| Man-Thing Released: Unfortunately MPAA Rating: R Genre: Monster Nuts and Bolts: Whoever knows good filmmaking BURNS at the touch of the MAN-THING! Summary: Christ. Do I really have to do this? I don't even think there's enough of a plot here for me to go into detail with. I've scraped most of this monstrosity away from my memory like a crusty scab. Instead of giving you the scene-by-scene breakdown of this mess, I'll just give you some background on the formation of the ass that gave birth to this gigantic turd. Back in the early 70s, DC Comics spawned a fairly popular Berni Wrightson creation known as the Swamp Thing. You may have heard of him. He's had several volumes of his own comic, as well as two feature films and a God-awful cartoon series. Anyway, DC's competitors over at Marvel were likewise dipping their creative fingers into the horror-pool and decided to create their own muck monster. Writer Steve Gerber (whose legendary skills yielded forth the most-fowl of comic heroes, Howard the Duck) is the mad genius responsible for taking Wrightson's work, copying it, repackaging it and selling it to Marvel as the Man-Thing. Now the back-story of Manny is chiefly thus: A scientist by the name of Ted Sallis had been working on a big fat government contract to recreate a forgotten process known as the Super Soldier Serum - the same secret ingredient that turned puny little Steve Rogers into the muy-macho Captain America. But as luck would have it, a bunch of terrorists broke into Sallis' swamp-based laboratory and a fight ensued. Secret formula + evil villains + big explosions = instant formula for rampaging muck monster. Sallis became the brainless walking zombie of shit known as the Man-Thing! The interesting thing about the Man-Thing (aside from the fact that he had a giant penis for a nose) is that the creature could "read" the emotions of others. Different emotions yielded different responses, but the one emotion that drove Man-Thing stark raving bug-fuck was that of fear. If someone were afraid of him (and who wouldn't be afraid of a twelve foot walking green cock) then Man-Thing would produce this corrosive oil from his hands that would undoubtedly fuck a mutha up. The tagline of the comic book was, "Whoever knows fear BURNS at the touch of the Man-Thing!" Now Manny wasn't a super-hero or anything like that, but he more or less dumb-lucked his way into displaying bouts of grandiose heroism; which is to say, most of the drunken gator-porking, rednecks that he killed were bad guys. Once in a while, Manny would find himself standing alongside notable stalwarts such as Spider-Man or Dr. Strange. And he has fought the incredible Hulk on more than one occasion. Flash forward x amount of years, and now we have the Man-Thing movie. This idiocy was originally intended for a theatrical release, but after reviewing the dailies, even Marvel executive producer Avi Arad found himself disowning the project. But dammit, someone was DETERMINED to bring this corpse to life. As such, the Man-Thing movie found itself on the short bus, bound for that legendary hall of splendor where bad movies go to die - the Sci-Fi channel. Acting/Dialogue: Embarrassingly bland. There's no real conversation taking place in this film. Everything is just a reaction shot to something else that is going on. Dialogue consists chiefly of, "There's something out there" and "Something is killin' people in that swamp and we must put an end to it", and "Something just finger-raped Jimmy-Joe-Jeff-Henry-Bill-Bob!" Honestly, I have left things in the toilet with more conversational value than what this movie provides. Gore: Most of the gore is suggestive. You see a couple of drowned bodies with some bullet holes in them, but that's pretty much it. There's one scene where Man-Thing rips this guy to pieces, but the camera stumbled out of focus for that half-second, so I can't even really count that. Guilty Pleasures: The token love interest was fairly easy on the eyes, but as she does not at any point take her top off, I have little choice but to excise her name from my Christmas card list. The Good: The title of this movie provides many valuable opportunities to make a dirty joke. But no dirty joke could ever be as effective as the one played on me, for having watched this shit. The Bad: Do you remember the scene from Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum's character sarcastically queries, "Are there going to be any dinosaurs on this dinosaur ride?" Sadly, I found myself asking a variant of the same question roughly one hour and thirty minutes into this flick. Worse, my question was not to be answered for another fifteen minutes after that. Mister Dick-Nose himself didn't see fit to actually appear in this trash until about ten minutes before the ending. And the payoff was not really worth the wait. The special effects are adequate I suppose for Sci-Fi channel standards, but I see no reason why the Man-Thing couldn't have been shown earlier in the movie. I mean…its HIS FUCKING MOVIE for fuck's sake! Now if the film had been called, "Deputy Dicklicker and the adventures of the Moonshine Four", then I would have absolutely no issue with the fact that the swamp monster doesn't appear until the last ten minutes. But being as how the movie is called "Man-Thing" and not "Deputy Dicklicker and the adventures of the Moonshine Four", then I must confess to being more than a little put out by the fact that the title character couldn't be arsed to even appear in his OWN FUCKING FILM! What the hell kinda horseshit is that? What were they thinking? I could almost forgive the absence of the movie's selling-point, if the remainder of it had at least been filled with interesting characters; but its not. The characters in this movie represent every cliché stereotype you have ever heard about people living in the south. They all wear flannel shirts with no sleeves. They all have houses made of sheet-metal and barbed wire. And they all are missing at least half of their teeth. Now while this may be true of Southern culture to some extent, I would think that the writers might want to take some risks and pepper the cast with some characters that look as if they DIDN'T just step out Deliverance. I have no problem with a movie that chooses to poke fun at rednecks. Let's face it. Rednecks deserve to be made fun of. But this film just does it poorly. No style at all. The plot of the movie is equally ambiguous. I had such a difficult time paying attention to this flick, because my mind kept wandering towards more important matters; like studying the concentric patterns of the lint that had collected in my navel. It really doesn't matter, as the plot for this type of far is almost always immaterial. It's a fairly generic formula. Jimmy Joe hears a tale from Mary-Sue about how her brother/cousin Billy Bob got ass-hammered while making moonshine with Zeke who was in the process of fisting his sister/mother Mary Beth when all of a sudden a big honkin' swamp monster with a penis for a nose comes out of the muck and scares the bejesus out of everyone. You know, THAT old chestnut. It's really a shame. I was really looking forward to the high-flying adventures of the death-defying Dicknose - but I ended up with this shit instead. Creator Steve Gerber is probably rolling over in his grave. Not that he's dead or anything, but if I were him I would give serious thought towards suicide as an alternative for being the man responsible for giving us this wreck of a movie. My heart goes out to ya Steve. It truly does. Ya gave us a pretty cool comic book and they just turned around and fucked it all up. And since you have all been probably waiting for me to sound off with the most obvious criticism one could level at this shit patty, here goes: THIS MOVIE SUCKS MY BIG HONKIN' FAT GREEN GIANT-SIZE MAN-THING!!!!!!!!!!! Great lines: Christ, I can't even think of something funny to put here. Overall rating: 1 out of 10 severed heads. |
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