Rating: Summary: Kill!... Ribbit-Ribbit ... Kill!! Review: I saw this movie at the theatre after seeing the poster in the lobby. I thought it was about giant mutated frogs. I was wrong. My disappointment was short-lived however. "Frogs" was an excellent popcorn chompin', M&M munchin' good time! I was 10 then. I saw it again 30 years later and still loved it. Ray Milland is great as the old booger (Jason Crocket) who basically hates nature, which is no more than a nuisance to him. His only concern in life is his annual 4th of July bash. His relatives have all come to participate, not knowing that a holocaust awaits them! Sam Elliot (sans mustache) is the environmentally friendly photographer who gets stuck with Crocket's family of oddballs on their little island. Joan Van Ark is good as the grandaughter. Anyway, one by one the humans are picked off by smart, vengeful swamp-critters. Snapping turtles circle and attack! Alligators move in for a bite! Tarantulas weave their webs of death! Lizards dump poison onto one guy's head! All the while the frogs sit there, croaking!! Croaking!! Will Sam Elliott and Joan Van Ark survive? Will Milland's character get his just desserts? Will those frogs ever stop making all that infernal racket??! Watch it and find out...
Rating: Summary: Worth Seeing Review: I would have to say, this is one of very few movies, that actually made me scream out loud. This film is not the best in the world, but its not the worst either. Some scenes Mystery Science Theater 3000, could have fun with. The end of the credits with the frog, and the hand sticking out of his mouth, that was good, I liked it, and wasn't expecting it either. I thought all the actors were good in it, including Ray Milland (from one of my favorite movies: "Panic in Year Zero", he was the director and star of the film). The cinematography was good in "Frogs" even through, you could see the shadow of the cameraman and the camera once in awhile, definitely in one running scene you could see the shadow of both the camera and the cameraman. All in all, I give this movie a 4 Stars. It was pretty good, and worth seeing. Check It Out!
Rating: Summary: The Worst of the Worst Review: I, like most people even taking the time to read these reviews, have a love for horror movies of all kinds. I have a soft spot for cheesy horror movies, and usually, the cheesier it is the better. In my search for good chessy horror, I've come across some movies that just make me shake my head and think, "What the hell..?". This movie makes me wonder seriously if man isn't wasting his potential by making films such as this. I was going to go deep into the story and plot points, but then I realized, no. Just no. This film is horrible in every sense of the word. It could have been handled better. It does have an interesting "Nature Strikes Back" storyline, but the execution and events that occur null it completely void. Lizards(were they lizards? It's been awhile) kill a man in a greenhouse by tipping over containers of chemicals, killing him with the poisonous gasses that result. At the end, frogs use a telephone and call one of their future victims. Now, bypassing the stupidity of frogs using phones, how did they know his number? Search a phone book? Also, a lady is killed by turtles. Friggin' TURTLES. I have nothing against the people that gave this good reviews, because hey, I think Troma movies are great and I also think Burial Ground is an excellent zombie movie. But I have to wonder if somehow I got a different version when I rented it.
Rating: Summary: Death by Amphibian? Review: In this low-budget and prosaic animal-vengeance flick from 1972--which actually predates the similarly themed but higher-quality JAWS by three years--aged Ray Milland portrays Jason Crockett, an affluent, curmudgeonly, anti-environmentalist money-monger who pays the ultimate price for his predilection for polluting the ponds on the periphery of his property when the critter citizens revolt. Ubiquitous TV actor Sam Elliott plays young, hip nature photographer Pickett Smith, who tries to alert Crockett to the fact that something is askew in the lakes and marshlands on the Crockett estate. And in a nutshell, that's the plot of 1972's FROGS. Milland is usually a pretty good actor (check out his delightful performance in Roger Corman's 1963 film X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES), and Sam Elliott generally isn't bad for a TV actor. But in FROGS, Milland falls pretty flat, chewing the scenery a bit too fervently as he tries to play the part of a cranky misanthrope, and Elliott makes it pretty clear that he IS a TV actor, delivering his lines with soap-opera-like melodrama. The acting ability of the other cast members is a mixed bag, with cute Joan Van Ark, sexy Judy Pace, and pretty Lynn Borden parading around in skimpy outfits for no other reason than to provide eye candy for the target audience of hormone-laden adolescent males. If a swamp full of vengeful frogs and toads orchestrating attacks on humans sounds like a scary concept to you, then FROGS just might be your bag. But be forewarned that the titular amphibians do not themselves commit any acts of violence or murder. It appears that they are, instead, the ringleaders in this revolt against homo sapiens--specifically, the Crocketts--and they somehow get the other cold-blooded denizens of the lakes and swamps (that is, animals like snakes, salamanders, geckoes, alligators, and sometimes even spiders) to do all the "croaking." How or why they are able to do this is never explained (or even implied), so it makes it a wee bit difficult for the discerning viewer to suspend disbelief. FROGS certainly does not live up to the potential of its tagline: "Today the pond; tomorrow the world." Special FX? Non-existent. The frogs just sit with their air sacs pulsating as they croak a bit, and the other animals hiss a bit and crawl "menacingly" towards their human victims. The only genuinely creepy shot is an extreme close-up of the face and fangs of a tarantula. Some critics and fans have cited this film as one that is "so bad that it's good." Though there are certainly many horror films that fall into that category, this one misses that mark by miles. It would be more accurate to describe FROGS as "so bad that it's NO good." The DVD from MGM offers a pretty good widescreen transfer of the film, and it includes a trailer. But it would be much more enjoyable if the disc offered some other extras--like maybe a behind-the-scenes featurette, some bloopers, or even a self-deprecating commentary. Paying for ONLY this tepid film makes one feel like the money was just thrown to the frogs--er, that is, the dogs.
Rating: Summary: Appaling... DUH!!! It's Supposed to be! Review: Just like it says on the back of the box..."Best bad movie ever!"..It isn't supposed to be a good movie. This one goes right up there with classics like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter and Dead Alive. Watch it with the mindset: "I am watching this because it sucks intentionally" and you should be okay.
Rating: Summary: Absolutely appauling. Review: Let's cut right to the chase by saying that this movie reeks, and should never be viewed by any human being. However since I'm a reviewer here it's not that easy. Sure it's a blast to make fun of and there's lots of material to work with, but this is the review on the movie itself, not how much fun you can have with it. The "plot", if you can stretch the word that far, is about a wealthy man who has been wantonly destroying wildlife in the Florida Bayou finds that a swarm of murderous frogs is closing in on his own mansion habitat. Having said that, Frogs is a dumb little horror movie, and how much you enjoy it depends on your tolerance for wooden acting, silly death scenes, and lots of stock footage of reptiles and amphibians just sitting around. Since I have a since of humor, that spells F-U-N for me.:) In all seriousness however, The Crocker mansion rests on a secluded island in the middle of a swamp. After freelance photographer Pickett Smith is nearly killed while canoeing, by drunken idiot Clint, Smith is invited up to the family estate. There he meets Clint's "cute" sister miserable grand-pappy and about 12 other idiots who act just obnoxious enough for us to cheer when they eventually get eaten up. Even by the standard of B-movies, this one has a whole lot of blah-blah scenes. Dialogue such as "Where's Maybelle and Grover?" and "What happened to Iris?" permeate every scene. In order to best showcase the whole "frogs" theme, each and every sequence in the movie is followed by a shot of dozens of slimy, writhing frogs. They never really do anything, but we know they're there, just waiting. The clan has gathered at the mansion to celebrate several birthdays, drink a lot and do a lot of complaining about how 'loud those damn frogs are'. Nasty old grandpa has decided to poison the frogs, but since his handyman has yet to return from the creek, it's safe to assume everyone's gonna die, and in very silly ways. Snakes hang from chandeliers, lizards take over the greenhouse, and still - the frogs watch...and wait. Now here's a shocker, are ya ready? The Frogs, curiously enough, don't commit any crimes. They are basically by standards, and do absolutely nothing to harm anybody!!!! They leave it up to their buddies to do all the dirty work, while the icky amphibians simply sit in the background, enjoying the havoc. These rich snobs get snakebit, tarantula cocooned, chomped by big turtles, sucked on by leeches, and even poisoned by the world's smartest monitor lizards. Up until the final scene, when they hop gleefully on a corpse, the frogs are merely the ringleaders. To put this into the simplest terms possible, this "movie" is dumb! If Frogs is a movie you plan to seek out, I certainly couldn't talk you out of it.
Rating: Summary: The best DVD I've got so far! Review: Man, this movie's awesome. The animals are good, the acting's good it's just plain awesome! Matthew Hill here. Best Part: A tarantula gets on his hind legs and shows his fangs: first regular vision then close-up. 2nd Best part: An old man wrestles a gator.
Rating: Summary: "Frogs" is NOT the dumbest movie to "leap" from the 70's! Review: No, Bill, that singular distinction belongs to the classic camp of "Night of the Lepus", the story of marauding giant bunnies in the American southwest. Compared to that turkey, "Frogs" is Shakespeare!
Rating: Summary: MST 3K where are you now??? Review: Ok, this is a good bad movie.But, there is one problem with this film, there are NO frogs in it. We see toads,but not one little frog in the whole film.
Rating: Summary: Juicy, Fun Camp Classic! Review: Okay, so having "frogs" as the major killing machine in a movie isn't all that terrifying. But in this very well-made B-movie, the film makers have added all kinds of dangers created by nature. Each of the main characters are destroyed by an avenging Mother Nature. A group of relatives and visitors gather at the isolated plantation estate of Pappy Ray Milland, a sourpuss and snarling SOB if ever there was one. It's great fun trying to predict how each of the shallow characters, except the hunky Sam Elliott will perish. By far the best death sequence is that with Lynn Borden, the older woman who likes to hunt for butterflies. Dressed in a beautiful pink and white summer frock, she's finally done in by snakes, quicksand, vines. She's shown in wonderfully bloody make-up, her hair all mussed, dying in the swamp. Black actress, Judy Pace, is also a hoot, in very 70s mod fashions. Sam Elliott gets to strip off his shirt in several scenes, giving us worshippers of male beauty a cheap thrill. The DVD edition doesn't have any extras but the picture quality is terrific, with all the moist, gleaming greenery of the swamp, dripping with danger, caught beautifully. Milland hams it up but you sense he really wasn't acting. Probably thinking of that Academy Award he received in the 40s for his performance in "the Lost Weekend"--and now performing in a low-budget American-International classic. Cheer up, Ray! "Frogs" is still being watched and enjoyed while "The Lost Weekend" is forgotten, except by old movie buffs and nostalgia addicts.
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