What were they thinking?

Today I thought I'd talk about the abomination that is Swamp Thing: The Movie. This is not a review. To do a review, I'd have to watch this boring slowpaced mess of a film again. I like bad movies, but this thing is terrible. It's not far off displacing Species 3 as the worst movie ever. I own both these on dvd, which should tell you something about my dvd collection.

Anyway, Swamp Thing. About 2/3rds through the movie, we get this totally out-of-left-field scene at the bad guys mansion. Cue lounge room scene.

Lots of bad guys relaxing in the company of some sexy women. This scene is totally dreaming of being a porno in it's next life, complete with cheesy eastern snake charmer music. There's even a belly dancer in a bikini (centre screen). As soon as this shot opens, you just know that she's going to get her top off.

The camera follows her a bit (unfortunately, she really sucks at dancing), then pans back so we can focus on one of the bad guys.

With about as little warning as is possible, suddenly she's topless.

This is really quite awkward to watch. The movie up until this point has had almost zero sexual suggestion, there's not even any implied chemisty between the main characters (though we do get to see the heroine topless prior to this particular scene in a laughable 'bathing in the swamp while on the run from men with guns' interlude).

Back to that belly dancer. As I said, she had "I'm getting naked" written all over her from the start.

Hmmm, what's coming next?



Surprise!


"Oh you were in Swamp Thing? What did you do?"
"I played the topless belly dancer"
"Oh, neat"


With the required nudity out of the way, the scene ends and the movie carries on as it had before. I would love to read an interview with the director that explains the point of this, because I have no idea.