I recently got this movie on Blu-ray and watched the interview with Adrienne Barbeau. According to her, this movie was ambitious at first, but suffered many budget cuts by the studio during production. As a result, the finished product wasn't as good as hoped.
But, the technology of the day was limited as well. The OP mentioned American Werewolf in London (another favorite and also in my Blu-Ray collection), but if you look at the creature effects in that film, they're not as good as you think. The werewolf in that film also had a "fixed" face. It could open and close its mouth, but the expression was locked in an almost permanent snarl. There was a very small movement at the very end when the heroine was making her plea to the werewolf, but not much. Also if you watch the werewolf run through the crowded streets in the climax, they can't show you the back legs because the stunt guy's actual legs were sticking straight out of the werewolf's posterior and they were pushing him wheelbarrow style. They did lots of quick takes so you wouldn't notice, but that creature, in some respects, was even more limited than the Arcane Creature in Swamp Thing.
So, technology of the time and budget cuts certainly limited Swamp Thing, but I don't think it was the worse thing around.
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