Time To Learn You Some!: SWAMP THING PSA (1989)

Being a Silver Fox (Shut up! I know I’m gracefully leaving middle age; let me have my delusion) who grew up in a major city with three independent television station and an uncommonly healthy UHF culture, I’ve been exposed to some weird televisual stuff.  The weirdest of this stuff usually came from the realm of children’s television.  Since it was decreed from the 70‘s that Children’s Television had to have Educational Content, all the Saturday morning (and weekend afternoons in the case of WNEW, WWOR and WPIX) programming assailed us with strange little PSAs and similar artifacts that were designed to Learn You Some.  These PSAs, usually filmed on a...ahem...tenuous budget, then faded into the aether until YouTube brought them roaring back into our memories. 

Inspired by my meeting-through-twitter one Daniel Emery Taylor, let me share with you an example.  This anit-littering PSA was unleashed onto our cathode-tube-y screens in 1989 to tie in with the release of The Return of Swamp Thing...

...yes, there was a time when Jim Wynorski films were released to actual theaters, which you’ll learn as you continue to hang out at the Domicile...and The Return of Swamp Thing is actually pretty good escapist fun if you accept it’s not Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing...

According to Taylor, who played the redheaded kid Darryl in the film and this clip, this was the first thing he shot when he arrived on set.  I have to assume that Wynorski shot these.  It shows off the upgraded Swamp Thing costume that was used both in this film and the subsequent USA Network television series.  There have been other PSAs featuring comic book characters--ask me about that Teen Titans anti-drug one sometimes--but not one as dark and obscure as Swamp Thing.  This was two years before the aborted attempt to make DC’s Earth Elemental into a Kid’s Cartoon and a short while before the cable series and, as Wes Craven’s original didn’t do so well at the box office and Wynorski’s follow-up was in limited release, it calls Greenpeace’s wisdom in using Dick Durock in a plant suit into question.

In the years following this being slipped into commercial breaks at 6a.m. on a Sunday, many people have doubted this piece of film exists.  Well, now it’s here for everyone to see.  Deal with it.