Chad

Darkgod

So... it's called frogs but we get killer birds,snakes, aligators, spiders, lizards, and even an aligator snapping turtle./

LiquidSky

"Nonsense, Jenny!" "I want the menu that was orignally planned!" Mr. Crocket was hell-bent on that Forth of July celebration!

One of my all-time favorite nature-strikes-back movies. Dad took me to see this upon initial release. The theater lobby was decorated with hanging moss, etc.


I noticed that the older woman's death is different in the trailer than in the actual film.

rbrown498

^ I think I recall reading somewhere that the DVD has a different death or two than the theatrical, TV, and VHS versions. I'll have to try to find out where I saw that....

I guess that I could pull out my old VHS that I recorded years ago off of TBS--if I can actually FIND it, that is.

Giles

I think I attribute my fear of frogs to this movie.. no, really

LiquidSky

ribbit....ribbit.

LiquidSky

Interesting. The trailer shows Iris but this never happens in the DVD version. I remember there were even photos of this in Famous Monsters.

Giles

[runs away]

I particularily did NOT like the death of



the Iris scene is also one of the still pictures featured on 'Frogs' imdb listing

Undeadcow

Frogs turned out better than I thought it would be but it feels oddly disconnected because reptiles can not make eye contact of emote so many times it just seems as if a bunch of random frogs are randomly jumping around rather than targeting a victim. At times that seems menacing but often times it comes across as absurd.

3onameathook

The film isn't entirely all that bad. It's titled Frogs, but there were other creatures that assissted in killing the humans . Some pretty big names actors in this film. Just one out of many films during that time frame that contained an ecological message for the viewer.

LiquidSky

"We are the ugly rich!"

LiquidSky

My favorite is the hothouse scene. Also, the shot of a frog jumping on that fancy Forth of July cake!

orlmac

I'm sure that part of my love for this film is based on nostalgia and Famous Monsters of Filmland #91 featuring Frogs (including the great cover) didn't hurt my love for it, but I think it still holds up now. I love the nature strikes back theme (maybe we can add that to next year's themes), and for my money I love Ray Milland and Joan Van Ark. Sam Elliott also did very good in this movie. Some of the deaths are a little hokey but some of them still are very creepy to me. I may not have gotten a fear of frogs from this movie but it certainly contributed to my distaste for spiders and snakes.

3onameathook

I can remember the Famous Mosters # 91 it was the first magazine that got confiscated from me in school. After class I went into her desk , and took it back. Frogs really doesn't hold up that well , and is very dated. It was a dawning of pollution awareness, and I guess most of that has faded, or perhaps I've gotten used to all the hoopla.

Deaths may have been a little hokey you can't expect a whole lot more than that for a PG rated film. MPAA was a little more stringent back then. I will admit that I enjoyed the film over all. I didn't find it a bit creepy either on the big screen or tv in the privacy of my home, but it is very entertaining . They did leave the ending open for a sequel , and perhaps that was planned, but never came to be.

LiquidSky

Since Sam Elliott and Joan Van Ark are still around, Syfy should make one.

3onameathook

Hell SyFy doesn't make anything digestable. Only those that could stand the torture would watch crap from them. Besides been far too long ; almost 40 years..........40 years?? Wow. Time does fly. They'd want to bring in a younger audience , and quite frankly all those two actors would draw in are flies.

As I was saying 40 years is far too long to make a sequel; after all who would really look up the first after all this time? Not many from this generation.........at least I don't think so. I would like to see a remake..........gasp!! did I say that? Or should I say a reimaging , and bring the film up to date. Maybe bring that up to an R rating as well to bring in a decent sized audience ; and keep the CGI to a minimum. I might be interested in seeing something like that.

zwolf

Frogs (C, 1972) Eco-horror classic of the nature-in-revolt school. Environmentalist journalist Pickett Smith (Sam Elliott, so young you can't recognize him) is out taking pictures of pollution when his canoe is swamped by rich brat Bradford Dillman, grandson of wheelchair-bound tycoon Ray Milland. Milland's industrial pursuits have been raping the environment and the denizens of the swamp want revenge. It's hard to make much of a "silent spring" case for this toxic swamp, though, because the frogs, snakes, and lizards are thriving and swarming everywhere. And then they start attacking. The drawback is most of the swamp creatures aren't actually all that dangerous so the killings are ludicrous; in one, a guy's smothered in Spanish moss and tarantulas (which aren't even indigenous, much less venomous), and lizards learn how to mix chemicals to make poison gas in another! And the frogs themselves don’t get to do much but spoil the 4th of July birthday cake. Even the butterflies are killers, leading people to their doom. Leeches, caymans, alligators, snakes, crabs, snapping turtles, and I guess fish (one guy’s attacked in a lake by something unseen) all do their best to make the humans miserable. This is a pretty ridiculous movie but there’s something really lovable about it. There’s plenty of atmosphere (lots of shots of the wildlife, and the animal sounds are constant), and no matter how ridiculous it gets it plays it straight. The music score is weird and adds a lot. Goofy as it is, I’ve probably seen it a dozen times.

BobO'Link

This one has always fallen flat for me. I feel it's shot and plays like a lower echelon 70's made-for-TV "horror" type film. It tries hard and has Ray Milland to lend an air of legitimacy, but the others just don't seem to have what it takes to pull off a "studio" release. Even though it's from AIP, which *should* negate the TV feel to a degree, they did many better "B" horror films in the 50's and 60's that make this one feel like a studio in decline. I give it a 2 out of 5 but it's a *very* hard to get 2.

rbrown498

I'm lucky that I grew up in a very small town with only one hardtop theater and one drive-in, because the lack of viewing choices meant that I saw a LOT of movies when I was young. I took in double-features at least two or three weekends every month for a couple of years. Because my theater was the only game in town, the owner could get away with showing older, cheaper movies on weekends for the kiddie crowds. Probably a full ten years after they were released, I was seeing great films like Roger Corman's The Raven, Hammer's Kiss of the Vampire, and Mario Bava's Black Sabbath in a real theater. I discovered early on that I liked almost any movie released by AIP. In fact, I can't think of even one that I saw in the early 1970s in my small-town theater that I didn't like (and that even includes Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs). I made it a point to go see every horror movie that I could, and if it was an AIP movie, I was doubly-deadset to see it. So, it's rather odd that I somehow missed out on seeing Frogs. I remember my friends who DID see it telling me about it (for some reason, their retelling of the film made the scene where the frog jumps on the gramophone sound like the pinnacle of horror), and I was jealous. A neighbor kid gave me Issue #91 of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and it had Frogs as its cover story. I ended up having to tear off the cover (which featured a frog with a human hand sticking out of its mouth) because it frightened me so badly. So, tonight, after nearly FORTY YEARS, I finally caught up with Frogs. And boy, was I disappointed. I struggled to remain awake for the entire length of the film, sometimes pausing it to get up and stretch, or grab a snack, or check my email, or ANYTHING to refocus my attention on the film. I finally made it through, but it wasn't worth the effort. It's not often I see a film with so little to recommend it. Frogs isn't scary in the least, it isn't funny, it isn't really much of anything except endless shots of frogs hopping around, with the occasional snake or lizard shot to try to break up the monotony. You know a film is slow if someone gets killed by a turtle, which indeed is the case with this film. Earlier in the film, someone gets hanging mossed to death--hanging moss just drops all over him, sapping his will to live. And at the end of the film, horror of horrors, star Ray Milland is frogged to death. I don't know if it was the combined weight of the critters that killed him or what. At least they were conscientious enough to turn out the lights after killing him, so as to not waste electricity. Eminently forgettable.

rbrown498

Zwolf, methinks you may have mixed up Mr. Dillman with Adam Roarke, the actor who played Clint in Frogs (and who did NOT have a sidekick named Tattoo).

LiquidSky

clckworang

I was going to post the same thing. The frogs never really did anything! I guess the frog's ultimate strength is being able to recruit other animals to do the work ... and perhaps also teaching lizards about poison.

Trevor

Lots of personal nostalgia with this film.

I remember the trailers as a kid, and so wanted to see it. Saw it on network TV when it got there, I was still a pre-teen and loved it.

My memory is vague here, but I remember watching it one late night with my mom. She is a horror fan to some extent, or at least used to be, and watching channel 20 creature features with her is a primary reason why I'm who I am. But this particular viewing, I think I remember her really ripping the film, pointing out all the laughable moments and how it wasn't scary at all. Well, as a kid with a horror passion, and thinking my mom as a kindred spirit in that regard, her comments really hurt. She was laughing at something that was scary and wonderful to me. I think, subconsciously, I've always held that against her. That probably sounds too melodramatic. I love my mother a lot and still watch films with her. But I still think of that (probably accurate) memory whenever I think of Frogs or similar films.

Darkgod

I read on the IMdb page that it was due to the scene not fitting in with the movie, and was reshot with the animals.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

That's the only thing I got out of it. The frogs were leaders of what was going on.

So how many people watched this from the DVD they bought back when Wal-Mart started up their bargain DVD bin?

<raises hand>