FROGS

U.S.A. | 1972 Directed by George McCowan Starring Ray Milland Sam Elliott Joan Van Ark Color | 90 Minutes | PG Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) MGM Home Entertainment

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More '70s-style 'When Nature Attacks!' mayhem

6     6   10 = Highest Rating   Guest Review by Troy Guinn

It just might be the most enticing movie poster ever painted. Well, to a 6-year old boy, anyway. At that young age, I stared at my local paper's movie section, and legendary artist Ken Kelly's masterful poster art for 1972's Frogs stared balefully back up at me. That unforgettable giant frog, a human hand protruding from his mouth, slobbering self-satisfied over his meal. Why, any twisted kid with a yen for the fantastic and monstrous could only respond with "I'm there!" Unfortunately, it was not to be. I could only fume jealously while my older brother got to go see the film instead of me. I wouldn't get to see Frogs until it showed up on late-night television several years later. As it turned out, that classic poster was a touch misleading: there are no giant frogs devouring helpless human victims. In fact, the only frogs in the film can fit into a human hand, not the other way around. Still, Frogs is full of enough silliness and creepiness that I can (almost) forgive the false advertising.     The family of chemical-industry magnate Jason Crockett (Ray "The Thing With Two Heads" Milland, at his surly best) has arrived on his island to celebrate the 4th of July and several birthdays, including Crockett's own. Crockett may be wheelchair-bound, but he still rules his island and family with an iron will, and expects nature to step in line with everyone else. To that end, he has been haphazardly spraying chemicals on his island in the hopes of reducing the insect and reptile population. Meanwhile, freelance photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott, not yet sporting the mustache that would launch a hundred Louis L'Amour adaptations) is canoeing through the islands' many waterways, snapping pics of the wildlife for an ecology magazine. Little does he know the wildlife is scoping him out in return!     Crockett's family crosses paths with Smith when his canoe is swamped by the boat of fun-loving siblings Clint (Adam Roarke) and Karen (Joan Van Ark). To make amends, Clint and Karen take the soaked and less-than-amused Pickett Smith to their estate. Smith is introduced to Crockett and his clan, and realizes pretty quickly that this is one dysfunctional family. Only the pretty Karen seems genuinely warm or capable of thinking of someone other than herself. The various cousins, aunts, grandkids, and uncles are under Crockett's thumb and take their unhappiness out on one another. Crockett himself admits that they are the "Ugly Rich", willing to poison the wildlife around them as long as it keeps their estate clean and quiet. Tensions are high, and no one is able to sleep at night due to the constant croaking of the frogs that are encircling Crockett's house in ever-growing numbers. Crockett's handyman has been sent out to spray the property, and hasn't been seen for hours. Crockett asks Smith to discreetly explore the island to find the missing handyman, and also to assess the condition of the island itself. Smith's explorations turn up two alarming discoveries: one, that Crockett's chemical spraying on the island has killed large numbers of the island's animal life; two, the handyman has met a grisly demise, his bloated body lying face-down in the swamp.     Smith agrees to keep the death of the handyman between himself and Crockett for the time being, but he also tells Crockett that his pesticides are wreaking havoc on the island's wildlife. Their conversation is interrupted by a scream from the cook, Maybelle, who has found a snake hanging out on the chandelier above the dining room table. Crockett shoots the snake, declaring "Man is master of the world", but subsequent events reveal that the frogs and their ilk don't quite see it that way. Cousin Kenneth, Uncle Martindale, and Aunt Iris all meet grisly deaths by lizard, alligator, and snake, respectively, and finally everyone has to step outside their own self-absorption and realize that the frogs are leading nothing less than a revolt on the humans. A pretty damned effective coup it is, too. Hell, the clever amphibians even manage to kill the phone lines — don't ask me how. Crockett, arrogant and stubborn to the last, refuses to be moved from the estate, so it's up to Pickett Smith to try and get Karen and the remaining members of the family to the mainland and supposed safety. But, just how far stretches the influence of the Frogs?     You might have surmised by now that Frogs is a bit ludicrous, and you'd be right. It also has an ax to grind and doesn't do it subtly. It's one of fantastic cinema's early, heavy-handed attempts to address the '70s burgeoning movement towards environmental awareness. Fittingly, Frogs occasionally played on double-bills with Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (AKA Godzilla vs. Hedorah) a movie which mines the same pollution-alarm territory and actually does feature giant monsters!     Frogs director George McGowan (The Shape of Things To Come, 1979) toiled for the majority of his career in television, and much of the dialogue and interplay between the characters has a made-for-TV-movie feel. However, the film is not without touches of atmosphere and inspired choices. A great moment occurs when a big fat frog hops squarely in the middle of an American flag cake... a foreshadowing of the frogs' ultimate agenda? The occasionally gorgeous cinematography highlights the beauty of sunlight streaming through the Spanish moss-covered trees. Although the great Les Baxter scored the film, there is only a minimal use of music. Most of the time, the only real sound is the constant croaking of the frogs, which lends a nice layer of menace to scenes that would otherwise be mundane. The makeup effects on the corpses, swollen from snake and spider bites, are nicely gruesome.     None of these virtues can quite cover the real glaring weakness of Frogs, however, which is that the wildlife attack set-pieces are generally pretty lame. These sequences involve a lot of unconvincing back-and-forth cutting between, say, a lizard trying to taste the camera lens and the victim flailing and backing away from some unseen attacker. Hell, Uncle Martindale (George Skaff) looks to be easily winning his wrestling match with an obviously drugged (or stuffed) alligator before he just... dies. What Frogs banks on is that the general squeamishness many people have regarding reptiles, spiders, and such will keep the viewer cringing and creeped-out, despite the poor editing. If you're immune to such phobias, it's hard to really do anything but chuckle at the failed illusion that the frogs and their fellow creatures are doing anything other than trying to get away from their wranglers (and this nutty film) and into the nearest woods.     Speaking of those frogs... Considering they are the titular creatures, it's worth noting they aren't responsible directly for a single of the film's high number of deaths. They pretty much just sit and look grumpy and croak outside the Crockett estate. The impression that is left is that they are sort of the 'Dons' of this reptile mafia, with the gators and spiders (and even a giant snapping turtle!) as the various capos and henchmen carrying out the hits. I suspect that if these murderous critters were brought to justice, the snakes and spiders would do hard time while the frogs would merely have to play golf under 'house arrest'.

As is usual with MGM's series of cult movie DVD releases, you basically get a lovely print of the film, but fuck-all for extras. That's pretty much the case for their edition of Frogs. We can't gripe too loudly, when a film like this isn't likely to ever be deemed a classic worthy of four-star DVD treatment (and the disc is dirt cheap). Still, the one extra that is included, the film's trailer, puts forth a mystery that begs an answer: In the trailer, Aunt Iris (Holly Irving) is shown meeting her demise in a pool of quicksand. In fact, stills from this sequence turned up for years in magazines such as Famous Monsters, and I remember seeing it on the initial television airings. Don't believe me? Take a look at the DVD cover. Right in the center, there's Iris sinking into the quicksand. Yet, in this new DVD print, Iris' death occurs differently. (Instead of being herded into quicksand by scores of snakes, she now just runs in panic until she collapses onto the ground, her face all pale and swollen, presumably from multiple snake bites.) How and why did this alternate version of Iris' death turn up in this DVD print? It's not like one death is any more intense or gory than the other, so I can't imagine it would have been a censorship issue. Here is where an audio commentary might have come in handy and might have provided some sort of explanation. Instead, we are only left with the mocking, unnerving call of the frogs: RIBBET... RIBBET... 5/24/09

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