Teeming with alligators, crazed Cajuns and creatures right out of the comics section, the dark and foreboding specter of Louisiana swamp country can be a dangerous region to travel through.
Just ask your home video dealer, who probably has most of the following bayou epics bubbling ominously on his shelves:
– Magazine journalist Jill Clayburgh and her teenage daughter (Martha Plimpton) venture into the Louisiana swampland in search of some decidedly distant relatives and a good article in the 1987 drama “Shy People.”
There they encounter tough Cajun matriarch Barbara Hershey, who teaches the city slickers a salient thing or two about rugged life on the bayou.
– A platoon of incompetent weekend warriors representing the Louisiana National Guard none too proudly tangle with a lethal brood of wily Cajuns who hunt them down as unwelcome trespassers in director Walter Hill’s violent 1981 action film “Southern Comfort.” Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine lead the sadly outnumbered troops into unexpected mortal combat.
– Hot on the trail of his partner’s killer, determined Chicago cop Richard Gere tracks his prey deep into the Cajun-controlled swamps of southern Louisiana in “No Mercy” (1986).
Before he busts the bad guys, he slogs through the muddy underbrush handcuffed to gorgeous but deceitful Kim Basinger, who’s the unwilling girlfriend of the gang’s lethal leader.
– Armand Assante portrays the mesmerizing “Belizaire the Cajun” in an atmospheric 1986 production about a charismatic faith healer who fights for the rights of his countrymen in the prejudiced Louisiana swamp country of the 1850s (not to mention the affections of a wealthy foe’s wife).
– Resourceful government agent Adrienne Barbeau parades around the bayou, frequently in a state of semi-undress, in a 1982 film adaptation of the comic book hero “Swamp Thing.”
Never read the scholarly publication, eh? Well, the story centers on a dedicated young scientist who gets drenched with his own formula and mutates into the title creature. As the villain, Louis Jourdan does some mutating of his own.
– Jourdan must like it down there. He hosts “Bayou Romance,” an obscure 1982 romantic feature with “Designing Women” star Annie Potts as an artist who inherits a Louisiana plantation and is wooed by a handsome gypsy and an underhanded doctor.
– A standard-issue mad scientist manages to alter his genetic code into something resembling a huge, walking catfish and embarks on a murderous rampage through an unprepared little village in the 1985 bomb “Attack of the Swamp Creature.”
– Even as suave private eye Joe Mannix (who always had an eye for the ladies), Mike “Touch” Connors never had to deal with a gang of escaped cons as beautiful and deadly as those in “Swamp Women.”
Directed by B movie king Roger Corman, the 1956 cheapie casts Connors as a geologist who finds himself in heavy demand with the sex-starved molls as they slosh through the murky waters in search of precious loot from a diamond heist.
– Hideous overgrown bloodsuckers terrorize hapless swamp dwellers in a bizarre 1959 Corman production, “Attack of the Giant Leeches.”
These monsters have exceptionally good taste in choosing their victims, dragging the region’s resident blond bombshell off to their underwater lair for late-night sipping.
– Ex-Olympic swimming sensation Johnny Weissmuller, still tops in the Tarzan sweepstakes, made a rare jaunt outside the jungle as a Navy vet who battles bayou boss Buster Crabbe for the hand of damsel Virginia Grey in “Swamp Fire.”
Instead of rampaging elephants, Weissmuller has to deal with snapping alligator jaws in the 1946 adventure, also notable for an early appearance by a young David Janssen.
– For a comically unflattering portrayal of Cajun life, it’s tough to top “Bayou,” a 1957 potboiler later successfully exploited as “Poor White Trash.” Peter Graves stars as a northern architect who travels into the swamp and quickly falls for a spicy local teen queen, much to the chagrin of her macho boyfriend (Timothy Carey).
