Frogs

This week in the corner, I am writing about a much different kind of movie than in past weeks...George McCowan's Frogs!  Let's get a few things out of the way.  First off, the poster would lead you to believe that this movie is about giant man eating frogs.  While there are lots of frogs, none of them are enormous, nor do they eat humans.  Secondly, although this movie would be considered a horror movie, it is rated PG and is pretty low on gore and adult content.  So why have this on my blog?  Because this movie follows another very common horror trope in the genre sometimes known as the creature feature.  Creature features have been around almost since the beginning of film making.  Lon Chaney, who was a master of make up, was the wolf man in 1941, Creature from the Black Lagoon was released in 1954, and Frogs was released in 1972.  These are of course not the only creature features to come out, but movies about monsters, creatures, and animals that attack have been made for over 70 years.  So what does Frogs have to offer?  Not much...Frogs is basically about a rich old curmudgeon who owns a plantation of sorts in a swampy bog in what could be Louisiana, Florida or some other kind of marshy area in the southeast.  The rich old man is celebrating his birthday weekend and his entire family has come to "celebrate" with him.  The family doesn't like him much but they all hope to be included in his will so they try to put up with his unpleasantness once a year.  While all of this is going on a wildlife photographer played by a very young Sam Elliot ends up in a boating accident on the water and ends up crashing the old man's birthday party.  What Sam Elliot's character begins to realize is that the old man's fortune has been made through various factories and plants that have been poisoning and contaminating the swamps and bogs for years.  Well it turns out that frogs, snakes, spiders, alligators, and all forms of reptiles don't like to be poisoned and decide to attack the entire family during the old man's birthday party.  This movie is pretty terrible.  But terrible in one of those so bad it's good kind of ways.  Writer Fran Lebowitz actually called this "the best bad movie I have ever seen in my life."  The interesting thing is that I think most creature features are kind of bad.  So why do they continue to get made?  For one they tend to attack a lot of humanity's base fears.  Lots of people are scared of snakes and spiders.  Lots of people are scared of creepy crawlies.  Also human beings mistreatment of the environment has been a hot topic for a lot longer than people realize.  Frogs is clearly conveying an eco-friendly message and this kind of movie was actually very popular in the 1970's.  Godzilla, which may be Japan's most famous export outside of high end electronics, was about mutated wildlife that resulted from the nuclear bomb.  Creature features will continue to be made...some better than others.  Frogs as a film is pretty terrible to watch all by yourself.  But with a few friends and some beer, you could have a pretty fun Saturday night.  You could make a drinking game out of it and take a drink every time there are 3 or more frogs on screen.  You can stream Frogs on Netflix right now.

If you end up watching this with friends or you brave through it by yourself, leave comments below!  Next week I am going to change gears a bit and actually write about a TV show instead of a movie.  I will be taking a look at the first episode of the Netflix exclusive Hemlock Grove.  This series is created and directed by Eli Roth who is famous for his nasty horror flicks Cabin Fever and Hostel.  Hope you come back next week!