An amazing movie, if you get down to it: this nature-gone-mad eco-horror movie not only evidences a notable lack of directorial talent, thespian ability and narrative skill, but is also oddly boring and padded and without any truly convincing action — BUT: it is also amazingly riveting and fun and watchable. It is truly a tangible example of dichotomy at work, and deserves its reputation as one of the worst watchable movies ever made.
Trailer to
Frogs (1972):
Alone in the opening scenes, as we watch mustacheless nature photographer Pickett Smith (Katherine Ross's husband Sam Elliott of The Man Who Killed Hitler and then Bigfoot [2018 / trailer], Ghost Rider (2007 / trailer), Tombstone [1993 / trailer] and so much more) paddle through the swamps taking photographs nature and pollution, we already know that the production is going to be lacking: Italy-born cinematographer Mario Tosi* (11 May 1935 – 11 Nov 2021) has notable difficulty at keeping the shot in focus. Luckily his ability to focus does improve, even if his camerawork is pretty generic and not much better than that found in an assembly-line TV movie.
* Mario Tosi, who started his career lensing things like Sinderella and the Golden Bra (1964 / movie in 5 minutes) and How to Succeed with Girls (1964 / full movie) before working himself up to movies like Swamp Country (1966, with R.G. Armstrong) and the ridiculously bad Terror in the Jungle (1968 / music) and Frogs, eventually went on to do better jobs on better movies, like Buster and Billie (1974 / trailer) and Carrie (1976 / trailer). He was also a painter; an example of his work is directly below.
The script for Frogs comes from the hands of Robert Hutchison and Robert Blees (9 Jun 1918 – 31 Jan 2015), the latter of whom was an industry stalwart whose low-brow credits go back to Sweater Girl (1942 / full film) and who had highlights like Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1972 / trailer, co-scribed with Jimmy Sangster) and Robert Fuest's classic Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972 / trailer), but the uncomplicated script to Frogs is pretty underdeveloped, illogical and populated above all by stereotypes and ciphers.
Strangely enough, for a nature-takes-revenge movie titled Frogs, the story never actually sees the frogs do anything but hop about or watch or croak, leaving the various rather incompetently staged deaths to snakes, lizards and salamanders, gators, turtles and crabs, tarantulas and, unbelievably enough, apparently sentient Spanish moss. The scriptwriters, not to mention those who greenlighted the script, had to have been stoned to think that what they had written was in any way fit to be filmed.
Not that the plot is all that complicated: on the family mansion on the private island of the filthy rich Crockett family, where the various mostly less-than-likeable and definitely not environmentally conscious family members and hanger-ons have gathered for the annual birthday celebration of the clan's unpleasant patriarch Jason (Ray Milland [3 Jan 1907 – 10 Marc 1986] of The Swiss Conspiracy [1976]), nature suddenly starts doing away with one person after the other. Not exactly a plotline that requires a lot of creativity, but one that could offer a lot of possibilities — all of which are squandered by the slumming scriptwriters.
American poster by Diener-Hauser
* Milland, an actor whose main concern was generally money and not quality, followed his star turn in Frogs with the even more reviled Thing with Two Heads (1972 / trailer). Oddly enough, one of his most WTF movies, the ridiculously entertaining Old Dark House thriller The House in Nightmare Park (1973 / trailer below), has become virtually forgotten by now.
The House in Nightmare Park (1973):
The lack of talent that the script seems to evidence, unbelievably enough, is truly outdone by the incompetence and directorial inability displayed by the movie's spectacularly untalented director, the busy TV auteur George McCowan* (27 Jun 1927 – 1 Nov 1995). He fails to bring any sense of urgency to this rather bloodless and not very violent GP movie, and any suspense that builds is intermittent — as in only when a character wanders away to be killed — and of the kind that draws laughter instead of clenched teeth.
* Aside from Frogs, McCowan directed around nine feature films during his career, none of which are as memorable as this disasterpiece. He killed the Magnificent Seven franchise with the flop that was The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972 / trailer), made the shot-on-video and virtually unseen paranoia thriller To Kill the King (1974, with Susan Tyrrell), helped destroy Jan-Michael Vincent's career with Shadow of the Hawk (1976 / trailer), and subsequently crowned his lackluster career with the psychotronically terrible but fun Shape of Things to Come (1979 / trailer).
** The beautiful Judy Pace (of 13 Frightened Girls [1963 / trailer], the WTF Three in the Attic [1968 / trailer] & its sequel Up in the Cellar [1970 / trailer], Cotton Comes to Harlem [1970 / trailer], the overly familiar Cool Breeze [1972 / trailer], and more) plays Bella Garrington, the model girlfriend of one of Jason's grandsons. She and the Crockett family's Afro-American staff, Maybelle (blues singer Mae Mercer [12 Jun 1932 – 29 Oct 2008] of Pretty Baby [1978 / trailer], The Swinging Cheerleaders [1974 / trailer], and Dirty Harry [1971 / trailer]) and Charles (Lance Taylor Sr. [18 May 1915 – 6 Sept 1984] of Blacula [1972 / trailer]), leave midway for civilization, but while we never see exactly what happens to them, we later learn that they obviously didn't make it to safety.
Not from the film —
Mae Mercer with Sonny Boy Williamson live:
Ray Milland, on the other hand, hovers indeterminably amidst the thespian resolve of Pace and Elliot: if his turn as the almost militant, bullheaded and loveless patriarch is in any way convincing, it's because he obviously hates being in the movie and often seems drunk. Somehow, his seething inebriation lends credence to his refusal to let killer kritters and a few dead family members stand in the way of his annual July birthday celebration. His demise is long in waiting — for that matter, all deaths are long in waiting, as they are always preceded by an interminable and anything but suspenseful tease period — and is also, in all truth, the most anti-climactic.
"I'm as heartbroken as anybody over this tragedy, but I won't let anything interfere with today's schedule!"
Jason Crockett (Ray Milland)
Jason Crockett (Ray Milland)
Of the kills, the one that would have impressed the most is probably the one found in the first cut of the movie and (partially) found in the original trailer: the addle-brained butterfly collector Aunt Iris (Holly Irving [16 Jul 1917 – 28 Dec 2002] of The Crowded Sky [1960, with Anne Francis), was originally killed by a big butterfly pulling her into quicksand, but cooler heads seem to have prevailed because by the time the movie hit the cinemas, her death was reshot using less-WTF leeches and a rattler. Still, as with the fates of most of the family members, you can't help but laugh as she dies. (One wonders why the filmmakers saw it as acceptable to have sentient Spanish moss working together with tarantulas to kill family member Michael Martindale [David Gilliam of Severance (2006 / trailer) and Gunpowder (1986 / trailer)] but found the idea of a giant butterfly unacceptable.)
Regardless of the how anyone dies in the movie, however, rest assured that the deaths are neither frightening nor even competently filmed. The demise of Jenny Crockett (Lynn "Miss Arizona 1957" Bordon [24 Mar 1937 – 3 Mar 2015] of Hellhole (1985, with Edy Williams), and Black Mama White Mama [1973]) stands out in particular as a good laugh, but rest assured that there is not a single shown death that doesn't instigate either mirth or groans.
Okay, Frogs is truly terrible and boring movie that should perhaps better be titled An Exercise in Incompetence. There is nothing about the movie that should make it enjoyable, that should make you want to bother to watch it. But it is one of those rare movies that manages somehow, well, if not to transcend its countless faults, then to at least present them in such a road-kill manner that the movie, as boring as it is, becomes mesmerizingly watchable. And the more people watching it at the same time, the better. Just don't forget the beer and smoke.
German poster by Lutz Peltzer
BTW: At least one online source claims that for the NYC release of Frogs, the movie was paired with one of the most ridiculous Japanese Godzilla movies, the ecology-minded Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971), a.k.a. Godzilla vs. Hedorah, a movie famous for its scene in which the Smog Monster, having tossed Godzilla in a deep pit, proceeds to cover Godzilla with sludgy shit. A Godzilla movie worth watching.
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster:
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