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At the impressionable age of 17 I left the small town where I grew up to attend college in the big city. There I learned that movies weren't just a convenient occasion to feel up a girl and, if she turned you down, to blow into your empty Milk Duds box and make a fart noise.

No, they were "films," a form of entertainment that, when molded by a master director - an auteur - achieved the status of art.

At my college there were film societies for foreign films, contemporary films, documentary films - you name it. The people who ran these clubs dressed in black turtlenecks and wore berets - indoors! They talked about "tracking shots" and "jump cuts," which I thought was a passing route run by a tight end. I was woefully behind in my knowledge of le cinema, but I got up to speed as fast as I could on the road to becoming a cineaste.

I boned up on Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. I watched the films of Indian director Satyajit Ray. I saw Orson Welles play Harry Lime in The Third Man, before Welles got so big the phone company gave him his own area code.

At the end of the school year I would return to my hometown to harvest fescue or haul ice. Believe it or not, I found it hard to squeeze my hard-earned knowledge of French New Wave directors into the conversation when we'd go out to lunch for chicken fried steak.

The contrast between the two cultures was striking - "decomboobulating" in the words of Bird Dog, a guy I worked with on one summer job. How could one live with such cognitive dissonance? And then came the epiphany - l'apercu - that helped give form to my summer leisure time. Why not apply the finely honed bullsh***ing skills I had picked up hanging around avant garde film fans to the Swamp Thing cinema that flourished all around me?

It isn't easy to jump into the bog of Swamp Thing cinema. Like the early British films of Alfred Hitchcock, the prints have often deteriorated, and they are hard to find. Your local library or video store is unlikely to offer The Legend of Boggy Creek, whose heart-stopping slumber party scene ranks with the Rosebud shot in Citizen Kane: A gaggle of high school girls assemble in a mobile home for an evening of popcorn and cootie catchers, and are dreamily discussing who has cuter eyes, Joe Don or Gene Ray, when the hairy arm of the Boggy Creek monster busts through a window, spoiling all the fun!

But, you ask, what if my local adult extension school doesn't offer a Le Cinema du Swamp course? How will I hold my own when somebody says "I found the denouement of The Swamp Thing Escapes anti-climactic, and the jute-and-epoxy costume unconvincing"?

Simple - take this quick and easy online Introduction to Swamp Thing Cinema! It's pass-fail - continuing education credit may be available in some states.

Swamp Thing Returns: 3 1/2 gators. As every aficionado of le cinema du swamp knows, Swamp Things never die, they merely withdraw into the muck to lick their wounds. When they recover, they come back madder than ever. In this fine debut flick Roger Nelson, who went on to direct It Came From the Compost Heap, lures you into the ultimate horror with a succession of increasingly larger victims, from a baby chick to a miniature French poodle.

Beauty and the Swamp Thing: 3 gators. "Unga" is a misunderstood Swamp Thing who is befriended by a young woman after he picks a tick out of her hair. A worthy effort, but the plot is overpowered by the soundtrack, especially "Swamp Thing's Love Theme." The production numbers flag as the creatures flop their tails around a lackluster swamp set, giving the film a claustrophobic feel. I found myself wanting to hold my head under brackish swamp water until the film died a natural death.

Bride of Swamp Thing: 4 gators. This romantic comedy sends an important message: if abducted by a Swamp Thing, make the most of it! You may find love where you least expect it - the arms of a seven-foot-tall ape-like creature with day-old possum on its breath.

- Con Chapman

Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer whose works include The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Yankees-Red Sox pennant race, 10 published plays and two novels, Making Partner and CannaCorn (Joshua Tree Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor.