Frogs

Frogs was the first horror film I saw in a movie theater, on its release in 1972. I’m not sure why my cousin Tim and I chose to see Frogs, since frogs aren’t inherently scary in real life or in this movie. Fortunately, the producers thought fit to add in snakes, spiders, lizards, crocodiles, birds, leeches and more to attack mankind. If only Columbus Zoo maven Jack Hanna could have made an appearance! The frogs themselves just look knowingly over the proceedings, like malevolent masters of nature.

Even at my young age, I knew from years of drive-in movies that the American International Pictures logo was a warning of cheap production standards and cheap thrills. Those promises were fulfilled in Frogs, directed in a no-frills way by George McCowan, better known for helming episodes of Barnaby Jones, Starsky and Hutch, and Hart to Hart. He reportedly said this to a Canadian interviewer in 1978: “I do shootouts, car chases, that sort of garbage.” Hmmm … Frog‘s producer George Edwards’ previous two films were the horror titles How Awful About Allan (1970) and What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971).

Frogs begins with reporter/photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott, in his first lead film role, after a regular gig on Mission Impossible) taking photos of trash and environmental damage in a Florida swamp. Yes, the animals are exacting revenge on mankind because of what we’ve done to the environment, one of several such films of the early ’70s. The swamp is owned by the wheelchair-bound, headstrong patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland), determined to celebrate the 4th of July, and his birthday with his family, at his island-bound, swamp-surrounded Gothic mansion. To those who might cringe at the thought of the classy Milland performing in a B-movie horror film, keep in mind he appeared in three genre classics,: X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963), The Premature Burial (1962), and The Thing With Two Heads (1972), as well as directing and starring in the post-apocalyptic sci-fi film, Panic in Year Zero! (1962).

Included in Crockett’s circle of family members and servants are the flighty Maybelle (played with delicious enthusiasm by ex-blues singer Mae Mercer), assistant Stuart (longtime character actor George Skaff, who was also the co-founder of Pace Records) and Crockett’s daughter Karen (the classically-trained Joan van Ark). The large coterie are gradually killed off over the summer holiday; the most inventive of the murders is probably the soul who’s asphyxiated by poison gas, knocked to the floor by lizards in a greenhouse. Through judicious editing, the screaming actors and menacing creatures are rarely seen together in the same shot. Mae Mercer’s shown flailing in quicksand in the trailer, but the scene’s not in the film. There is a great shot of frogs desecrating the 4th of July cake, which should be a metaphor for something — I don’t know what. The weird, electronic music score is by ex-band leader and exotica experimentalist Les Baxter.

It is a hoot seeing Sam Elliott so young. If my eleven-year-old self could have only known, in 1972, that nearly half a century later, I’d be seeing the same actor give one of the best performances I’ve seen in my life, as the charmingly evil crime boss Avery Markham, in the final season of Elmore Leonard’s Justified. Sharply written roles were still in Elliot’s future, but in ’72, some scenes in Frogs are so amateurishly written, you can see the actors trying to maintain a straight face. Milland, though, plays with conviction as if Frogs were a Hitchcock film. He was a pro and, in the proper frame of mind and with low expectations, you might also enjoy this silly, swampy diversion.

—Michael R. Neno, 2016 Jun 30