Swamp Thing -- Theatrical and Unrated -- Comes to Blu-ray

For all that was wrong with the 1982 Swamp Thing, it still holds a place in a kitschy little corner of my heart. From the visible zipper in Dick Durock's Swamp Thing mudsuit to the rushed romance between Alec Holland (Twin Peaks' Ray Wise) and a re-named Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau) who is now no relation to the villainous Arcane (Louis Jourdan) -- and relegating Linda Holland (Nannette Brown) to be Alec's sister instead of his wife for the sake of expediency, the movie was nonetheless a milestone for fans of the comic book just by existing and having the character look like Swamp Thing.

Now, just over 40 years after its initial debut, Swamp Thing comes to the home theater market on a new 4K Blu-ray from the LaserVision collection (complete with a folded poster of the LaserDisc cover). But what was more intriguing to me was that there were two versions of this film -- a theatrical release and an unrated release.

Of course, I opted to watch the unrated release. And I can understand why I never saw it before. In the middle of the film, after Arcane has captured the Swamp Thing, there's a party at his house -- actually, more of an orgy, with nudity and sexual situations that simply felt out of place with the rest of the film. It's like the producers thought about inserting the scene just to get the R rating for a horror film, then checking themselves before the release.

The film continues to devolve into silliness when Holland's formula is discovered to not really have anything to do with plants, but to make visible outward what a person is on the inside, allowing for some ridiculous monster transformations in the films final acts.

Flawed but still fun. Definitely something fans of the DC comics universe should watch at least once in their lives.