Blog / Swampflix

Swampflix is a New Orleans-based film blog, podcast, and zine founded in January 2015.

Founded by Brandon Ledet, the site hosts reviews of recent and classic films, podcasts about specific topics or films, and the occasional article about film in general.

Swampflix is notable for its distinct tone and style, its deliberately zine-esque monochrome aesthetic, its tendency to spotlight ignored and overlooked media. The site also features the Camp Stamp, which delineates when a film's rating is also based on its camp value. Also notable is the frequent with which Swampflix updates; despite roughly half a dozen contributors, Swampflix has been updated daily for over 6 years.

Swampflix also has a Twitter, and as of October 2020, an Instagram that showcases Ledet's recent and archival drawings from previous posts.

Contributors

• Brandon Ledet (founder and editor)
• Alli Hobbs
• Britnee Lombas
• C.C. Chapman
• Hanna Räsänen
• James Cohn
• Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Features

• Movie of the Month - Every month (other than January, when the crew posts their best-of lists for the previous year), a contributor makes the rest of the crew watch a movie they’ve never seen before, then hosts an email discussion of it. The rest of the month features follow-up articles on topics related to the movie.^note The Movie of the Month feature appears to have been quietly sunsetted in 2023 following some Schedule Slip; first, July 2022 had no post, then only February, April, and August of 2023 featured Movies of the Month. The site's greater expansion of its podcast feature(s) likely took its place.
• The Swampflix Podcast
  • Standard episodes hosted by Brandon and regularly featuring Britnee, James, and (later) Hanna, with occasional appearances by other contributors. Generally discuss an individual film and a related topic (i.e., Hack-O-Lantern (1988) & Metalsploitation, Olivia (1951) & Lesbian Boarding School Melodramas, or Madhouse (1981) & Evil Twins).
  • Lagniappe^note a Creole word roughly meaning "something given as a bonus or extra gift" episodes, which function as minisodes between the main episodes. Due to the coronavirus, Brandon, Britnee, and James began to record virtually while social distancing; this led Brandon to build out the crew's ability to record long distance, allowing Boomer to record as well. The first of these (a discussion of Death Spa) was released in July of 2020. Alli joined the Lagniappe crew when she rejoined Swampflix; her first appearance was in the February 2021 discussion of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
• The aforementioned Camp Stamp.
• Agents of S.W.A.M.P.F.L.I.X.^note Superhero Watching: Alternating Marvel Perspectives, Fresh and Longterm, Ignoring X-Men. - In which Boomer (who reads superhero comics & is well versed in the MCU) & Brandon (who reads alternative comics & had, at the start of this project, seen less than 25% of the MCU’s output) revisit the films that make up the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the perspective of someone who knows what they’re talking about & someone who doesn’t have the slightest clue.
• Roger Ebert Film School - A recurring feature in which Brandon attempts to watch & review all 200+ films referenced in the print and film versions of Roger Ebert's (auto)biography Life Itself.
• The Late Great Planet Mirth - an ongoing series in which Boomer, who was brought up in a fundamentalist community that followed the precepts of PreMillenialist Dispensationalism, explores the often silly, occasionally absurd, and sometimes surprisingly compelling tropes, traits, and treasures of films about the the Rapture.
• The Swampflix Canon - Films that contributors have rated 5 stars^note formerly 4.5 and 5 stars, covered for Movie of the Month, or selected as Movie of the Year.
• Wrestling Cinema - Reviews & articles that discuss movies about or related to professional wrestling.

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Swampflix provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • The aforementioned The Late Great Planet Mirth article series about films about the Rapture, began with frequent updates in early 2016, with those updates taking longer before the last/most recent article posted in 2018, leaving off before reviewing the fourth and final film in the A Thief in the Night series. Based upon the subtitle and postscript of this article posted a few days before the presidential inauguration of 2017, he may have no longer considered the review series very fun in light of the political climate.
  • Agents of S.W.A.M.P.F.L.I.X. also seems to be on a permanent hiatus, with the last article for that series (a discussion of Captain America: Civil War) published in June 2016. This is likely due to Boomer's lack of interest in Doctor Strange, about which he wrote a pre-release opinion piece criticizing the MCU's handling of issues of race. He has continued to write reviews of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as they are released, and the reviews are overwhelminlgly positive, with Doctor Strange remaining the only Marvel film reviewed on the site by someone other than Boomer (Brandon).
• Agent Mulder / Agent Scully: Played with. Brandon in the Agent Mulder and Boomer is the Agent Scully with regards to their preferences for how Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane reveals should be handled in media. Boomer prefers a rational, Doing In the Wizard explanation for initially ambiguous situations, and praises films that ultimately provide an empirical, non-supernatural explanation for events (citing examples like The Boy and Housebound). Brandon considers this to be a limitation on the magic of fantasy.
  • In their podcast discussion of the above-mentioned Housebound, Boomer admits that he recognizes that he's advocating for something that would "probably make movies more boring in general."
• Author Appeal:
  • Brandon loves Ken Russell movies. He also has a fondness for wrestling, hence the Wrestling Cinema feature.
  • Both Brandon and Boomer love giallo films in general, and Boomer has a particular love for Dario Argento specifically.
  • Britnee has a self-professed love of romcoms. She also loves the Brady Bunch movies from the 1990s.
  • James loves anything with a punk aesthetic.
  • C.C. professes her love for art films, and French films in particular, in the Movie of the Month discussion of Love Me if You Dare.^note not to be confused with the Chinese series of the same name.
  • Boomer's love for Star Trek has come up once or twice (see Running Gag below). He also has a fondness for "women on the verge" films, frequently choosing movies of this type for his Movie of the Month selection (i.e., An Unmarried Woman and Puzzle of a Downfall Child), noting this quality in the Movie of the Month selections of others (i.e., when Hanna nominated The Match Factory Girl), or naming them as his favorite film(s) of the year (i.e., naming 2015's Queen of Earth the best of the year).
    • Alli is also a big Star Trek fan, which has led to much chagrin on Brandon's part when the other two Lagniappe contributors go off on tangents about the franchise.
    • This has resulted in Alli and Boomer breaking off to do two separate Swamp Trek podcast episodes. The first was recorded in September of 2021 due to Brandon having no power following the landfall of Hurricane Ida, and the second was recorded to discuss the first two seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
• Connected All Along: In an extremely rare podcasting example, while discussing the band Why? (see Lampshaded the Obscure Reference below), Alli, Brandon, and Boomer suddenly realize that they were all in attendance at the same Halloween 2013 performance of the band in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, years before they met or started writing together. Boomer even refers to this revelation as the kind of thing that a sitcom pulls once it had run out of ideas.
  Boomer: "You were the weird dog mask guy?!"
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The Movie of the Month Swampchat, which normally features four contributors, initially had only three (Brandon, Britnee, and James) at the time of its inception in February 2015. They briefly had the standard four contributors in May 2015, when Kenny Reynolds participated in the Swampchat for 1984's Crimes of Passion.^note To date, this is his only contribution to the site. That number and even dipped to two when the roundtables for July (Highway to Hell) and August (Babe 2 – Pig in the City) 2015 featured only Brandon and Britnee. This was resolved when Rrin and Boomer joined the site in late 2015 and participated in the September 2015 Swampchat for The Boyfriend School.
• Fun with Acronyms: Used in Brandon and Boomer's MCU roundtable discussions, entitled Agents of S.W.A.M.P.F.L.I.X.^note Superhero Watching: Alternating Marvel Perspectives, Fresh and Longterm, Ignoring X-Men.
• Insistent Terminology: In discussing the 1997 film Cube, Boomer insistently refers to the sequel by its full title (Cube 2: Hypercube) every time that he mentions it.
  • Boomer also uses the honorific "America's Darling" every time that he mentions Brad Dourif, in print or in the podcast.
• It's Not Porn, It's Art: Discussed in Brandon and Boomer's discussion of French adult film Equation to an Unknown. It's porn, but possibly also art.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: While discussing the French adult film Equation to an Unknown (which is itself obscure, appearing neither here or on The Other Wiki), Boomer quotes a lyric from the song "The Hollows," from the album Alopecia by Why?: "Just the slight jingle of pocket change pulsing." ^note This follows a lyric about discovering two men having sex in a public place in Berlin, so its presence in a discussion about a European adult film actually does make sense in context. In an apparently genuine moment, Brandon asks "Is that a Why? reference?"
• Not So Similar:
  • Despite the site growing out of a small group of friends (Brandon, James, and Britnee) who had similar tastes in movies, Brandon and James frequently find themselves in disagreement during the podcast.
  • Brandon and Boomer have a lot in common as well, but not so much that they haven't specifically written rebuttals of one another. After Brandon's positive but not effusive review of 2017's Alien: Covenant, in which he also expressed a positive opinion of Prometheus,^note Brandon later gave Prometheus 5/5 stars in his "Alien Movies Rated and Ranked" article, Boomer issued "A Swampflix Court Dissenting Opinion," in which he expressed his contempt for Ridley Scott's 2012 film. Years later, following Boomer's tepid review of Emma., Brandon defended the film with his piece, "Emma. (2020) is a Major Work, Goddamnit."
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Although credited officially as "Mark 'Boomer' Redmond," he is only ever referred to as "Boomer" by the others, himself, and this very wiki.
• Put on a Bus:
  • Kenny Reynolds, as noted above, made exactly one contribution to the site, when he participated in the Swampchat for Crimes of Passion. He hasn't appeared since.
  • Erin Kinchen wrote her first review for the site in July 2015 (The Man Who Laughs) and her last (Crimson Peak) in October of that same year. She continued to contribute to the Movie of the Month roundtable discussions until April 2016 (My Demon Lover); after that, she hasn't been seen since.
  • Alli Hobbs wrote her first review on the site in May of 2016 (1953's Summer with Monika), and her last in June of 2017 (Wonder Woman), although she continued to participate in the Movie of the Month roundtables until July of 2018 (1983's Born in Flames), after which point she stopped writing for the site.
    • The Bus Came Back, however, in January 2021, when she wrote a review of 1962's The Manchurian Candidate, and joined the Lagniappe podcast episodes starting in February 2021 with the discussion of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
• Running Gag:
  • Following their discussion of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the Lagniappe crew has taken to referring back to the film whenever they zone out or forget something, in reference to the movie's dreamlike plot and the missing time that the film's characters experience.
  • Boomer mentions Star Trek in virtually every podcast in which he participates. This reaches an absurd Inception level in the episode in which Boomer and Brandon discuss Star Trek VI. During the introductory segment (in which the Lagniappe hosts discuss what they've seen recently before discussing the main topic), Brandon mentions that he recently watched Tank Girl, which Boomer immediately identifies as "starring Star Trek: Voyager's own Lori Petty." Petty appeared in only one episode of Voyager, "Gravity".
    • This gets even worse when Alli joins the Langniappe Podcast Crew, as she also loves Star Trek and she and Boomer can go on longer tangents together than Boomer alone. Brandon jokes about getting a bell to ring each time they make their obligatory reference, and the bell eventually does appear in the group's podcast episode about 1974's Impulse, appropriately enough given that the film starred William Shatner.
    • This reached an apotheosis when, as part of the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in 2021, much of New Orleans was left without power for over a week. Boomer and Alli (the only two contributors no longer living in Louisiana) recorded a special, all-Star Trek edition of the Lagniappe podcast entitled "Swamp Trek" to ensure that fans didn't lose a week of content.
    • Alli and Boomer appear to be taunting Brandon now. During a brief discussion of the film Lifeforce during the Lagniappe episode about Ginger Snaps, Boomer tricks Brandon into ringing the Star Trek bell by mentioning the role played in that film by Patrick Stewart, best known for his role as Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but citing his role in the famous science fiction franchise... Dune.

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