Frogs (1972) Review

WEEK 3: CREEPY CRAWLY CRITTERS

Frogs (1972) Review

Rounding out creepy crawly week is one of the oddest killer animal films I could get my hands on. It’s none-too-surprising that the boom of eco-horror productions occurred after 1975, the year Jaws was released and became a raging success. Frogs came out a few years earlier, and I remember seeing it for sale in a new-and-used video store when I was just a kid, but when I went to buy it, I was dismayed to find someone else already had. Now, all these years later, I finally bought it (on blu ray, no less) and watched it, and I can honestly say, I was not prepared for what I saw.

A photographer canoeing around a swampy island is taking pictures of the various wildlife—most of which is reptilian or amphibian—as well as the garbage and pollution choking the ecosystem. A couple in a speed boat capsize his canoe by accident and invite him to their family gathering on the island. The couple is oddly friendly, and the guy introduces himself as Pickett Smith, but it sounds like he says Pinkett-Smith, as in Jada Pinkett-Smith (no connection as far as I could tell). They arrive on the island, which has a frog infestation. The family has gathered for the grandfather’s birthday, and Smith is introduced to all the family members in the most boring and unsubtle way possible. This is so-and-so; so-and-so, this is Smith. Rinse, repeat, until everyone has been introduced. The grandfather is an extremely grumpy old guy in a wheel chair, and he will stop at nothing to have his birthday party, even when people start mysteriously dying. Smith investigates and finds nature is striking back against the family for polluting the island and trying to eliminate the frog problem with poisons. Once the attack reaches full-tilt, it’s up to Smith to try and save the family.

Frogs is a truly fascinating film. To start off, there are no frogs in this movie. Yes, you read that correctly. Actually, they used toads in place of frogs, but everyone in the movie refers to them as frogs. This movie should not have been titled Frogs. On the cover of the blu ray, there are two taglines (I'm not even going to mention the ones on the poster, just look for yourself) the first: “TODAY—The Pond! TOMORROW—the World!” and the second: “It’s the day that Nature strikes back!” The pond-to-world one is slightly misleading, as is the cover image, depicting a giant frog with a human hand hanging from its mouth. They are not giant, and the toads—I mean, “Frogs”—do little more throughout the entire movie than just sit, or hop, and croak. Not until the very final scene do they attack, but they attack the old guy, who I think just dies from a heart attack and not the “frogs”, which just hop all over him. I’m not exaggerating when I say there is probably a total of ten minutes of footage with “frogs” just sitting and croaking—that’s like a ninth of the film’s total runtime.

The first part of the movie is just bad. There are lots of electronic sound effects (I guess it was supposed to make the frogs and other critters seem scarier) but barely any animal action. “Frogs attacking windows” and “snakes hanging from a chandelier” (actual lines of dialogue) is the extent of the scares in the first half. It’s all about the family and the Smith character, and the acting all-around is atrocious. Nearly every member of the family acts like an asshole, otherwise everyone else is just boring. The couple on the boat turns out to not be a romantic couple, and both of them continue to be overly friendly to Smith. With the girl, it makes sense, because she clearly thinks Smith is hot, but with the guy, it gets weird. He talks about his wife and his football trophies with Smith as if they’ve hung out dozens of times, but they've only known each other for less than an hour. What’s really bizarre is there’s no real reason for Smith to stay. He loses his camera when he falls out of his canoe, and then he just hangs out, idly helping grumpy grandpa figure out what’s going on with the island creatures. It’s in the second half of the film that things go from bad to so-bad-it’s-hilarious.

It’s as if some reptile sanctuary let every creature they had in their exhibits out of their cages and onto the island at the same time. This movie should have been called Reptile Rampage; it would have been a more accurate title. The attack scenes become more and more hilarious with each death (the most entertaining of which involves an alligator, some sped-up footage, and red paint) but the most perplexing death occurs in a greenhouse with some geckos and monitor lizards. A guy goes in and the lizards follow him, somehow closing the door behind them. They topple over a bunch of jars of poison, which fills the greenhouse with gas and kills the guy, leaving the lizards unharmed. This raises two big questions. First off, why would anyone keep massive amounts of poison in their greenhouse, in glass jars placed precariously on shelves where something could easily knock them off? Second, how did the lizards not die from the poison? Are they immune because of the pollution? I have to assume so, because an explanation is never given.

I came up with a theory as I was watching this movie, though it’s never confirmed by the end, so it will have to remain a theory. I think the frogs were in control of the attacking animals the whole time. While the frogs never attack anyone, they’re frequently shown, and being in the title would make you think they’re important. But it seems every other animal imaginable—lizards, snakes, alligators, butterflies, snapping turtles, even birds—attacks the people, while the frogs just observe. I think they had some kind of mind control over them, and were the ones plotting this rebellion against the family.

Frogs might be the most peculiar animal attack film I’ve ever seen. It’s a concept that was doomed from the start, but the way the story is spun makes it so intriguingly bad, I couldn’t help but try to figure out what the filmmakers were attempting to accomplish. It’s sort of a cautionary tale about the dangers of polluting and nature fighting back (a well-tread concept that’s common in these sorts of films), but there’s more to it than that. If anything, Frogs is worth many good laughs.