
He asked if he could restrict his top ten to his own qualifiers, as a list of this magnitude would be too hard otherwise before deciding on sharing his top ten obscure slashers:
10. The Incubus(1982): Weird and creepy with a supernatural edge, The Incubus is a sleazy, fever dream slasher.
9. Death Screams (1982): You don’t get much cheaper than Death Screams but this golden era doozy features fun kills and hilarious dialogue.
8. Too Scared To Scream (1984): A crime thriller turned slasher, Too Scared is giallo-esque in its approach. An intriguing whodunit.
7. Fatal Games (1984): A javelin throwing killer picks off the high school athletics team. What’s not to like?
6. Nightmares (1980): Well shot and exploitative, Nightmares boasts fantastic POV stalk & slash with blood and breasts to boot.
5. Mortuary (1983): An off-kilter tone sets Mortuary apart from its rivals. The killer guise is suitably scary and the cast elevates the material.
4. Blood Tracks (1985): Bonkers The Hills Have Eyes clone. Blood Tracks is madcap entertainment with a glee filled variety of deaths.
3. Girl’s Nite Out (1982): A killer dressed as a bear mascot terrorises a college campus. It’s ridiculous but it’s a damn good show that provides a chilling twist finale.
1. Hide & Go Shriek (1988): A bunch of kids celebrating graduation get picked off one by one after breaking into a furniture store. A fine slasher which utilizes its excellent location and crazy cross-dressing killer!
Thanks Slasher Trash! If you’re interested in sending us your list, either reply here or email us at bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com!
When this movie was being filmed, a psychologist was hired as an adviser to ensure that Gary Busey’s character of Tom Sykes was realistic. Busey was excited, as he felt that he already was the character.
Fives after filming, he crashed his motorcycle with no helmet and nearly died.
Busey, who campaigned against mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists, flew off his bike headfirst directly into a curb. Neurosurgeons at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center needed to remove blood clots from his brain to save his life.
He told Oprah Winfrey in 2014 that “My bike hit sand and fishtailed. I hit the front brake and flipped over and hit my head on the curb.” The accident split my skull wide open. At one time they had me under 12 layers of drugs and strapped down to a metal table, naked, in the mental health alert ward — cause they were going to ‘Cuckoo Nest’ me.”
Then, after saying a prayer, Busey said, “And I felt a white cloak cover around me, and I called that cloak faith. And that’s what got me out of the hospital two and a half months early. My brain got altered in a way that’s not normal and I have a different way of looking at things and feeling things. And I know how special life is.”
Recently released psychiatric patient Tom Sykes (Busey) has gone full-on Bad Ronald, hiding within the attic of the Dreyer family — Phil (Michael McKean, yes, from Spinal Tap), Julie (Mimi Rogers) and their kids Neil and Holly — and uses a baby monitor to listen in on their every waking moment.
His goal? To become the new father of the family, inventing an affair for Phil and slyly spying on Julie as she skinny dips in the pool. He even murders their dog Rudolph when he gets too close. And then when young Neal gets beat up at school, he teaches him how to fight back.
Phil and Julie get into a huge fight and he moves out, which gives Tom the opening he needs. Only one person distrusts him — their neighbor Gene. Do you know how creepy Gene is and why no one listens to him? Because he’s such a weirdo that he helped give birth to the ultimate weirdo — he’s Crispin Glover’s dad Bruce.
Of course, it all ends like Fatal Attraction, complete with Tom shrugging off bullets to keep coming after the family. But that’s not how it originally ended.
In the original script by Lem Dobbs (Romancing the Stone, The Hard Way with Michael J. Fox, Kafka for Steven Soderbergh, Dark City, The Limey, The Score with Robert De Niro, and the ill-fated Travolta vehicle, 2018’s Gotti), Sykes was an abused child and much more sympathetic. After trying to burn down the house with the family still inside, he realizes that he’s just recreating the way he murdered his own abusive family when he was young. He now realizes that he has become as evil as them and despite the rejection of the Dreyers and the fact that he can never be a part of their family, he saves them and allows the house to burn down all around himself. This ending is completely out there, which I love and wish had been filmed.
Is there anything as Gary Busey making his own home within the walls of the place you feel most safe? No. There is not.
If you want to see this for yourself, you can grab it from VHSPS or watch it on Amazon Prime or You Tube Movies. Director Matthew Patrick also directed Raquel Welch in 1993’s Tainted Blood (free; You Tube) and Jennifer Beals in the radio-ghost story, Night Owl.
DAY 21: POWER PLANTS. One where the vegetation fights back.
Swamp Thing can trace his roots — yes, it’s a he — back to “It,” Theodore Sturgeon’s short story that ran in the pulp magazine Unknown in 1940. The story is all about a man — Roger Kirk — who dies and is reborn in a swamp.
This was an influential tale whose roots — pardon the pun — took hold throughout comic books, which were the younger brother of the pulps. In Air Fighters Comics #3, published in 1942, Sky Wolf (a World War II fighting ace given to wearing the mask of a wolf and helping Airboy battle the Axis) the muck-encrusted form of World War I German pilot Baron Eric von Emmelman returned from the grave in the same way that Roger Kirk did two years before.
Thanks to his immense force of will and the help of the goddess Ceres, as the Baron’s body decayed, he became one with the vegetation of the swamp that he was shot down over. Now, he was more marsh than man, and fought Sky Wolf until discovering the fanaticism of his countrymen.
Before long, The Heap was the heroic star of his own backup in Airboy Comics, with adventures lasting from 1946 to 1953. He’d return in 1986 as part of Eclipse Comics’ reboot of Airboy before being bought by Image Comics, where he’s now part of Todd McFarland’s Spawn Universe.
After EC Comics (the creators of Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror amongst others) and other horror comics publishers were taken to task for their extreme material, the Comics Code Authority outlawed all monstrous characters unless they had literary roots. In fact, until the year 1989, you weren’t even allowed to say the word zombie in a mainstream comic book (Marvel got around this by calling them zuvembies, if you can believe that).
As the CCA relaxed its rules at the start of the 70’s, two different characters that both grew from the Heap started at both Marvel Comics and their cross-town rivals, DC.
Man-Thing was created by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas (who’d go on to write Fire and Ice and adapted plenty of Conan stories, including the one that would be filmed for Conan the Destroyer). A series of conversations led to five different potential origins for the character, with the name being recycled from another character that had already appeared in Tales of Suspense #7 and #81.
Thomas would tell Alter Ego that Lee “had a couple of sentences or so for the concept — I think it was mainly the notion of a guy working on some experimental drug or something for the government, his being accosted by spies, and getting fused with the swamp so that he becomes this creature. The creature itself sounds a lot like the Heap, but neither of us mentioned that character at the time.” Lee also had the name for the character, which would lead to perhaps by favorite comic book title of all time: Giant-Sized Man-Thing.
While you’d think that Man-Thing would be a one-note character — he never speaks and he just kind of shows up in the swamps — but he grew from his first appearance, where he battled Marvel’s Tarzan-esque Ka-Zar to become something much different thanks to the deranged hands of Steve Gerber, who made Man-Thing the center of the Nexus of All Realities, which just so happened to be inside his swamp.
Once biochemist Dr. Theodore “Ted” Sallis and a former co-worker with Dr. Curtis “The Lizard” Connors, the man who would become Man-Thing was working on a version of Captain America’s Super Soldier formula with Dr. Barbara Morse (who would become Hawkeye’s wife Mockinbird, man, I read too many comics as a kid) when techno soldiers from Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) and his betraying wife attacked. The result? You guessed it. Fused with the swamp, no brains and a tendency to wander. That said, Man-Thing also gained the ability to burn anyone who felt fear in his presence, so he had that going for him.
Man-Thing became a story engine for Gerber (who contended that he was just a reporter for the very real tales of the character, as he appeared as a fictional character within the comic), who used these stories to introduce sorceress Jennifer Kale, the barbarian Korrek who emerged from a jar of peanut butter, the serial murdering Foolkiller, Dakimh the Enchanter and Howard the Duck. Yep, Gerber’s Man-Thing was pure imagination writ large across the comic book page. After leaving comics, Gerber would write for plenty of cartoons, including Dungeons & Dragons, which his work had a major influence on.
At pretty much the same time, Len Wein came up with the idea for a swamp-based character as he rode the subway. “I didn’t have a title for it, so I kept referring to it as that swamp thing I’m working on. And that’s how it got its name!” Master illustrator Bernie Wrightson (he drew the comic cover for Creepshow) designed the character’s visual image and helped tell his first few adventures.
The Swamp Thing was once Dr. Alec Holland, who was working with his wife Linda to invent a solution for the world’s food shortage problems. After some thugs blew up their lab, his destroyed body was coated in one of his formulas and grew within the swamp, transforming him into a conscious plant with all of his old memories. Of course, once Alan Moore came on board — after this movie brought the character back to comics — we would learn that Swamp Thing was really the latest in a long line of Earth elementals that protect the Green.
If this all sounds like DC was stealing ideas from Marvel — well, they were all stealing from the Heap who was stealing from Theodore Sturgeon — let me blow your mind a little further. Swamp Thing writer Len Wein and Man-Thing’s co-writer, Gerry Conway, were roommates.
Despite the first version of Swamp Thing appearing House of Secrets #92, Len Wein would later say, “Gerry and I thought that, unconsciously, the origin in Swamp Thing #1 was a bit too similar to the origin of Man-Thing a year-and-a-half earlier. There was vague talk at the time around Marvel of legal action, but it was never really pursued.”
It was decided that this was just a strange coincidence and after a while, the characters became so different, no legal action was necessary.
If you’d like to learn more about the fascinating lives of comic book swamp men, I recommend TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator 6: Swampmen.
Whew! I told you all that so I can tell you this: In 1982, Wes Craven wrote and directed an adaption of the comic, long before comic book movies were a thing. His intent was to show the major Hollywood studios that he could handle action, stunts and major stars, all while doing it under his $2.5 million dollar budget. Good news — he succeeded.
A top-secret bioengineering project in the southern swamps is dealing with sabotage, so Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau, playing a mix of the comic’s Matt Cable and Abigail Arcade) has been dispatched to replace one of the scientists who has been killed. She soon meets lead scientist Dr. Alce Holland (Ray Wise) and his sister Dr. Linda, who together have developed a glowing plant with explosive properties, as well as a combination animal/plant hybrid.
The real issue is that the secret base is being eyed by the evil Anton Arcane, a paramilitary leader who wants the fruits — and vegetables — of all this labor for himself. He’s played by Louis Jourdan, who is absolutely perfect in the role, oozing menace from every pore while remaining aloof and almost high cultured in his pursuit of evil.
Soon, Arcane’s forces attack, murdering Linda and blowing Alec up real good. However, just like the comic, he now rises as the Swamp Thing, played by stuntman DIck Durock (who was also the pie-eating champion in Stand By Me). Now, he must protect Alice and his notes, keeping them both from Arcane.
The movie differs from the comic in that Holland’s formula unleashes whatever the dominant personality trait exists within each person. For Holland, it’s the ability to heal and transform his inner strength into outer muscle. Yet Bruno (Nicholas Worth, who played the heavy in plenty of films and lent his voice to the Reaper in The Hills Have Eyes Part II), the biggest of Arcane’s henchmen, becomes a small rat-like creature and Arcane himself becomes a gigantic boar.
Another of Arcane’s henchmen — Ferret, the one who gets his neck snapped by Swamp Thing — is played by David Hess, who was Krug in The Last House On the Left. Also, Karen Price, who plays one of Arcane’s messengers, was Playboy‘s Playmate of the Month for January 1981. I tell you that because it’s her centerfold that appears on the tail of Gyro Captain’s copter in The Road Warrior.
There was one bit of controvery this film caused, more than a decade after it was released.
In August 2000, MGM released this movie on DVD and althought it was labeled PG, it actually included the 93-minute international cut, which amps up Adrienne Barbeau’s ample charms and nudity in the skinny dip sequence. Two years after that, a woman rented this film in Dallas for her kids and was shocked and dismayed by what her family saw. Trust me — they should be so lucky!
Durock and Jourdan — along with much of the crew, including producers Michael E. Uslan and Benjamin Melniker — would return in 1989 for The Return of Swamp Thing. It’s directed by Jim Wynorski and features Heather Locklear as Abigail Arcane, who heads to the swamp to confront her stepfather Dr. Arcane. He’s been brought back to the dead by the evil Dr. Lana Zurrell (Sarah Douglas, Ursa from Superman) along with an army of mutant Un-Men, all ready to do battle with Swamp Thing.
If anything, that movie gave us more than a series on the USA Network and a cartoon complete with Kenner action figures (of course I bought every single one). It also gave us this, a PSA where Swamp Thing speaks for Greenpeace.
Good news. Today you learned way more than you ever thought you would about 20th century popular fiction involving swamp based creatures. Would it help even further if I told you that Man-Thing also appeared in a 2005 SyFy movie directed by Brett Leonard (The Dead Pit, The Lawnmower Man, Hideaway)? I sure hope so.
You can watch this for free on Tubi. You can also grab the blu ray from Shout! Factory and the MVD blu ray reissue of the sequel from Diabolik DVD.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.