Frogs

Greg McCowan
1972

This revenge-of-nature film from American International pictures is pretty standard fare, but remains memorable thanks to some solid acting and McCowan's excellent use of atmosphere to transcend lackluster character deaths and special effects. Kickass photojournalist Sam Elliot gets caught up in the Crockett family celebration while shooting an expose on the family's pollution plagued island. Old man Crockett (Ray Milland!) is a cantankerous old cripple, proud of his wealth and his shallow gin-and-tonic swilling family. The festivities take a ghastly turn as guests, family members, and hired hands are bumped off one-by-one by the island's resident flora and fauna. Ray Milland and Sam Elliot play brilliantly off each other as they flex alpha-male wills and vie for the leadership of a dwindling human herd. The frogs themselves are frankly not all that menacing, but shot repeatedly, in large numbers, and with ominous music McCowan successfully makes a monster out of a benign amphibian. While the director uses other swamp critters as primal avengers, it's amusing to note that the better scenes tend to revolve around the more harmless animals: snakes and alligators gobbling up bluebloods is a snooze compared to hissing lizards shattering jars of poisonous insecticide on the same victims.