Source:
THN Date: 5th June, 2006 Posted by:
Aaron Allen
Last
week I reviewed X-Men: The Last Stand, which broke records of box office
attendance for the Memorial Day weekend, collecting about $175.7 million domestically
before losing the top spot to The Break-Up. This week we go from the top
shelf to the bargain bin of superhero films with the direct to video release of
Man-Thing (2005).
What's a Man-Thing, you might ask? A fair question. The word itself is
vague. What does a man have to do with a thing? Is the thing a man or the man
a thing? It's no Snakes on a Plane, that's for sure. With that kind of
movie you know what you're in for! Let me put it into perspective. Man-Thing
was a horror character published by Marvel Comics (Fantastic Four, Spider-Man,
Captain America, etc.) in the early seventies. He was a human biochemist
and inventor of a new experimental formula; while fleeing those who wished to
kill him, he died in a swamp, but due to a combination of magic and his formula,
his body was reconstituted as a shambling human mass of swamp vegetation, and
he became the terrifying Man-Thing!
MAN-THING
Starring: Matthew Le Nevez and Rachael Taylor Director: Brett Leonard Release
Date: 2005 Running Time: 1hr. 36min.
Released by Lions Gate Films, the Man-Thing movie was originally intended
for theatrical release around Halloween 2005 but it was pushed back and delayed.
It eventually found a home on the sci-fi channel as a TV movie before coming directly
to DVD. I can tell you it was withheld from theaters for good reason. The Man-Thing
concept was never necessarily strong in the comics, and considering no commercially
viable film based on the concept would be able to represent all the crazy magical
or occult storylines from the comic books with such a small budget, and no reasonable
film company would look at the concept of Man-Thing and be willing to supply
anything but a small budget, the filmmakers decided to turn Man-Thing into
a formulaic horror film where the heroes and villains are picked off one by one
by shadowy monster.
The film begins with promise. The voice-over at the beginning tells of the "dark
water," a magical section of Louisiana swamp that has been desecrated by an industrialist
named Frederic Schist (Jack Thompson) and his oil development company. The swamp
was once a place filled with life and beauty, but evil men with their "drills,
their pipes, greed, and murder," have awaken a vengeful spirit. We are shown glimpses
of a corpse rising from the muck and transforming into something large and tree-like,
perhaps a murderous version of those walking trees from LOTR: The Two Towers.
Someone has been murdered, we assume, and the corpse has risen from the swamp
for revenge. Supernatural revenge stories are always promising, but from this
point forward the film devolves into the predictable beats of a standard horror
film with some very mundane and often comical acting.
The first to die is a couple of fornicating teenagers. The female actress tries
to appear sultry and overcome with lust, but she only ever looks like she's in
pain, so maybe it's a good thing that the young man writhing around on top of
her is soon dispatched; he's impaled by giant vines shooting from the swamp's
shadows, his wounds gushing blood all over his topless girlfriend's gratuitously
fake bare breasts.
After this grisly scene we're introduced to our so-called hero, Kyle Williams
(Le Nevez) a man in a dark jacket, dark glasses, and freshly cultivated rebel
stubble who arrives in the swamp town of Bywater to act as the town's new sheriff.
He is a real tortured soul, or so the film makers would like us to think, because
it is suggested that he's leaving a troubled past behind him. This side of the
character is never explored (perhaps for the best), and the sheriff turns out
to actually be quite useless throughout the entire film. He never really discovers
anything about the mystery of why people are being murdered, he never really does
any detective work into Schist and his obvious underhanded and illegal activities
(murder, pollution, corruption, and bribery), and he never stops anyone from actually
being murdered. He spends most of his time in the film wandering through the swamp,
encountering various inbred redneck Southern American stereotypes, and being maneuvered
by the film into an ill-conceived romantic relationship with a environmental activist/schoolteacher
(Rachael Taylor) with a connection to the local Native American mystic. There's
no spark or hook to Le Nevez's character, and whenever the sheriff isn't performing
a plot function that is absolute perfunctory he has nothing to do but look pensive
and confused. The film was also filled in Australia, so although the Australian
actors try their best, there Southern American accents never sound quite authentic.
The film is all about broad strokes. I'm not surprised; a movie called Man-Thing
doesn't really scream for subtlety. Schist and his industrial goons are painted
as absolutely evil and racist (anyone familiar with Pink Floyd's concept album
The Wall and the movie based on the album might recognize a similarity
between the logo for schist industries and the red-on-white walking hammers that
visually signify fascism and the Nazi Swastika in The Wall), and the various
characters who live in the swamp are dirty, long-haired, overall-wearing taxidermists
who moonlight as armed thugs for Schist. There is also the obligatory Indian mystic
who is the only one that knows the church but only ever speaks in riddles.
The film has some scary moments but is overall formulaic: scares are dependent
on loud music or startling jumps, jarring montage scene transitions, and the fact
that the creature is only ever seen moving quickly and out of focus through the
shadows. The film has its decent moments and some pretty visually interesting
deaths, such as when one major character is impaled by the Man-Thing and pumped
full of oil in a symbolic inversion of what the character is doing to the environment,
but overall the film's plot is a boring and tedious slog in which you just wish
all the characters would die so you can see more of the monster in action. The
Man-Thing is never really revealed in decent lighting until the last scenes and,
while the CGI could use some work, for a low-budget film the creature is a pretty
decently designed monster. Unfortunately the final scenes are the only real interesting
parts of the film, and definitely not worth sitting through an hour and 36 minutes
for.
The movie tries
to include a few fan-moments for those familiar with the comics ø there is mention
of the Nexus of All Realities (a paranormal hot-spot that Man-Thing guards in
the comics) and a character is named after Mike Ploog, a Marvel Comics artist
in the1970s who worked on horror titles like Man-Thing, Ghost Rider,
and Werewolf by Night - but these little references add nothing to the
story.
The acting
is awkward, the characters are unlikable, the romance has no chemistry whatsoever,
the plot has no intrigue or sense that something is at stake, and the atmosphere
is flat. This is the sort of movie you might watch on a late night with friends
when everyone is drunk so you just laugh yourself silly at the improbability and
stupidity of the characters on screen. Unfortunately it's not even bad enough
to be funny-bad.
Grade:
C (Boring and Uninspired)
If you want to see a real hysterical swamp monster movie, checkout The Return
of Swamp Thing (1989), starring Heather Locklear and Dick Durock, for all
sorts of stupid puns and laughable acting, but more than enough rubber suit monsters
and pyrotechnic special effects to enjoy. It's a worse movie than Man-Thing
in many ways, but is more enjoyable as a result.
Swamp Thing? Man-Thing? Just a minute, you might say. Is there a difference? It
depends who you ask. Swamp Thing (DC Comics) and Man-Thing (Marvel Comics) are
characters that appeared in 1971, both were biochemists, both were murdered in
the swamp, and both were then transformed into shambling half-man half-vegetable
muck monsters through a combination of science and magic. But while Swamp Thing
retained his human conscious and became a hero and protector of the swamp, Man-Thing
was little more than an instinctual animal, a mass of slime, swamp muck, and gunk
from the Florida Everglades with no thoughts or feelings, but nevertheless found
itself acting as a hero in accidental crime and horror story situations. Unique
to Man-Thing was his strange power: whenever Man-Thing laid its hands on someone
experiencing fear, Man-Thing could secrete a corrosive burning acid. "Whatever
knows fear burns at the Man-Thing's touch," the comics used to proclaim! Unlike
Swamp Thing, whose original goofy premise was turned into a series of excellent
stories and though provoking comics by Alan Moore (V for Vendetta), and
who has inspired two live-action movies as well a cartoon series, Man-Thing has
made little impact on popular culture and has been written into few really interesting
stories.
Different
enough? You might be unconvinced. On further reflection, you might even realize
that a lot of Marvel and DC characters are suspiciously similar: DC's Elongated
Man and Plastic Man have stretchy powers like those of Marvel's Mr. Fantastic;
Marvel's prince of the sea, Namor the Submariner, might appear strikingly similar
to DC's Aquaman; and DC's speedster, The Flash, isn't that difference in terms
of abilities from Marvel's Quicksilver. What's the deal with that?
I'd tell you to stop asking so many questions and just simply accept the fact
that although Marvel called itself the House of Ideas it probably "borrowed" a
lot from DC, and vice versa. It's not like Swamp Thing was that original in the
first place; both Man-Thing and Swamp Thing were influenced by a history of earlier
muck monsters with equally uninspired names, such as the Heap (1942), which was
a character inspired by Theodore Sturgeon's 1940 short story, "It", about a man
who died in a swamp and came back to life as a decomposing mass of vengeful plant
matter. After Swamp Thing and Man-Thing came around as comics, Sturgeon's
"It" was adapted into a one-shot comic book in Marvel's Supernatural Thrillers
#1 (1972).
Unfortunately
Swamp Thing and Man-Thing now have something else in common -- both their movies
suck, although the Swamp Thing movies are so bad they're funny whereas Man-Thing
is thoroughly flat.
NEXT
WEEK: I catch you up on some of the latest news and developments in the world
of comics to film. What looks interesting and what looks like a bad idea? See
you at the movies, or hopefully if I can convince you, also at the comic shop!
