[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to another episode of the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandtights.com. it is horror Week. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Galactic Comics and
[email protected]. check them out. But this is horror week. We're in the middle of horror week now. We're doing interviews with authors, with comic creators, with movie reviews, which is what this is. Our friend Paul Eaton of Galactic Comics and collectibles, the owner and retailer over there, came on this episode to discuss the 1982 Swamp Thing movie. And so we discussed that the tv show attached to it, the most recent tv show, the return of the Swamp thing movie. We discussed a bunch of things, including how Batman should give up on Gotham City and move to Smallville. So check this episode out for Horror Week right here on the podcast. Before you do, follow us on and like us and all that stuff over at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blue sky threads, all those things, as well as rate reviews. Subscribe over on Apple or Spotify or I, any major podcasting platform, really, as well as YouTube. And check us out on capesandtice.com for so much more content, including a bunch of stuff this week for horror week, including top ten lists, countdowns, interviews, reviews, all that stuff. So check out this episode with Swamp Thing movie review with our friend Paul Eaton of galactic comics and collectibles for horror week here at Capes and Tights podcast. Enjoy, everyone.
Welcome. It's this horror week. Paul at the Capes of Taste podcast right here. For a week.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: For a week. What a kickoff.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: It's awesome. It's actually getting its own footing because this is a third year we'll be doing this. And Dark Horse emailed me was like, hey, I know you're getting ready for your horror week. Do you want help with any guests? You know, things like that. I'm like, holy shit. Dark Horse is actually known.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: It's like other people know these things. That's amazing.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: They're used to the dark worst comics horror. We can get them to sponsor the whole week and, oh, holy hell yeah.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah, let's jump on this.
But it's fun.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: It's horror weeks. We're doing this this year. You know, we have, this is the Tuesday podcast. We're doing four, maybe five. And that's the thing. We're recording this. There's a possibility for a Friday podcast that I'm working on. I just haven't heard back. It basically has to be that this person has to be available, like within a certain two hour span on a certain day. And if they are, then, then we'll do it. If not, we'll have to postpone them to a different time. So if they're not available during that time, I'm not gonna have a podcast on Friday, but we'll have one Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which is pretty exciting to do.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Let's hope we hit d five too, and get the full run. That'd be dope, right?
[00:02:39] Speaker A: It's just gonna be great. It's a person that I'm looking forward to. They have a dark horse comic coming out. They're author, and so that's pretty cool on that side. So this week we have multiple authors. CJ Leed, who wrote Maeve Fly, one of my favorite books of last year, and one of my favorite books of this year, American Rapture, which comes out this month or October. And we've got this episode, and we've got Nat Cassidy, who is a author as well, who wrote a short story or a short novella called Rest Stop, which is fantastic. And then we've got Isaac Goodhart and Tate Bramble coming back to the podcast to talk their oddly pedestrian life of Christopher K. S Halloween special. And so we'll talk horror stuff like that. So we've got comic people, we've got movies. We're doing swamp thing today. We've got a couple authors, potentially another song person. My goal next year is I want to get someone who's in like a b movie. Good actor, like an actor or something. Yeah.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be cool.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah, man.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: I made it for horror week.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Great. I mean, you've been in for Star Wars Week. It's your favorite. We're getting for all the favorite things, right? When we do the Transformers week of the GI Joe, we'll have to do the Energon week at some point. Yeah, it's just talking Transformers, GI Joe's, all that stuff. We'll just, we'll just have you on every day to talk about a different Gi Joe or something like that. No, but this is swamp thing. So this kicked off a bunch of swamp thing stuff. Honestly, I didn't realize it until after watching this movie again, because I did actually watch it last year around this time. I had never seen a movie thing I do. Yeah. But there was this in 82, which is the swamp thing. Then they did the return of the swamp thing, but they had the tv show. They did a tv show from cartoon 90 to 93. They did a cartoon in 91.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: I watched the opening of the cartoon. And it was just. The opening was bad. Yeah, just the opening was terrible. I don't know if it was for. What I saw was five episodes. Is that all? Did it only make you five episodes?
[00:04:41] Speaker A: I don't remember. I didn't look up exactly. I know that.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Because I know the action figure line.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: I mean, swamp thing, like, when went big time.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah. They'd actually did a video game.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yep, that's right.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: And then they also had the 2019. Had that weird. It was. I haven't seen it yet, mainly because of. I'm afraid of the fact that it was supposed to be 13 episodes and they made it ten. And so to me, like, did they screw something up at the end there and, like, truncate it?
[00:05:11] Speaker B: I've heard that the. The 2019 Swamp thing is really good.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: That's what I heard.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: It was supposed to be 13 episodes. It went to ten episodes because it was on their DC universe channel, the app.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Funding fell through or something.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: That was. I think the problem was, rather than releasing it on anything that was known, they tried to make their own platform, and the platform itself tanked. And I think that's what kind of killed it, because everyone I've spoken to that was. Has seen this is like, oh, man, I wish they would go back and do a second season of it. They should do more of it. So I would be down for watching it. I'd like to check it out.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Yeah, they said that it was.
One of the things that it was, was that it was. They had tax credits for Georgia or something like that. I think they filmed it in Georgia. I was looking it up this morning, and, oh, North Carolina. They were filming in North Carolina. There was a tax credits for filming there, but they weren't as big as they thought they were going to be. So there's multiple reasons that went into this, but again, financially, the whole thing.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Just kind of messed up.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: You know, maybe if it was on Netflix or HBO Max or something like that, maybe there would have been two or three seasons because there would have been the funding.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: If it got a major platform.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: When you release it yourself, you get the subscription. Like when Netflix releases stranger things, they get the subscription fees, but they don't get anything else. When you send it to HBO Max, you get a big lump sum money or money per episode or money, however they structure the deals, but they get paid for that from that other service and then other services. Job is to sell the subscription fees. And so sometimes there's good money in that. I mean, obviously, Netflix has made, made it billions and billions of dollars off.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: I think DC thought that they were gonna, like, be able to turn this into a huge thing, and it did not work.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: And it was right around the time that everybody was releasing their own things.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, there was tons of platforms, though, you know, and it's just, I don't think that they have enough.
I don't think they have maybe enough property of their own to be able to do a whole one. You know, I mean, they're starting to show that, like, maybe Disney doesn't have enough property to really run its own one.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Well, that's why they. Now it's Hulu. Like, basically Hulu.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: It's all one lump thing because there just isn't enough to keep it going.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: You see, like Lion King, and then it was like a Marvel thing, and now it's like ABC News as a thing that comes up and I'm just like, oh, okay, this is an interesting Disney ABC News streaming thing going on here. But the swamp thing of it all in movies and media like this started in 1982 with this Wes Craven movie, which is also crazy. This was directed by Wes Craven. Boy, directed by Wes Craven.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: It's funny, I read a little bit about the whole Wes craven side of it and how Wes Craven wanted to prove he could do more than just like the, the hokey horror. You wanted to do this action stuff and everything. Even though I gotta say, this kind of still a hokey horror.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Somebody had the perfect, yeah, the campiness. They had the perfect, like, responsive. At the end of the day, it's still a rubber suit monster man.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Like, the, all we did was go from rubber suit monster man being bad guy to rubber suit monster man being good guy.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Like, so his, his kickoff film was the last house on the left in 1972, but then he did the Hillside Vies in 1977, which is a classic horror, like, gross horror movie. Yeah, but, but let's be honest, like, he started things with swamp thing, and then there was nightmare on elm street, and then he did the sequel. Tonight he'll survive. And then it, honestly, to me, the greatest horror movie that he's ever made was screen, which was, you know, a different way different movie than this in more of a clean, cleaner, but, like, slasher so much.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that was in this.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: I don't know, scream, like, really was set apart compared to a lot of the other more traditional Wes craven stuff. And certainly this movie, this, like this, this definitely fits the traditional well.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. It just threw me off a little bit, because being a scream fan, knowing that he did hills have eyes in some of these more campy or horror films, it doesn't surprise me when you think about that in the fact that he wrote and direct this film.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: It's more along the lines when you think of scream, because I think of scream being more. I hate it. I'm saying the word clean, but it's like, more scream is like.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: I don't know, it's hard to say that you want to say screams are better, but screams kind of a better movie.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Like it is. It's a better still happy because it's. It makes.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And it has like these, these, I don't know, just more drawn out plot line, more. You don't know who the killer is. You're trying to solve the mystery.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: They build this, like, thriller suspense. There's a lot of scenes where you're like, is the killer? There isn't hedgesthem. You know, all of that stuff versus. This is like. And I think in more typical Wes craven fashion of back in the day at least, is more like just in your face.
Here it is. Damsel in distress.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Oh, maybe the reason is Paul. He wrote and directed this film as well as Hills of Eyes and Hills of Eyes, too. And also the scream movies he didn't write. So maybe there's that thing. Maybe there's just the director or part of it. You can tell some similarities between the two, between all of his films, but maybe because the directing and the writing. I mean, his first, what, 123-4567 films up until 1985, he wrote and directed. And then he wrote a couple in the early nineties and directed. But then, like, starting in 1995 with Vampire in Brooklyn, he did scream. Scream two, scream three, red Eye. I've never even seen that movie. All those movies. He just.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: I've only ever seen the first Scream movie. Yeah, I've seen the first Scream movie a few times, but I've never, I don't know, just like, it just keeps going.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And then scream four, he directed eleven, but, yeah, so it's, it's maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's a little bit of, you know, him writing and directing. But to me, looking back on it, DC's got this like an all star horror director as your writer, writer and director on this film. So that there was that. But I'm also.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: I'm sure they had to go like, I mean, this is interesting. You look at the marvel stuff of this erade realistically. It's not as well done. Not to say that this is well done. No, but, like, this seemed to be much better. And I know, like, I never watched this, which is kind of surprising. I never watch this, like, as a kid growing up. Yeah, but I have friends of mine that, like, this. This was like an epic movie of their childhood, swamp thing. Like, how can you not watch it? We love him, blah, blah, blah.
So I think, you know, if I'd watch this and had that nostalgia vibe for it, I probably would be a little more hooked on it. But if you look at the other, I mean, you look at Superman, swamp thing, DC was doing much better in the theaters at this stage than, you know, we had. We watched the 90 Captain America, the, the Doctor strange.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Well, I think that there's a difference. I think also, like, one of the things I liked about this movie was the fact that it was like a horror movie that featured a DC character, that it wasn't too, trying too much to be like, this is DC and you need to pull in, like, oh, the horror movie, the swamp. Oh, there's Superman and then there's Batman. And like, he wasn't trying to pull in too many characters. It was like, we're gonna make a straight ahead horror movie that has a swamp creature in it. And why not? Instead of just making a, you know, it's almost like Wes Craven. If you wrote this and put this movie together and then brought it to DC and say, hey, swamp thing, you know, what about this? And then DC was like, eh? And he goes, fine, we're just gonna make a swamp movie. It's gonna be called swamp creature. And literally, they could do the exact same story. And obviously they couldn't use things like what the Doctor or the arcane, who's a DC character as well. But also, I mean, Alec Holland and him and then just changed the names and could have been a completely different movie. But for those fans who are fans of comic books, it's like, oh, this is cool. It's a straight ahead horror film that features a character from a couple characters from the DC universe. And there we have it. And so maybe that's why. And same thing with Superman. Superman didn't try to do too much. I think there, we'll get to that. Actually do Superman. Whereas, like, some of these, like, with Batman versus Superman, it's like they try to do too much. They try too much to make a Superman movie in a Batman movie and do it all in one.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: I feel like it's like the early Marvel stuff. Early being like the daredevil yeah. You know, where they were like, oh. Like we talked about, we may not give another shot at this, so let's just ram it full. Like, stuff it all in the Nick Fury special, they're like, let's just stuff as much into. As possible. This was very simple. It was swamp thing.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Yes. And it was like. It was a creature appreciate creature feature. It was a creature feature that could have been episode X Files. It could have been anything like this. It just wasn't movie. It came out in what, February of 82, which is like a couple years before I was born. But you were.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: I wasn't. I was born in June 82, so.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Yes, there you go. As a two and a half million dollar budget, which, you know, and actually.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: West a lot for back then, to a degree, like, I was sort of surprised, but I suppose. And, like, looking at it, it doesn't look like they spent two and a half million dollars on this, but looking back at it and how much, like, that suit did not age well, but the amount of effort that had to have gone into making that thing. Yeah, like, yeah, all right. I get it. I can only imagine the amount of reshots and redos because you got this.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Suit and all this stuff, and then he's got to be wet constantly, always going through the swamp, and he's out here and like, yeah, okay. Like, I get it.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: Well, two and a half million dollars now I feel like it's just like the base to make a movie. It's like. It just. Yeah, now, cameras, shooting insurance, actors, all that stuff. It's like two and a half million dollars.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: It's pretty much where you're at. And so, I mean, everything in that movie, so pretty much everything across the board in that movie looked like a camping 1980s horror film. The one downside of, I think, at all, that was swamp things costume in the side of. Maybe if they would have done it more at night like we did. We watch the man thing. A lot of that stuff happened at night.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: So they were able to hide a lot of that in the darkness. The other thing, the biggest complaint I had wasn't even the suit. The suit was completely dry, dreaming. Like, if you looked at the suit, it was just like a vinyl suit. And whereas if they added some, like, goop to it or some liquid or some sort of something to make it be like he was just in the water and he just got out of the swamp.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: I feel like some more. Like it had some moss, but, like, more size more stuff hanging off. It looks like a guy wearing a rubber suit. That's what it looks like.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: You squid your eyes. He's green suit man hanging off.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, swamp thing is big, menacing. You know what I mean? Basically, this had a tall guy in a rubber suit. All right. Yeah, close enough.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Who knows? Maybe that was on purpose. Like, we're looking at this back, thinking back on it. Maybe it was like, we're gonna make this super freaking campy, dude. We're just gonna do it and we're gonna fuck with it and so on and so forth. But, I mean, I will say no.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Matter what, and we're going to jump way ahead, but no matter what, the swamp thing looks way better than the arcane when he transforms and he.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Yes. Wow.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: But, but is this. If we, if you, if we take this as a DC film compared to all other DC films or comic book movie compared to all of the comic book movies, and you look at it, you're like, oh, my God, this is crazy. If you take it in, the fun fact that you're going to throw this movie on in a horror. You're going to do your own horror week at home and you throw this on and you're like, this is going a freaking campy movie that features a character that I know because Swamp thing.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Is a conference can be funny, entertaining.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Then you. Yeah, but, but it basically is the origin story in a sense of. Of Swamp thing. It doesn't show him becoming Swamp thing as much as you think that you'd see, like, actually physically, like, yeah. Morphing into swamp thing. Like, you just is swamp thing in a sense.
But it's also about the people around him.
It's about, I don't know, I just, to me, was like the beginning of it felt like a creepy horror movie. Slow, ominous movies, trees in the swamp.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah, lots of that. Like, looking out into the swamp and sounds and like the.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: What you have to do because 1982 was like law that you had to show all the credits ahead of time and you couldn't do anything else but the credits, so they had to, like, show like, just like ominous swamp area, helicopter flying overdem.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: And so I think that. I think it was great when you were, you put this movie on, you're like, oh, this is a cool horror movie. Again, it's that. I think that's why it just was so not good to me, but, like, so much better than it could have been is that it was just played like a horror movie to me. It just played like a straight ahead horror.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: But I mean, I'll tell you what, this is way better than the 1990 Captain America if you want to go superhero movie. And like, as far as, like, your, your goofy monster horror movies, this is a yemenite goofy monster horror movie.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: It is. But it features a DC character. And I think that to me, and Swamp thing is a very, you know, swamp thing, people always compare it as a Marvel fan here, compare swamp thing, man thing, right. The, always the never ending Superman, you know. You know, Superman, I guess, is more like, what was it, century on or century. Yeah, but like, you know, Batman, Moon Knight, you have these, like, each of the big two had these characters that people were like, well, they're just the rip off of that other person and so on and so forth. And you have, this is swamp thing, and man thing forever will have this whole, like, man thing is Marvel's thing, and swamp thing is. Is DC's thing.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Even though it's funny, because I feel like Swamp thing is considerably better known, and maybe some of the reason, like, it's just swamp thing is much better known than, like you say band thing to the average person. Like, what you say swamp thing, they're like, oh, I sort of know what you're talking about.
They could at least they have a vision. It pops in their head what swamp thing looks like.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: It's because I think also DC was like, we're actually going to put some effort behind this. I think man thing. It's like you had the man thing movie we watched. If you want to go back and listen to that episode, we watched man thing on here. But there's no man thing video game. There's no man thing in other things. There's no man tv show.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Boy, to a degree. I mean, especially if you look at time in comparison, I think this movie was better than that man thing movie.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I think so.
But DC was like, we're gonna actually put effort behind this thing, where Marvel's like, we're gonna have this character to kind of compat.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: They almost buried it after they were like, oh, this was not what we thought it was gonna be.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And so I think that having that be the fact that they actually put some money and effort into having Wes Craven write, direct a film based on a character that was created by what Lynn Wein and Bernie Wrightson created, man thing. I think it's great. And then you added what one other character? Arcane was the only other character that I remember in this movie that's actually an actual character. Everybody else is just peripheral, kind of made up, could be anybody that's amazing. I think that's a cool, like I said, that's a way to just be like, I wish they would do that more.
I wish I could see these low budget. But just, like, these simple movies or shows that are just based around a random character that we're major.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Does that mean your major Marvel or DC characters, your big guys use some of these more off the wall side characters and make something of them.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Make a horror movie that has, you know, a character in it. It's kind of like, was it the Halloween special, the werewolf by night Halloween special?
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: In that sense, where it's just a straight ahead horror that features a couple horror characters from. From the universe. You can make a comedy, and it just has Howard the duck in it. I think, to me, would be a fun thing. And I don't think you need to create this whole world building. I don't think you need to create this whole, you know, $1 billion movie. I think if you make a movie for 30 million and make 60, maybe.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: We need to dumb it down a little. Yeah, make it a little more simple.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: And so that that's where I think that this succeeds.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Don't know that I want to see a guy in a rubber suit this day and age.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: No, but also, you know what's funny about it is if they made it on purpose like that, I would watch it and be like, oh, this is.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Pretty funny because they're making fun of themselves three today. Like, you'd sort of be like, all right, bring out the crappy rubber suit and let's go.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: But you mentioned. We mentioned the 2019 show off the top here, and I think that that is proof that that's the way the character should look. If you look at it. I haven't seen the show. Like, I would actually go probably on my plans to watch it now that we're talking about this.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: And so, yeah, I sort of feel the same way. Like, man, I really gotta check this out now.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Book club. We read the swamp thing. Alan Moore.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: I enjoyed the swamp thing. We read it, too. I was sort of sad that it didn't have the same, like, love interest character. The abbey. Right. Like, so I was sort of, like, disappointed with that side of it. But overall, like, I mean, it's fun. It still follows some of the comic history. Like, the guy's trying to create the formula, and then he gets turned into the monster. And, you know, it was. It was enjoyable for a comic side, and it was, like you said, fun for a stupid horror movie.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: And his first was it first appearance in the movie when as swamp thing, he's on the road, like, stopping the car. Yeah. Which I thought was kind of interesting that someone didn't stumble upon him in the water, like, in the swamp. It was like, oh, we can't get this thing. It's probably because they couldn't get the thing wet. That's probably what it was. That suit couldn't get wet. That's why there was no wetness.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Maybe that's why when he did the water, it was, like, at a distance, like, it's always kind of away.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: It's literally just someone wearing a green suit. Not the actual suit that you see.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, it's just sort of, like, backed off. Like, let's say, let's not do that close up.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: See.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Then maybe they had multiple. It'd be interesting to know, like, a little bit of the filming of this.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Thing, but it'd be like Aquaman's, like, first battle with someone being, like, in the desert or something like that. To me, like, it was like, okay, this guy lives in a swamp, but your first thing is gonna see him. He's gonna be stopping a car on the road instead of in this swamp, which is so just out in the middle of. Yeah.
And I also felt like from here up, the suit wasn't so bad because of the fact that you don't usually see a lot of stuff hanging off his face sometimes. I mean, a couple of weeds just glued onto his face would have. Would have done drastically different. It's really the lower down when he moves, you see the wrinkles.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I said to, I said to Elizabeth, I'm like, I wonder, like, this probably is another one of those movies that doesn't, like, age well, with the better graphics like this on VHS, probably looked better than it does now.
Here we go. Wow, that suit looks bad. Like, in VHS form, when this originally came out, it probably looks a little better. You know, it's the same thing that I think, like, the last needs a little fuzziness. This needs a little bad shading and, like, all of that.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: Yes. That's why I said the darkness would have helped. Most of the stuff happen at night.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: The majority of it's during the day. This movie is, like, for being a horror movie, there's, like, a lot of night stuff going on.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: I think it's less expensive to film during a day because of lighting and. Yeah, I, uh. But, yeah, I think that, like I always say, the last season of Power Rangers, the original tv show from, from the US, had such bad. Like, they just, like, threw people, like, we don't give a shit. Just, just get on that. Get out there on the stage because you just see, like, zippers and, like, right.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Doesn't matter. We're not here for quality folks.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: No, they see the filling. Like, like, filling coming out of someone's like, suit.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Like the old Godzilla movies.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, stuff would come out and they're like, I don't give a shit. Just throw it out there. Like, part of that is like that.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: It's like, really hokey. Like, we didn't even try.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: I just remember, like, seeing, seeing, like, the back of someone's, like, not like a, like a Power Rangers suit being unzipped because obviously it goes on and off, but, like a monster having, like, a zipper, like an actual zipper and then, like, like a filling that you'd see on your couch cushion, like, coming out of the back of it. And I was just like, okay, this is shit. Like, this is. And so, like, that's part of what I felt like when you see him moving around the suit, it was kind of like, and then when you get to the fact that you talk about the arcane becoming the wolf monster, you have that. The same thing where it's like he looks like he's wearing a, went to the store and bought a mask to wear.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Yes. What it is exactly what it looks like because there's no, the feature. Facial features of it never change.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: We didn't, we didn't spend anything on that. Like, it's just this weird werewolf mask, like, leftover from another prop. They got used what it looked like. So when he starts start shedding and his skin's turning this weird color, I thought we were gonna get this, like, oh, he's dead inside and that's the whole thing. And he was gonna be this, like, zombie nasty, you know, something like that. So then he, like, is screaming and it goes to another scene. He comes back and he's peeling away the layers, and all of a sudden he's just like, wolf pig man looking thing.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: And I'm like, oh, God, really? Like, this is where we went. I mean, I guess I get you got to have the big monster battle, right? Like.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: I said, he went to spirit Halloween. Wes Craven saved some money there.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: I don't think that looked good on VHS. I'm guessing that looked bad even then. Like, I would have to think that's.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: The transformation wasn't, like, the actual transformation itself wasn't horrendous. Back to, like, how cool it was to see, like, raiders of the Lost Ark and seeing, like, people's faces melt off and doing things in reverse and things like that. And that's kind of stuff. It's like, that's just how they did special effects back then. And so, like, 1982, just seeing that him transform from, you know, the funny thing is, the woman comes in to give him the bottle of water. Obviously not a bottle of water, but whatever it was.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Brandy. Yeah.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: And she goes and she screams and she runs off. And I'm like, but then you see his hands, and there's, like, literally nothing wrong with him at that moment.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And then it starts to transform half his face during that. So I kept waiting for it to come over, and the other fast is all like, this goes over, and he's just sitting there, and I'm like, what the hell is she so scared of?
[00:26:12] Speaker A: You couldn't have at least had, like, hair on his hands or something happened to his hands when she handed the brandy, it was nothing. It was his hands. And also his hands started growing the. And all that. Like I said, that was cool. That was classic horror transformation. Monster horror. Yeah.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Like, great special effects in London looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: It's just the end result did not match. Like, the end result was like that. They're like, okay, we're gonna have this creature feature battle at the end. Da da da. And then it's like, the producer comes over and goes, you have $1,000 to do this? And he's like, oh, cool. So I'm gonna go to spirit Halloween and get a wolf mask. Wait, that was that.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: We may have spent too much of the budget before we got to this point. Crap.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Yeah, because that's what it looks like. It looks like.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Got something in their closet they don't need.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Cuz. Cuz swamp things costume was bad, but not nearly as bad as that, which is good.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: I mean, because we gotta. We got to see a lot of swamp thing.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: And I agree. I think. I think the worst looking swamp thing is him moving the. It looks like a.
I don't know, almost like a dive suit or something. Like, you know, that's what it looks like. It's like this, like, rubbery and wrinkles, but, boy, the. The arcane was not.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: No.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I really thought I, you know, the skin looked like it was melting. I'm like, here we go. Here we go. We're gonna get this creepy tale of the crypt keeper zombie, you know, and it would have made, like, the whole idea that it enhances what you are the formula supposed to do. So I'm like, oh, all right. He's always like, this horrible person. He's dead inside.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: No, which.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: That was like the. I mean, the guy. The guy that he first, like, drugs.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: And him, like, shrinking and turning into a weird werewolf. Munchkin looking. Yeah, that was super wes craven horror looking. Like. It was.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Screamed goofy eighties horror.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: He looked like Dobby from friggin Harry Potter.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Except Dobby had a real bad night.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: He's like, jumps on the table.
What?
[00:28:09] Speaker A: I also thought he's like, oh, you're the. You're the. You know, it's because you did all the hard work and you've been working so hard, so you get to try it first. Not. I don't know what the. This is gonna do to me.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: So you should try actual side of, like. Yeah, I'm not gonna.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: You don't know you're taking.
I hit it, and you don't know you're taking this either. This is not even a. Your choice. Like, what is this?
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Because, like, the stuff always glowing. You know what I mean? They show it, like, repetitively. This is. Is glowing green. They hit him with glass, and he's just like, oh, my drink glows. Cool.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Well, this is a cool effect.
Well, it's funny, is thinking back on it, Paul, and anything you've ever seen with some sort of potion like that. So if you look back on the serum, super soldier serum for Captain America, you look back on Hulk and, you know, gamma rays and things like that, has it ever turned out well for the other person taking it, that's not, like, never.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: So, like, never works, right.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: It's twisted and it's always, it always. The number one story is situates. Yes. Accentuates your. Your being. So a horrible person is going to be a more horrific person. And so, like, you see it all the time in movies and in comics and in books. It's like the person who takes it after the person that you're jealous of and want.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Hero guy.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It never works, so please stop taking it. People.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess they don't learn well, you know what I mean? They don't. Well, they don't.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: Criminals, they're not that smart there.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah. They're not that brightest. Um, so one thing that got me with the whole swamp thing side that I was saying to Liz, it was hard. Was like, he's. You don't really get a lot of swamp thing powers. He's just sort of chucking dudes and always landing in water throws them. Like, that's all you ever get. Until he, like, instilled super strength. But you get a little bit more of the horror side when he grabs the guy and just crushes his head. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, all right, now, now we're getting this. Like, because I sort of wanted. Gets a little more of this horse, even if he, like, it's supposed to be a horror movie. Grab the guy and, like, throw him through the boat propeller or something. I don't know, give me something. But instead he's just chucking guys. They're in the water. Like, yeah, this felt a little bit howard the duck of, like, what age audience were we trying to get? Yeah, because there's sides of this movie that are blatantly r rated or whatever, but then there's other sides of it that are, like, sort of campy, hokey, like, yeah, PG superhero.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: And I don't know. I mean, back then, maybe.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Maybe they said something like, swamp thing can't. Well, they obviously can kill people because he.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Crushes that dude's skull.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: I don't know. Obviously I mentioned that I had saw this for the first time last year, and I forgot that I had seen it. It wasn't until I started watching again. I'm like, wait, this seems familiar. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I did watch it last year, and you hadn't seen it yet. So obviously neither one of us have seen Return of the Swamp thing, which is the movie that came out following this, which had a very similar budget, was like a $3 million budget. It actually went to theaters. It had like $6 million in the theater, which is obviously pretty good for. You're making money on it. At least it has a similar rating online, like IMDb.
Is there more of that in that? I guess is my question is, like, maybe there's more of that in the next. In the next film.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: It's also like, question we have is like, would you continue this? So now the question is, will you watch the sequel?
[00:31:13] Speaker A: I might watch the sequel, but I also probably fast forward all the way. Like you mentioned, I mentioned I'm probably watching the 2019, you know, and here's my question. Is the 2019 series, I'm guessing it's an origin story. So we're going to see this starting from the beginning. This is not just a thing.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: I wonder if the comics closer. I'm interested in seeing the 2019 one.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: That's one thing I would be willing to watch because I think I don't have a problem. You know me, I'd rather actually watch and read and do things based on Swamp thing than Superman or Batman or anything like that because there's continuity, but there's also, like, it's a little bit less, you don't see them interact with any other people, really. Swamp thing isn't the swamp. It's not like swamp thing is joining the, you know, the DC's.
Yeah, like, he's not joining. It's the same thing with man things never going to be part of the Avengers. This is just like the way things are. You might see swamp thing, you know, teaming up with. With, you know, Aquaman or something. Right. Aquaman and any other sea creature or water creature teaming up. But yeah, no, I don't think that's ever going to happen. So I'd be more willing to watch a lot of things around this. I just don't know. I mean, the return of the swamp thing.
I mean, here's my question. I asked is the same act. I know the guy who plays arcane is in it and it's the same actor.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Oh, comes back in the sequel.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. His name's Lewis Jordan. Jordan.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: I think we probably should have left him dead as the pig wolf man in the swamp.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Yeah. He returns. Heather Locklear is in it. So maybe that's why I would watch it comes back as maybe his daughter. Her name is Abby Arcane, so I would think that he's okay.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: All right, well, so they had, it's funny. They had Abby Arcane in the cartoon series I saw okay. Listed, and I was like, oh, so this must be like the daughter of.
Yeah, hurricane must be interesting.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Susan Sarah Douglas is in it. Like the same guy, I think plays the swamp thing as arc. You know, I was trying to think. It's like, does the woman come back? Because, like, she is. What's her name?
[00:33:13] Speaker B: Cable.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Cable does not come back in the sequel. Which would be the reason why I would think that he would return is to, you know, I'm guessing some new.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Trouble comes up and he's.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'm guessing because in the COVID of this return of the swamp thing, it's a picture of him holding.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Her.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Heather Locklear.
It's just kind of funny. The poster, if you ever get a chance to look it up, it looks like the Hulk is holding her. Yeah, the face is like, no, look. The face looks like the Hulk.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Space.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: It's really.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was directed by a different person, too, and written by a different person. So, you know, maybe, I mean, I would. Why not, right? I mean, it's not like it's gonna.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Take, maybe not dedicate your, your evening to it, but if you're doing something, you can throw it on in the background and whatever, hour and 28 minutes.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: It's like not a hard read, you know, or a hard thing to watch.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: I mean, I'd rather probably invest time into that than 72 episodes of the tv show and then ten episodes again, it's a ten episode run on the.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: So the original tv show went 72 episodes.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah. 1990 to 1993.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Wow.
I, and the funny thing is, I.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: Also feel like, what are you, I.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Really remember the movie.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: I feel like they succeeded. Everything they needed to tell in this story.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: You know, what else is there?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: I just read a book and I'm not gonna put it out in here right now, but like, I just read a comic that I read and I was like, you know what this, this feels like, Paul? It feels like it should be in a horror anthology. Like, the story feels like it was so rushed in the first issue that it just felt like they tried to set the tone, set the story of the plot and so on and so forth. By the end, they were trying to like that they next issue, they needed to move further on the story and they just rushed it. It was like, it almost felt like someone was trying to sell the entire story in one issue. And I felt like that could have been in your anthology instead of being in a series.
Everything needs to be told in this. The return of the Swamp thing was almost like, oh, people liked it a lot. I had a pretty good, pretty good rating, but let's do it again.
72 episodes. I'm like, what the hell is going to go on?
[00:35:09] Speaker B: You can't do like, I guess some of the swamp thing is like, he's in the swamp, right? So like, he's protecting being in. So you could get into every week.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: You turning in every week. Just watch it protect the swamp.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: It's not like he's going to a different swamp, man. This just ain't working here. Let's just go to Louisiana.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Swamp thing. Los Angeles.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Michael does the NCIS thing at the swamp thing, goes to Hawaii.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: He's popping up.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Well, maybe he's the thing. Maybe he's the thing in the movie. The thing. He meets a horror. He's got. He was in the snow creature. Maybe it would have been cool if.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: They showed some of like in the, because in the comic, he is like the essence of the swamp or whatever. Like that physical being is not necessarily him. Like it would have been sort of cool to see him fade into the, like, yeah. But come back out somewhere else.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Like, well, that you. That in 1982, that would have been a very difficult thing for them to do. But, yes.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: I don't walk into the water and then have reappear.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
Maybe it would look worse. I don't know.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: I want. I guess somebody can email us or comment on this post or this video or ever just say to. If they've watched the set two episodes, that if it's worth watching, because I don't, like I said, it just seems like a long.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: And is it worth watching? Not because you watched it as a kid and you're like, oh, it's the greatest thing I've ever seen. You know what I mean? Like, is it actually good? Yeah. Because, I mean, it is. I mean, during the. During that era, like, we started having, like, a lot of understanding of protecting our environment and eco awareness and stuff. So I can see this as being a giant series of here come bad guys to the swamp to do something kind of like a man thing. Here's the oil company. And then here he is stopping them just week after week.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Do you know that the.
So the animated swamp thing is not. The tv show actually wasn't even one of the first things that was on tv? Alec Holland incarnation of Swamp thing appears on an anti littering public service announcement aired on behalf of Greenpeace in 1989.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: Oh, shit.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: That's amazing. Nowadays, there's no way that anybody would ever associate with themselves with something else like that, hoping that it didn't, you know, someone didn't boycott them because. Yeah.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: I was trying to think of how long the episodes were. 30 minutes episodes. Okay. So there's. I mean, nowadays, I'm guessing that DC 19, 2019 one is their hour long episode. So that's really 20 episodes. And so this is really 36 episodes, if you think about it. So it is less than you would think. But still. I don't know. I don't. You know, half an hour plus the suit's got to be worse, right? I guess.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Oh, God. I would assume. I mean, this is the suits. Not great. So maybe it's just kind of the same.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: I'll have to watch at least episode or two. That's it, right?
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Go see what it's about. Yeah. I'm curious enough. You know what's funny is, like, we read something for book club that I never really read, and I liked it enough that I would like to read some more swamp thing. And now we've watched this, and it's not this amazing movie or anything, but it's enough that I'm like, yeah, I want to go watch the 2019 Swamp thing. I want to. Or like, you know, I'll try this old tv series about, I guess I'm developing this, like, this liking of the character. I mean, it's catching on with me the way that I feel. Like a lot of people are like, oh, swamp thing. They come in and like, oh, Swamp thing is great. And I read a lot of DC stuff, but I don't read Swamp thing. And normally when I'm reading DC and Swamp thing comes in, I'm like, oh, man. Yeah, crap, we got swamp thing in this. Well, now I'm leaning more into, like, I kind of want to go read some swamp thing stuff.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: I'm leaning into it too, because guess what? The guy who plays Alec Holland and Swamp thing in the movies also plays him in the tv show. So, like, okay, seriously?
[00:38:34] Speaker B: Kept the same character.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So this is the funny about the early nineties and tv shows. Ready for this?
Season one aired from July 27, 1990 to 1991, 22 episodes. Okay. 22 episode season. That's, that's a regular half an hour episode season. That's about normal. I'm watching West Wing right now. Every season is about 22 episodes. It's just normal. Season, 211 episodes. It aired all in January 3 to March 20 of 1992. Season 3, July 10, 1992 to May 1, 1993. 39 episodes.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:39:06] Speaker A: It was like, all of it. 20, 211, 39. They don't know what the hell they're doing.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Whatever they're, whatever they could get a contract for is what we're making, folks. Yeah, whatever we can get.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: I'm guessing the season three was not nearly as good as season one. I'm just guessing they were just like, doing, like, throwing things out.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: There is the question, like, how much can you do, especially on a weekly syndication of this character, how much can you really do before you're like, well, we kind of ran out of stuff. I mean, you can get into more supernatural stuff, I guess, and, yeah, get into all of that.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: And, like, I was trying to see, and I don't see any of, you.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Know, like, the man thing, the whole hokey dark magic character you can throw out there.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: I suppose the, I also look to see the titles of the show, episodes that, like, do you remember back in, like, the first run of 1990s or X Men, the early X Men animated show? They're like, they'd have multiple times where it was like, nights of the Sentinels, part one and part two, that there really was two different episodes, but it was really an hour long episode into two different weeks, and I thought that this. Maybe this would be it. It's not. They're all individual episodes.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: They may play into each other movie. Yeah.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: But, yeah, it's kind of funny. I don't know. You're right, though. I. But again, to me, the thing about Swamp thing, to me, it would be the same thing. I think, in the opposite side, if you're a DC fan, you want to be something about Marvel is that it doesn't connect so much to the greater universe.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: It seems like it should be a.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Lot more dependent, and if it does, that's cool. But, like, I feel like this gives me the ability. Read a one off series and watch a one off movie.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Swamp thing, we read for book club, had this, like, one. What was it? Like, maybe one page of panels of, like, showing the Justice League being like, oh, there isn't really much we can do down there or something. And then that was it. Like, right back to one thing.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Just so you knew it was in the same universe, I guess.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Or so you could write off the Justice League. So that way you weren't like. Because I feel like that's a hard part in some of the supero stuff. You're always like, man, if this is so bad, why don't other people come help?
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: So it was a, you know, and that I always have this issue with this giant world ending event. We're only following one character. Where's everybody else? So instead, be able to say, hey, they were all off doing other stuff, and then we're like, oh, God, look what's happening. And I don't think any of us can help, so.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: And I think it's one of the things we have to now, at this point, so far into these universes and the movies and tv and all that stuff, we have to suspend belief on some things and be like, we know why they can't put everything in everything. They can't do it. It's the way that we're. Why characters never die? Why do characters come back to life?
[00:41:27] Speaker B: So this was my biggest problem as we go off into the other universe, my biggest problem with the Eternals movie.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I know you have the Eternals.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: In there, and you're like, all of this stuff has happened that we've watched. Aliens showed up and tried to destroy New York, and Thanos takes out half the population, and the whole time, the eternals are like, it's not really our problem?
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Well, we just have this problem with tv and movies. We don't have this problem as much with comics. Like we blood hunt happens and vampires are taking over the New York City and stuff like that. And then next series are like, oh, cool, X Men are having Krakoa. It's just like, we don't, we just suspend belief that these things are all in the same universe too. Like the world, you know, shitty. This world, Gotham actually really is compared to what?
[00:42:06] Speaker B: God, no one's shitty in the first place.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: It's shitty in the first place. But if you take it real, if you, if you take it seriously, the place is a shithole. Like, you kidding me right now?
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Every time you turn around, if you don't have the, this, this insane guy as a clown gassing half the place, you got another guy freezing it, and you got this clay monster wandering around and you got like, all this other crap. Like, you'd just be like, you know what? I know I've got $3 to my name, but I'm going to go ahead and move the hell out of Gotham. Yeah, yeah, like, I don't care at this point. Let's go, like, grab. We're gone.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: I want to see that one off series in DC where Batman's just like, screw this, man. I can't do this anymore. I've given you everything. I've almost died multiple times. I love Gotham so much, and I want to save you so much, but you don't want to help me? I'm out.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Peace.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: I'm going to the metropolis. I'm done, I'm done. I'm going to go.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: Catches the bad guys. It's always the, like, somewhere along the line, the government inside of Gotham is like, oh, crap, he got out again. Where'd he go? Yeah, Batman will catch him again. He's just like, fine. There's always that one guy that's like, oh, damn, I left that door unlocked.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: There you go. Just, Bruce Wayne and Batman just retires of Smallville, and they just. He just lives in Smallville on a farm. He takes over Superman's farm and just lives there and doesn't worry about it. Just, you know, says, you know, screw you to Gotham City, somebody else's problem. It's the same thing in a Marvel universe, though. Why. Why would anybody ever want to live in New York City?
[00:43:30] Speaker B: They're always, always an issue. Yeah, there's always something. You got the green Goblin flying by. Yep. All this stuff Spider man's running around.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: That's why I was actually upset with the fact that Marvel canceled the damage control idea they had for a tv show because I think an office style, like, mockumentary like thing would have been fantastic because of themselves and saying, like, they could have an entire episode on someone trying to sell homeowners insurance in New York City and, like, been like, like, the rates would be astronomical.
Obviously, Thor is going to destroy your house at some point.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Do you want to sign on for Hulk damage? Hulk damage is extra. Yes, I know it doesn't seem likely. However, if you look at the block down the street, do you cover all.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Hulks or only green hulks? No. Red Hulks? No, she hugs.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Just, that's the only hulk, actually. It's your building. If he throws a car at it.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And you have on us, you have, like, Bruce Banner, like, drive his car, accidentally crash into the building. Like, no, no, no. He was Bruce Banner. That wasn't the Hulk.
See, that would have been amazing. I think that would have been funny. I think a lot of people would have been funny and they just, some reason they canceled it. But I want to see the tv show where Batman just decides that he's done, he wants to go live, and you just see him on the farm.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: You know, it'd be funny if, because they always have this, like, it's like, what came first, the chicken or the egg? If Batman quit, would Gotham stop being so bad? Would all the criminal, these psycho criminals, just be like, huh? Well, that would be the smart thing to blow up half the city today. But there's no one to stop me. And I just kind of lost interest.
[00:44:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Like, Batman quits and all of a sudden the sun comes out and Gotham.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Like, and then, and then he has to return to Gotham because now they're all attacking Smallville because they want to attack him.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. They're like, where'd he go? Let's go find him.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: So I just think that's why I think this is a cool thing. It's a one off thing. That standalone that doesn't connect to anything that, that he just wants to protect the swamps, he wants to protect this thing. And here's that thing. He's protecting something, not people, really. He's protecting a thing.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: He's protecting nature and nature, whereas, like.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Gotham, Batman's protecting Gotham and the people in it, in the city, whereas, like, and then, you know, New York City with, with marvel, they're always protecting the people in New York City that they don't really don't care about the damage to the property. It's, yeah, it's as long as the people are survived. This is like he wants the creatures, the, the swamp, the, the algae, the, the vegetation. He wants all of that to be protected, that someone needs to think for the trees, like Lorax. He needs to think for the, for the trees.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Captain Planet.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, there you go. Captain Planet, dark hero.
Okay, so it's a straight ahead horror movie that has DC elements in it that has some pretty cool, I mean, some accuracy. There's definitely some editing. That's pretty bad. When she fires a gun, I don't know if you noticed that she fires a gun behind the barrel and she goes bang. And it goes bang. And you see this flash and you see her shift to the left a little bit and it cuts through. Like, it's like they shot something, then spliced the two together at the bang.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: And they're like, oh, they exploded.
Yeah.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: It was like, so obvious too. It was like, it's not even like they put her back in the same marker. They moved her over. So it was like, bang, she's like, over here.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: That's how bad it exploded. Well, causing no harm to her.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: The, they had, so it's a straight ahead horror movie with a DC elements in it. But they did have the horror requirement, which is there was boobs. So they did have that. That was the requirement for a horror movie, that you have some killing on screen. You need to have nudity. Um, but what the hell is with this creepiness of just glaring at her from a distance and watching her bathe?
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: You notice that she's like, he's like, standing in the trees and he's like, watching her and she's like, in the water right up to here and her boobs are out. And she's just, he's just like, yep. Uh huh. And then, you know.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And she's just fine with it. Of like, oh, well, I'm just gonna bathe right here where you can watch.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: In part of me has a Howard the duck woman in that thing where.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: That was my thing. And it didn't, like, realistically, it had no necessary part of being in the movie.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: No, it didn't. Again, it had to be because Wes Craven needed to follow, fulfill his agreement as a horror director and writer. Did he need to put some sort of nudity in it? And there you go. He checked the box off, and that.
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Was the only thing because, like, and.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: It was barely there. Like, I'm not saying this as a, as a, oh, I wish there was more. I'm saying that like, if you didn't watch it quickly, if you're just not paying attention fully, you would have missed it. It's really, like, from a distance, but it was there. And, but that wasn't even the part that I latched onto. The part was the fact that he was, like, holding onto a tree, like, looking at the person bathing, and the.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Fact that he's a creature being a creeper.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: Here's my same thing with, like, does, does he have sexual feelings as a swamp thing? Like, I can't understand. Why would she be.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: That's the only thing I could write off was the idea that, like, it's showing that he, like, is trapped within what he is now.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Like, his lack of humanity or whatever.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I can't reach her. She's off in the distance. I'm trapped in this being. I can't. I want to be, you know, I don't know.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Yeah, but it is completely like, okay, so you, you immediately, like, put this at an r rating, but then swamp things randomly throwing people into the water.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: There was just no purpose for it. Like, if that's, if that's the case, we're making this horror movie and we've decided we've gone for the r rating. Let's have a brutally kill some guys. Let's get, like, choking the guy to death with his, like, super strength.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: And, like, we're using the swamp to do it, too. That's the other thing I love. If he's one with a swamp, it would be nice to see him just, like, stand there and have, like, like, roots come out of the swamp and, like, grab onto people and pull people down and things like that. Like those kind of things drag them.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: Under the water and all this stuff. And it's basically isn't. It's like he doesn't really have any powers besides being, like, invulnerable.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: And he's just throwing guys around and they always land in the water. Like, they always come back. Like, he only kills one dude until he kills, like, arcane the pig man.
[00:49:15] Speaker A: God. Yeah.
So, so it was, to me, again, there's, like, these saving, redeeming qualities to it being like, if you go into it and be like, this is a horror movie straight ahead. Horror camping, horror movie from the 1980s. You cannot take things too seriously because obviously you have a limitation of special effects budgets, all that stuff. And practical effects is what they had. Could they have changed some things? Like, honestly, thinking back on it, there were definitely some fixes that were available to them. 1982, that they didn't do, again, some sort of, like, if some things were hanging off of him, it would have made him. Give him some depth. There was no, give him some.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Give him some death. Make it look more like a swamp and less like a guy in a rubber suit.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. But otherwise, I said, you know, there's an editing things, but for two and a half million dollars, you know, story was. It moved along. You understood the story a little bit. Like you on the plot was there. It made sense and, you know, yeah.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: It overall had a purpose of the.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: Villain there wanted the serum, da da da. Like all of that all made sense. It had comic book connections and so on and so forth. So overall, for a movie made in 1982 about a DC character with the limited, again, that's why they never really made movies about comic book characters. This is very hard to do.
[00:50:25] Speaker B: Well, yeah, super hard. You're trying to have these special effects show up and everything. I mean, you saw like almost ten years later the Captain America special effects were awful. They were worse than this realistically.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: And so overall, I say, you know what? I gave it two and a half stars. I said, you know what? I went from two, maybe two and a half to think that it's, it's, if I put it in the time being, it's in and all that stuff. That's not, it wasn't horrendous. It was, there was definitely some glaring mistakes. But two and a half stars, I.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Think I'm right in the two and a half, even three. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a great movie. But I could understand why friends of mine that have this, like, attachment to this movie, I now understand more.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: That, like, they saw this and then they started reading swamp thing comics and like, I sort of get it more.
This isn't, it's not a great movie and it did not age well. But, yeah, I think it's, it's. Two and a half is fair. I'd even push to a three, maybe.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: It's not like you said, the, the biggest thing is it had a plot and purpose.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:51:24] Speaker B: A little weird. It may have been a little off. Like the weird, you never really get this whole scientific government thing.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: No, like all that.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: Or in the, like the, the army, arcane army guys are super hokey and yes, numb. Like they're dumb as a box of rocks.
[00:51:42] Speaker A: But if you go into it with that, if you're not going into it with award winning, overall.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: But overall, you win that we all went into watching the end game in Avengers with them saying they're trying to create this like epic masterpiece plus potentially win awards and things like that. Whereas I don't think they went and makes 1982 Swamp thing to be like, oh, it's win awards. They went into a make a movie. It was like, you know, I mean, so like if you look at it that way, it definitely is that middle of the ground movie for 1982. And to be honest, DC, outside of a few Batman films that have been really good, have really struggled at the box office and struggled making movies.
[00:52:14] Speaker B: So I think, I think they've got.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Released next year and it would have been better than a lot of movies.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I think they've got, looking back at the old eighties stuff and as it progressed into like 89, Batmandhead was all much better than what we've seen in the last.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: They have things at their fingertips now and they don't use them correctly. So at least, at least they don't even have a chance. I don't know.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: Those are better back then than they do now.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: The CGI we have nowadays doesn't exist back then and they still did it better than some of the people. So I think there's, there's that thing and I will say Rotten tomatoes, the critics gave it a 60% and the popcorn meter they call it now is a 40%. So it's right around the same place that 50%.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: And that was, I noticed that too. And I'm like, yeah, that's, it's about right.
[00:52:54] Speaker A: IMDb is a 5.3. So it's like that middle of the ground. It's not a bad movie. It's not a good movie. It's a movie that's worth watching. And again, maybe it's leading us to watch this return of the swamp thing and maybe watch the couple episodes of the old tv show and watch the new tv show. And so, you know, I think that's what is available on dvd regularly. You can get this movie. This is not a like hard to find movie. No, you can stream it on certain places and things. So it's definitely available to watch. And I would recommend watching it because it's fun. And this is the kind of time you should watch it around horror.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: Yeah, watching, watch it during your horror week. Watching. If you, if you're one of those like, oh, I've got to watch a horror movie every day to October, Nath or this one in the list.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: Are you guys gonna watch a little bit more horror movies this year? Are you I know you guys don't usually, but I know you talked about disgusting.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: It's still sort of my plan. Okay, so I think we're gonna try to go in for some more. You know, I'd mentioned a while ago we watched american psycho that I'd never seen, and that was actually her pick. She's just like, gonna watch this. I'm like, okay, sure. So, you know, let's go on for some of these. The cult classic horror movies that I've never watched.
[00:53:55] Speaker A: Yes.
Or fun for October, to me, scream Halloween. Those ones, I've never seen Halloween.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: I haven't seen Friday the 13th. Yeah, I hear nightmare on Elm streets. Kind of more horror than west gray. So. Yeah, so I'm more thinking, I would rather watch your, your Halloween, your Friday, especially the first ones before the 13th.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: One is Friday the 13th. It doesn't really become Friday the 13th until the second movie because the first one really doesn't actually include Jason.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: And so you can watch the first watch of the psych second when, like, what? Psycho? Yeah, like, give that around. Maybe some of the older, like some of the Stephen King property I haven't watched.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: So I honestly, I watched last year, I watched Frankenstein, which was pretty good. Honestly, some of those classic movies, you're like, oh, I'm never gonna watch. And those are the ones you go into. Like, this is filmed in 1937. I could, I could, I could figure.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Know what you're gonna get. Yeah.
[00:54:50] Speaker A: Yes. So, yeah, it'd be fun. It's a horror movie. So one of those things that I've grown onto, but I definitely am in the, I watch a bunch of them, but I do think, like, Halloween is worth watching always for everybody. I think how the first Halloween movie is one of those iconic classic movies, watching and crossing off the list and just being like, okay, I've seen it at nightmare on Elm street. You know, same thing. I think that, again, how you can't watch really Friday the first two unless you watch one.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: So you can have one and two. Yeah.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: Scream, to me, has always been one of those movies that, you know, scream to music.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: I've seen scream a couple. I've watched it at least two, two, three times, and they're not back there to make normally watch the shining every, every October now because I loved it when I saw it and now Liz loves it, so, which kind of led me to, like, maybe give a few more Stephen King properties around and try out some other stuff. And I go watch that cemetery. We got Bangor comic and toy con coming with a big focus on it. Let's watch that.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: It's actually this weekend. It's actually part of horror week is actually this weekend. It's actually bang or comic toy gun. As we were. As it's dropping. It's this weekend and so that'd be pretty cool. I never even thought about that. It's the pet sematary reunion on that weekend. But yeah, yeah, we're more interested in.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: The Ninja Turtle side of it. But hey, like pet Sematary. Maybe I should give that around.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So that was it. So yeah, two, two and a half, three stars. I mean, honestly, two and a half to three. So like 2.75 right around there. Worth saying that this movie is worth it. But yeah, this is another movie review. It's not one of the worst. Not one of the best. Which is. Which is okay with me. I don't have a problem with that. I mean, we didn't. We're going, oh shit. We have to talk about this. I was actually excited to talk about it because there were some things to discuss. And I think these are the kind of things even when we're reading a book club or these movie reviews, like if we have this like middle of the ground thing, it's almost the best conversation. It's not a bunch of shit talk. It's not a bunch of good talk. It's like, yeah, conversation.
[00:56:40] Speaker B: You don't get a whole lot, honestly. When it's really good. No, me tell when it's really good.
[00:56:44] Speaker A: It's really good. Cool. Awesome.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: All right. I liked it. Yeah, me too. All right, well, we're through here, but.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: So yeah, this is horror week at the. At the Capes and Tights podcast. Thingy, thingy, ding. Thingy thingy. Do that thing.
[00:56:55] Speaker B: That thing you do.
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that thing we do. I got a DC comic in front of me.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: Whoa, there it is.
I think that may have gotten autographed at galactic comics.
[00:57:05] Speaker A: I did, actually. Joey Esposito. Yeah.
[00:57:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: So check out galactic comics, galacticcomicsandcollectibles.com.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: You know, we're here doing galactic comic things.
[00:57:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
And we'll be at Bangor Comic and toy con this weekend. If you decide that you do want to show up to this thing in Bangor. You live in the area. Bangor, Maine, that is. We'll be supporting and promoting our Galacticon, which happens this summer over in Brewer, Maine. So you can check that out. We have a booth there up in the concourse.
[00:57:32] Speaker B: We have work to do too. I think we're like. We're doing the comic panel. We're doing a podcast, right? We got stuff to do.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: Stuff to do. So, you know, I have stuff in the mail for postcards and banners and stuff like that. So that'd be cool. I don't know when they're coming in, but I'll be by the shop to show you those things. But, yeah. Thanks, Paul. It's another one in the box.
[00:57:51] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:57:52] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: One done.
[00:57:53] Speaker A: On to the next one.
