Frogs (1972) – Review

With some movies, it sometimes helps to read the small print. Back when I was a mere slip of a lad, I stood in the video rental shop, gazing fascinated at the cover of a movie that featured a frog with a human arm hanging out of its mouth – “surely no one’s made a movie about killer Frogs” I thought, only then to be similarly entranced by a brazen tag line that threatened: “TODAY – The Pond! TOMORROW – The World!”. I mean how can you not get transfixed by a cover like that?
Of course, naive, childlike wonder is soon steamrolled by the harsh realities of adult life and when I finally got round to watching George McCowan’s Frogs, I couldn’t help but feel a little let down. It seemed that while the frogs in question were undeniably in control of the “ribbit-lution” that’s suggested could sweep the world, this actually wasn’t a movie about giant killer frogs hopping around eating people. If I can be frank, the disappointment never truly went away as I got a fairly standard, “wildlife run amok” flick instead. But while I’m come to appreciate the only, eco message behind Frogs, a thriller featuring huge amphibians was just too much to hop for (not a typo).

It’s July 4th and every year, controlling, wheelchair-bound patriarch Jason Crockett demands that his family all return to his island mansion estate to both celebrate Independence Day and his own birthday. As His various spoilt family arrive to withstand another year of rigorously planned activities and various verbal putdowns from the tyrannical old fuck, something that’s threatening the ambience is the continuous, loud croaking from the large population of frogs thar have seemingly swarmed into the area.
Meanwhile, stony-faced wildlife photographer Picket Smith is canoeing through the local swamps, snapping pics of the local wildlife to find various breeds of animal giving him the constant side-eye. However, he doesn’t have much time to mull on it thanks to the drunken Clint Crockett swamps his craft after whizzing by on his speedboat. In an effort to make amends, Pickett is invited back to the Crockett plantation where he’s invited to stay for the festivities, but he and Jason soon find themselves locked in an ecological debate when the young photographer questions the wealthy patriarch about the pollution his estate pumps into the surrounding environment.
However, words are cool and all, but the local wildlife has figured why debate when you can just bite and directed by the frogs, every snake, spider, crocodile and lizard near the island lay in wait to pounce on any human who strays too far from the mansion. Before you know it, Crocketts are dropping like flies (and we all know how much Frogs like flies) – can Pickett manage to convince Jason to abandon his obsession about his yearly celebration, or will the obstinate old bastard watch his entire bloodline succumb to nature rather than submit to the superiority of… the frogs?

To this day, I’m still in two minds of what my opinion of Frogs truly is. On one hand, the movie moves incredibly slow and anyone expecting some sort of camp freak out will no doubt feel let down that the movie doesn’t attempt the all-out, unintentionally hilarious lunacy of similar nature-gets-revenge flicks such as The Food Of The Gods or The Giant Spider Invasion. However, one the other hand, we have a bunch of heavily disgruntled frogs cheerleading other swamp beasts to kill all humans and standing in their way is none other than a confusingly young and noticably mustache-less Sam Elliot. Just for that sentence alone, Frogs demands at least some respect from lovers of trash classics as the film gets endless mileage of cutting back to the pissed amphibians looking smug every time one of the Crocketts goes down, but despite the utterly ridiculous premise, director George McCowan somehow plays everything as deadly serious as he possibly can.
Sure enough, there’s some lofty ideals going on behind the laughable concept of frogs convincing other species to wage all out war on a wealthy family with Sam Elliot gravely reminding us and anyone who’ll listen that nature has had enough of our shit as is look to take us out. However, even weirder than stapling an eco message to an exploitation flick that sees someone murdered off screen by turtles is the fact that the movie, with its plantation setting, dysfunctional family and forceful patriarch bizarrely reminds me of of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, which just makes the whole thing even more surreal. I’m not crazy enough to suggest the two are the same (although I’d blatently pay to see Paul Newman and Lizzy Taylor fight killer frogs), but my addled brain simply can’t shake the fact that there’s weird similarities.

Certainly aiding my psychosis is the fact that we’ve got a stubbon Ray Milland barking orders at fed up relatives who obviously are only taking his blustery bullshit because they want to remain in the will. Similarly, there’s moments of social commentary where the only black guest persuades Jason’s black butler and maid to abandon their “master” and protect themselves, and themes of peer pressure and gas lighting as the ego of the head of the family swells to the point where it starts to put everyone in danger. Yes, the various family members are fairly bland and can be shuffled into the various, privileged stereotypes you’d expect to get, but it fits the aim of this eccentric little movie well.
And yet, despite its efforts, the majority of the deaths just involves a bunch of actors writhing on the ground as they’re either pelted with rubber spiders or extravagantly acting like they’ve now got veins full of snake venom. It’s hardly the estuary scene from Jaws and you can tell that the filmmakers are stretching to make a bunch of docile looking snakes and lizards look like they’re efficient man killers. In fact, at one point in a greenhouse, a bunch of geckos prove that they can not only read labels marked “poison”, but also have a mean knowledge in toxicology as they smash the right chemicals together to make some sort of nerve gas to kill a guy. Elsewhere we get much of various scenes that involve people getting scares and immediately falling into the perfect environment for a swampy animal to fuck them up while they flounder until someone mercifully yells cut and once again I find myself torn between admiring the balls for a bunch of filmmakers who think they can make frogs scary, and condemning the film for not embracing the silliness more. So it is an admiring two star, or a condemning three star?

Do you know, even at this late point of writing, I’m not entirely sure so whatever I end up with will be totally from a gut reaction. But I will say this… why on earth would you simply name a killer amphibian movie “Frogs” when “The Kerminator” was right there?
Fuck it, two.
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