“The frogs are thinking now, the snails are planning strategy, they have brains as good as ours.”

Justin’s rating: Toad-ally creepy

Justin’s review: Eco-horror movies are a weird, specific breed that had a heyday in the ’70s and only occasionally popped up for a Mark Wahlberg cameo every so often. The idea of nature suddenly gaining sentience and rising up to murder people easily tips into the ridiculous. However, to be fair, the concept has potential to creep some people out, especially if you’re the type to get freaked out at seeing anything move around in nature.

In my experience, thought, these kinds of movies tend to backfire on an audience who might end up thinking, “I wonder how late Home Depot is open and if they still sell flamethrowers?”

An additional downside of these movies is that you always know they come with A Message intended to bum you out. Apparently the message of Frogs is, “Don’t throw a handful of trash into swamps, lest a full-scale reptilian revolt overthrow the human race!”

Apparently nature got its knickers in a twist over some light pollution around a Southern swamp island and orders its minions to swarm the house of a cranky wheelchair-bound coot. Said coot is downright obsessed with his birthday going off as planned, much the same way an eight-year-old considers his birthday the centerpiece of the universe. And everyone puts up with him because they want part of his fortune when he dies. He’s so grumpily evil and obstinate in the face of this crisis that you can’t help but eagerly wait for the moment that he gets a snake up his nose or something.

Caught up in the birthday festivities is Pickett, a tall drink of water played by Tombstone’s Sam Elliott (in his first lead role, without his trademark mustache). Pickett’s a photographer and botanist who believes that people should live in harmony with the outdoors. He’s almost too laconic and pacifistic to be our hero, making me wish we had John Goodman’s exterminator from Arachnophobia taking care of business instead.

The movie hints that this critter uprising is happening everywhere in the area — the world? — but if course it doesn’t have the budget to show full cities paralyzed by a plague of amphibians. Maybe in the remake?

As far as I can tell, the makers of Frogs mostly picked up reptiles by the gross ton, trucked them all to a Florida set, and flung them at the cast for a couple hours. Reportedly, the Holiday Inn where everyone was staying (rightfully) drew the line at allowing the crew to keep the creatures in the rooms. I also love the fact that there was little regard for collecting the critters after the movie was done, as most of them simply escaped into the wild.

This being before believable practical creature effects and CGI, using real animals was probably the only way to go. And it’s this decision that actually gave the movie a more authentic, long-lasting appeal. Those are real snakes, crocs, spiders, leeches, lizards, and whatnot crawling and slithering all over the place. Most look pretty cute and harmless, so the humans have to do a lot to make up for the terror side of things, especially when an adorable lizard started swiping poison bottles off a shelf like a cat might.

Despite the name of the film, the frogs don’t actually kill anyone — they just swarm all over the place, jump on an America cake, and look ominous. Maybe they’re like the mob bosses, calling the shots and ordering hits. The only real laughs I got here were the constant shots of doughty frogs looking upon kill scenes as if they were grimly approving the slaughter.

Mention must be made of Frogs’ soundtrack, which is either completely silent or unleashing genuinely unsettling bursts of noises and notes. It goes a long way to keeping the viewer unsettled while the creepy-crawlies are up to no good.

It’s not a wholly bad movie, but I actually kind of wish it was. Some camp and over-the-top attitude such as would come a decade later would’ve gone a long way to spicing up the slower parts. As it stands, Frogs is as straight-forward a movie could get about beasties slowly amassing a wide-scale revolt and using Spanish moss and bottles of poison to eliminate the humans. It was fine, but one does leave with questions about the actual purpose of the frogs.

Intermission!

• That Frogs title card made me laugh
• Floating garbage is worth several pictures. I think you got a Pulitzer here.
• Drinking and driving a speedboat is a terrific combo
• He throws the reckless boater into the water, nice move
• This family is big on introductions
• Butterflies are really in
• This family gets quite agitated at background frog noises
• Chandelier snake!
• He acts like this isn’t the first time he’s shot a chandelier snake from a wheelchair.
• “I know it sounds strange as hell, but what if nature was trying to get back at us?”
• Frogs love it when kids set off fireworks in their backyard
• The log game: “The boy’s a loser!”
• This is the worst pre-picnic music
• Is the moss eating him alive? I don’t get what’s going on here.
• The lizard knows which poison gas bottles to knock over. But they end up being OK.
• The frog jumping on the Fourth of July cake HOW DARE IT
• The vine choking fakeout
• Yes, flee FURTHER into the swamp! That’ll confuse the snakes!
• Yes, flee FURTHER into the water! That’ll confuse the alligators!
• Yes, flee FURTHER into the lake! That’ll confuse the snapping turtle!
• Sorry kids, you’re orphans now.
• And then his shirt came off. That’s how you know it was serious.
• Yes, give the kids the rifle while you paddle
• The taxidermied heads all making animal sounds