The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)

As previously reported, there was much ado about Swamp Thing between the 1982 release of Wes Craven’s film adaptation and its belated 1989 sequel—on the back of that original movie, DC relaunched the comic series, and a year or two into that run, it was given to Alan Moore, John Totleben, Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch, et. al., who reinvented the character through their journeys into “Sophisticated Suspense.” The opening credits for The Return of Swamp Thing features a montage of comics covers from the entire series run, showcasing striking images by Totleben, Bissette, Richard Corben, and character co-creator Bernie Wrightson, among others—playing over that montage is, of course, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou”, indicating that the tone of this movie is probably nothing like those comics. Nor is it anything like Wes Craven’s movie, which was sincere to a fault, while, for better or for worse, this doesn’t have a sincere bone in its swamp debris body.

Spring (2014)

Always on the lookout for monster movies that venture outside the norm, writer-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead’s Spring caught my eye—it even received plaudits from Guillermo del Toro, who referred to it as a “Lovecraftian film.” I personally think you’d have to have a pretty broad definition of “Lovecraftian” for this to fit the label, but I guess I can also see where he’s coming from—this is dealing with things strange and ancient that span across human history, things with a certain inexplicable nature, and things that really blur the line between Science Fiction and Fantasy (which is sort of theme in the movie itself.) Despite what some websites will tell you, though, this is definitely not a horror movie, even with some of the grotesque imagery and violent moments (this is the same sort of dispute with online resource genre tags I got into with Lamb—why must these massive websites be so very wrong all the time!), but a fantastical romantic drama, which is certainly unique, and is totally up del Toro’s alley given his own monster filmography.