Bad Meaning Good case study #5: 'Frogs'

Wednesday, November 11 2009

In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...

Bad Meaning Good case study #5:
'Frogs' (dir. George McCowan)

Summary:
'Frogs' is a 1972 eco-horror thriller that plays out like a modest, low-rent knock-off of 'The Birds' (which has aged in similarly less-than-stellar fashion) and a decades-in-advance pre-cursor to the somehow even more ridiculous M. Night Shyamalan crime against humanity known as 'The Happening'. It also works equally as a vehicle for a young, strapping Sam Elliott to bare his perfectly manicured and impeccably chiseled chest in all its masculine glory. One might even consider the possibility that his every hair follicle were hand delivered from the gods of hairy-chestdom and custom-placed for maximal female heart-melting effect. I, for one, wouldn't dare deny the plausibility of such a scenario. But I digress...

Elliott plays the thoughtful, mild-mannered Pickett Smith, a freelance photographer documenting the effects of pollution and environmental hazards in Florida's gulf coast. While out on the job and photographing from his canoe, he becomes the unfortunate recipient of a rude waterlogging at the hands of a drunken, recklessly speeding boater named Clint Crockett (played with pompous, asshole-ish gusto by Adam Roarke) who is on holiday at his father's nearby estate. Being the closest thing to an ecological expert in the area, Elliott winds up, in a roundabout way, spending a significant amount of time on the Crockett estate investigating the growth of the local frog population (which has become a major source of annoyance to those living on the property).

It turns out that Jason Crockett (played or rather, "scene-chewed" by Ray Milland), the owner of the estate, has been poisoning the local wildlife with repellents, insecticides and other various toxins in order to keep the frog population at bay. His stubborn insistence on using his wealth and resources to obliterate the frog population at all costs backfires though as mother nature begins to put up a fight and just may put his entire family at risk in the process. Sensing that something is dramatically amiss, Smith tries to talk some sense into the old coot but Crockett will hear none of it and a vicious fight for survival ensues.

Family members and other assorted workers of the estate are knocked-off in increasingly ridiculous and impossibly clumsy death sequences and we're treated to an endless and often tiresome array of ominous shots of brooding frogs seemingly plotting their master plan against the authoritarian ways of the evil rich. There is wildlife EVERYWHERE in this movie. Every variety of creature the Florida landscape has to offer is in on the plan but the implication is that the frogs are the ones running the show. We see snakes, lizards, alligators, salamanders, monitors, tarantulas, slugs, birds, turtles, crabs... Hell, even butterflies; all unleashing the diabolical death-doings of mother nature's awesome fury. There's also something of a leftist, socio-political message at play about how the high-handedness and environmentally insensitive ways of the American conservative class can offer both instant karma and bitchin' repercussions at once (this being a prescient 30 years in advance of the Bush years).

How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
Most of the fun in this movie is derived from watching the more waspy and self-entitled members of the Crockett clan get theirs. And get theirs they most certainly do. We see one man consumed by mossy forest growth, another man poisoned to death by co-conspiring lizards, a woman chased to her death by butterflies, another woman sort of walked-on-to-death by a sea turtle ... All kinds of stupid shit. We also see the senior Crockett blast a snake off of a chandelier with his six-shooter. Sam Elliott delivers the goods as our hero too and in one sequence smashes riversnakes with a boat paddle and then more or less explodes an entire gator with one shotgun blast. It's pretty fuckin' rad.

However, one must be forewarned... This film moves at a snail's pace (I cringed as I just typed that) and nearly EVERY single scene in the movie includes an additional close-up shot on a frog's face as he croakingly plots his next move. It gets totally out of hand and I'd be willing to to bet that 20-30% of the entire film is composed of frog footage alone. I imagine one could construct one hearty cocksucker of a drinking game if they were to have a sip every time a frog were on the screen. Including such a drinking game would make the movie significantly more enjoyable as well so perhaps that's something to realistically consider if you intend to ever give 'Frogs' a go.

In retrospect, I'm finding myself laughing more at the thought of the movie than I ever did during the movie itself. The unrelenting barrage of frog footage gave it a slow-as-mollases, NatGeo quality that undoubtedly knocked some points off of its rating (no joke, it at times visually resembled 'Aguirre: The Wrath Of God' in it's docu-drama stylings and pacing). Truth be told though, there's a lot of charm to this underdog and moreover, a few good laughs to be salvaged from the experience.

'Bad Meaning Good'-O-Meter:
6.8/10

Tags: Bad Meaning Good, Bad Meaning Good Case Studies

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