Offbeat Elmore Leonard yarn brought to the big screen by Paul Schrader. Juvenal (Skeet Ulrich) is a stigmatic ex-monk with miraculous healing powers, Tom Arnold is the religious fanatic obsessed with him, Bridget Fonda the nice girl who loves him, Christopher Walken the hustler who wants to exploit him. Nicely satirical about the modern media circus.
Wes Craven directed this fairly faithful adaptation of DC's horror comic muck monster: a scientist caught in a chemical explosion in a Louisiana swamp gets transformed into a vegetable superbeing. Sadly, the script's clunky and the make-up SFX are tatty beyond belief—notably, the rubber suit that makes ol' Swampy look like a giant walking turd. Result; a travesty.
