Before Craven's Nightmare

SWAMP THING-1982-This adaptation of the DC comics character takes place in “the unexplored reaches of an un-mapped swamp”. Adrienne Barbeau (who was in a segment of George Romero’s CREEPSHOW the same year) is Cable some kind of government liaison assigned to the secret lab of Dr. Alec Holland (Ray Wise) who’s experiments involve recombinant DNA and making plants more aggressive. Unfortunately a thought to be deceased evil genius Arcane (over acting Louis Jordan) is alive and takes over the compound. Holland is accidentally doused with is own rejuvenation formula and goes up in flames. He’s reborn however as a big green galoot (Dick Durock) who’s very strong, impervious to bullets and can bring people back to life! Cable escapes into the swamp and gets help from a young black kid named Jude (Reggie Batts).

While it’s certainly no classic SWAMP THING is ok especially for a comic book adaptation. Most of the SFX are pretty cheesy. The monster Arcane turns into at the end for the final battle is horrible and many of the scenes seem all to deliberately to be spotlighting Barbeau’s breasts but it is cool to see Nicolas Worth and David Hess (as Arcane’s lead henchmen) have decent speaking roles!

Writer/director Wes Craven was still 2 years away from NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and he still had his roots planted in low budget exploitation.

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Worth It!

DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE-1980-In this psycho-slasher horror flick the underrated Nicolas Worth plays Kirk Smith a deranged Vietnam vet/photographer who strangles women then takes pictures of them. He even calls a radio psychiatrist (Flo Gerrish) and talks with a Hispanic accent. Later he later convinces a prostitute to call the station and while she's talking to the doctor he kills her. James Westmoreland and Ben Frank play two wise ass detectives trying to solve the murders. I think they were trying to imitate Starskyand Hutch but they are more like Dumb and Dumber.

Worth (who died in 2007 at age 69) gives a tour de force performance, crying, laughing and talking to himself in a mirror. In a stand-out scene he talks to his "father" about how he beat up a pimp. The rest of the acting (made up mostly of TV actors and actresses) isn't as interesting and the story is quite sick (most of the victims die topless) and drags when Worth's not around but his performance makes it worth seeing. (No pun intended)

This was the only movie made by director Robert Hammer. The worst part is that while Smith is a crazed vicious killer the two cops act like jerks and aren't very likable.

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Below Honor...

FIST OF HONOR-1992-I've noticed that for some reason I watch a shit load of bad movies. I don't understand it! Once when I had nothing to do I watched this thing called FIST OF HONOR starring everyone's favorite nobody Sam Jones, a former Playgirl centerfold who also had the great pleasure of playing Bo Derek's husband in the colossally bad hit 10. He plays Fist Sullivan, an ex-boxer strongman who works for crime boss Harry Guardino who's about to renege on his truce with a rival Don (portrayed by Abe Vigoda, TV's own lovable Fish) who is the nicer of the two thugs. Although he fights for the mob Fist says he doesn't like to hurt people. What about the audience? They're people too you know??? He has a fight with a big muscular black guy but mostly he beats up skinny white ones.

Anyway to make matters worse ex-football star Bubba Smith is a crooked cop! And there are dumb scenes like a football coach being gunned down right in front of his whole team! When Abe's character is killed Fist is framed for the murder (and 5 others). The unique acting talents of Nicolas Worth (from DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE) are put to good use as Don Guardino's right hand man who accidently kills Fist's wife (Joey House) who is also Guardino's mistress. The unappealing Jones gets revenge of course proving it pays to work for the right mob!

FOH was directed by former cinematographer Richard Pepin who with his PM Entertainment partner Joseph Merhi churned out nearly 100 martial arts action movies (many starring Don "The Dragon" Wilson). I think they've stopped though! Screenwriter Charles Kanganis later directed DENNIS THE MENACE STRIKES BACK.......



BEYOND SUSPICION-1994-BS (ha!) is a boring Canadian based action drama that has Jack Scalia (who was on the TV show POINTMAN at the time) as an obnoxious corrupt cop trying to find the murderer of his partner. Police Internal Affairs think he's responsible. Stephanie Kramer (who ten years before was a regular on TV's HUNTER) is a photojournalist who gets in the way but has a photo of the killer. Scalia roughs up muggers, sleeps with Kramer (who uses a body double) and contemplates suicide (but not enough). This stupid movie somehow ties everything together when Scalia kidnaps Kramer's daughter to get the photo because he's being blackmailed by his boss (William Davis from TV's THE X-FILES), who let him kill some gangsters (?) .

The director, Paul Ziller had worked on the HIGHLANDER TV series and also made PLEDGE NIGHT, BLOOD FIST lV: DIE TRYING and BACK IN ACTION (with Billy Blanks and Roddy Piper).

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