Distribution Co: American International Pictures (1972) (USA) (theatrical) | Anglo-EMI Film Distributors (1972) (UK) (theatrical) | MGM-EMI (1972) (UK) (theatrical).Production Co: American International Productions | Peter Thomas Productions.Only decades later, though, can we recognize that maybe we also deserve our amphibious retribution. When Jason declares "I still believe man is master of the world," we know he is begging for his eventual, slimy demise. But its horror comes, in part, from how naive we were and how cynical and fatalist we've since become. It's the horror movie you didn't know you needed. Already more than 112 species of frog are thought to have gone extinct since 1980 as a result of the human impact on climate change.įrogs is wild. Jason Crockett might not have had the technology and money to get rid of frogs, but we do. What once was a zeitgeisty musing by Sam Elliott - "what if nature were trying to get back at us?" - is now entirely comedic. "Something happened to allow environmentalism's antagonists to stigmatize its erstwhile stewards as unstable alarmists and bad-faith prophets - and to call their warnings at best hysterical, and at worst crafted lies," explains Frederick Buell in his book From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century. After all, the 1970s were a turning point for environmentalism, both a time for the cheesy warning of Frogs and the eventual victory of the Crocketts of the world. It is only a matter of time before he is overcome by the hoard of frogs that have decided, 90 minutes into the movie, to at last get in on the whole "killing humans" thing.Īs absurd as this all is, Frogs is played entirely straight. The rest of the Crockett clan is not so lucky - Jason, who stays behind, is haunted by the animal trophies on his walls that reanimate to roar and (in the case of a fish) "chatter" at him. Sam Elliott only manages to escape by taking his shirt off and bashing a water moccasin with an oar. All the while, a cacophony of croaks rages in the background, like the primal scream of Mother Earth herself.īy the time our heroes realize that nature is taking back the island, it is - spoiler alert - too late. Another person is ambiguously killed by a turtle. One person dies by breaking bottles of poison (?) in a greenhouse. Snakes do most of the heavy lifting, and there are also some geographically misplaced lizards and alligators that get in on the action. Grover, as you might expect, is dead and covered in snakes.Īs many angry viewers have pointed out, the frogs themselves don't actually do a whole lot of murdering in Frogs. While all this hand-wringing about Uncle Sam is going on, Sam Elliott gets roped into doing chores for Jason and is sent to find a guy named Grover, who was tasked with spraying pesticides to get rid of the frogs. You know the Crocketts are going to die because one of them whines, "Daddy, did you know the government is forcing us to put strainers on our paper mill?" Released the same year that DDT was finally banned, it was one of several eco-horror films to come out of the 1970s warning of man's destructive tendencies toward nature - Long Weekend, about a camping trip gone awry, was another. This is a rather dated way of thinking about things, of course, but Frogs is of a simpler era. No matter how much pesticide you spray on your private island, nature will always win! "With all our technology and all my money, we still can't get rid of these frogs," Jason complains to Sam Elliott at this point, and you realize he might be onto something. I should mention that all of this happens with a low, ominous croaking in the background and some very disapproving reaction shots from frogs. Clint and his sister, Karen (Joan van Ark), feel bad, sort of, for flipping Sam Elliott's canoe over, so they take him back to their grandfather's private island, which is infested with frogs (you see where this is going). A man in a speedboat flips his canoe over, and you know this is the bad guy because he has an extremely villainous name, "Clint Crockett" (Adam Roarke). He plays a dashing canoer with the inconceivable name "Pickett Smith," and you know he is the good guy because he peacefully takes pictures of frogs. Importantly, it is a rare clean-shaven Sam Elliott, minus his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid mustache. The first thing you learn about Frogs is that Sam Elliott is in it. Let me take you through the plot, which is insane. Frogs is horrifying primarily as a relic from a quainter time, when it seemed like nature really could strike back, before organizations like the United Nations were issuing reports saying we've done nearly irreparable damage to the globe. Maybe not from an artistic standpoint, or even especially a horror standpoint - the worst scene is probably a man covered in tarantulas, just because imagining how they got those shots makes me squirm.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |