Weirdhouse Cinema: Frogs

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
And I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to wander
into the swamp and get a little bit muddy. Rob.
The movie that we're doing today you picked out because
of some recent Florida brain inspiration.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
That's right. I was in Florida over spring break and
it just got me inspired. I just really wanted to
do a Florida movie. Maybe it was driving through Tates
Hell or Driving out through tates Hell, I'm not sure
which of the two. But I started brainstorming. I was thinking, Okay,
what are the Florida movies, and we may come back

(00:49):
to some of the other ones that were knocking around
in my head. But then I started thinking about and
reading about a particular nineteen seventy two film titled Frogs.
When I looked into it, I realized, this is a
movie that is set in Florida, It was filmed in
Florida in its entirety. This is the film we have
to do. So this is our first Nature strikes back film,

(01:14):
but it's also our first Florida film. I think it's
our first Nature strikes back film.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I guess I can't think of another one. But I
find it hard to believe we've made it this far
on weird house cinema without doing a Nature strikes back movie.
The classic Nature strikes Back movie has one sort of
giant animal that represents nature's revenge against humanity for I
don't know, for having cities or for polluting nature or
something like that, for doing something that is violating the

(01:42):
sanctity of the natural world, and then we're punished by monsters.
This movie has more of a distributed strike back policy.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I would say Nature strikes Back
films tend to go either a swarm route or a
war by champion route. This was a huge deal, especially
in the seventies. This was a decade that gave us
Kiranha Prophecy. That's a mutant bear film, Alligator, Grizzly, Empire

(02:12):
of the Ants, the Swarm, Killer Bees, Willard, that's a
rat movie, ben Orca. That's a killer whale movie. Squirm
that's an earthworm movie. That's excellent. That's a Georgia movie,
though maybe we'll come back to that eventually. And of
course we also got Jaws out of this, so out
of nature strikes back, the summer blockbuster itself was born.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Okay, yeah, well, so I would say with Jaws, I
don't particularly see the element of like humanity provoking the thing,
like you know you're seeing. The Jaws would be a
very different movie if it started by showing like radioactive
barrels in the surf and then everything else was the same.
So I think in Jaws, Jaws weirdly is like the

(02:55):
best movie of the bunch, but it's also like the
least defensible from a moral point of view, because it's
just like, well, this shark's just it's just an animal,
but it's huge and bad.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, there are.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
So many movies like this, And I was actually just
thinking while you were listing those movies there, have you
ever seen the William Shatner tarantula attack movie Kingdom of
the Spiders.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
I don't think I've seen it in its entirety, but
I'm sure I caught part of it on TNT back
in the day or something.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
I was trying to remember if that one has any
element of like nature being if the spiders are provoked
by humanity in any way, or if they just start,
you know, multiplying out of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, I guess in general you might think of Nature
Strike's Back films, it's been sort of being the cinematic
outpouring of the public awakening to the damage that we
are doing to the planet and its natural environments and
the creatures and the various species that make it up.
Though given that we're dealing with genre films and often

(03:55):
be pictures, it's it's sort of a I don't know,
you often get the impression it's kind of a sense
of like, oh, well, let's explore this in B movies
so we don't have to think about it anymore, you know,
Or here's the imagine revenge. Okay, now we're good. Now
it can go back to the polluting ways.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, I would say that it actually comes in a
couple of waves. So you see something that is like
a precursor to Nature Strikes Back films in the nineteen fifties.
But there it's all atomic panic, like it's the the
contaminating human behavior that precipitates the giant animal attack. Is
some kind of nuclear testing. It's nuclear research, nuclear waste dumping,

(04:36):
nuclear weapons testing, and you know, for quite understandable reasons.
That was on people's mind in the nineteen fifties. But
I think there was a shift in the nineteen sixties
away from the contamination being nuclear and nature to being
primarily chemical in nature. And I think this probably had
something to do with you know, Silent Spring came out

(04:56):
in the sixties and that sort of alerted people to
ideas about pesticides and other chemical contamination of nature. So
the strain of nature strikes Back movies you start seeing
in the sixties and seventies, I think is more like
that there's like a pollution of various kinds. There's smog,
there's like something gross running out of a pipe, and
then you get giant alligators that eat people or something.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, And I would say that ultimately the film we're
going to discuss today, Frogs is it's probably one of
the more intelligent versions of this in that it is
not a single incident causing a single incident of nature
strikes back. It is, as we grow to learn throughout
the film, seems to be a global reaction to not

(05:40):
a specific event or even a specific specific technology, but
to our way of life, And in that it ultimately
is is perhaps a more nuanced commentary on our relationship
with the natural world.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, ye, I like it. It's the way I was
thinking of it. Was its bio maximum overdrive.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, oh yeah, I read somewhere it wasn't in reference
to maximum overdrive. But I know Stephen King saw frogs,
and I believe he was a fan of it. I
think now I remember what it was. It was something
about when he was riding the Shining, he was trying
to decide between doing topiery animals and a hedge maze,
and frogs was what convinced him that it needed to

(06:20):
be topiery animals chasing people. Something about, like you look
around in their animals everywhere.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
I guess, wait, wait, what was the other option? You said,
topiery animals and a hedge maze, But the book has
a hedge maze, because doesn't the book have both? I
mainly remember the topiery animals from okay, from the book.
I don't remember there been It's been a long time.
I was basically a kid when I read The Shining,
But yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I believe it was lacking a maze, or at least
the maze was not the sexual threat. And then Kubrick
and his adaptation decided to go full maze.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
That makes sense. Okay, yeah, but the topiery animals, they're
like bushes that are shaped like lions and stuff that
literally like they come after Danny in the book to
attack him.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
And somehow the frogs helped inspire King to go in
the animal bush direction.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Very good, very good choice, Stephen. Okay, so I guess
we've done enough setup to hit the trailer audio. Florida's
Natural Wildlife Rebels against Humanity in its early seventies environmental
horror film. Let's hear that audio.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Suppose nature gave a war and everybody came, the snakes,
the birds, the lizards, and frogs, and suppose that the polluters,
the species on earth called man, were the enemy in
that war.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
I still believe man is master.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Of the wood.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
And then suppose that the human race lost.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Oh yeah, that's that's so good. I'm gonna grab my
thermis here of Florida tapwater that I brought back from
the beach. Delicious. All right, Well, let's talk about some
of the people involved in this film. Let's start where
we tend to start. Let's start talking about the director,
and it is a Canadian director. This time, which on

(08:37):
one hand you might say, well, why not a Floridian,
Why is a Florida Floridian not directing this thing? But
then on the other hand, I feel like it makes
sense that a Canadian would come to Florida and perhaps
that would that would enable this like leaning into the
ravenous nature of the Floridian wildlife. You know, not that
you don't have some pretty rough and buggy environments in Canada,

(09:00):
certainly do, but I don't know. In my back of
my mind, I'm thinking, like, here's this uh, this Canadian
director George Mcowan showing up and he's just like, oh
my god, this this place is hellish. This is the
perfect setting. It seems like the Wow, the wilderness is
just trying to consume me at all times.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Right, Mosquitos, the size of hummingbirds, just like gaiters at
every turn. You can imagine the the like sort of
the anthropologists level of distance and removed from the from
looking at Florida like that, but also with it with
an added sense of horror in this lush, wet, humid
environment that's full of beasts.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, because I love Florida and Florida has a tremendous wildlife.
But I've I've gone on nature walks in the heat
of the summer in Florida before, and it is. It is.
It is kind of frightening at times. Oppressive might be
a better word.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
You know. Sometimes this movie has a ridiculous amount of
large you know, tetrapod animals in various scenes, like you know,
a number of frogs that I'm sorry is implausible, but
that's okay. But but the other end of it is
that it doesn't have enough insects. They are like scenes
where people are eating outdoors and it's July and Florida

(10:17):
and they're not being swarmed by insects. You don't see anything.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't find anything about when they exactly
filmed this in Florida. It is set on the July fourth,
the weekend or something, But there's no way this is
this is July in Florida. Like there's again, like you said,
these scenes with people outside, there would just be bugs everywhere,
Like you wouldn't be able to film it. They must have.
They must have filmed this in one of the cooler

(10:42):
months for sure.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Also, there's not a steady It's like sheen of sweat
on all the actors at all times.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Oh yeah, that's funny too. Yeah, they're all they're all
relatively dry, except when they're supposed to be wet from
having fallen in the disgusting lake water. Yes, but okay,
So who's this guy? George McCowan director all right.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
He lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen ninety five. He
did a lot of TV work. He also directed the
nineteen seventy nine sci fi film The Shape of Things
to Come, starring Jack Palance. I think I watched a
riff track version of this, or maybe it was something else,
but I've seen this when one form or another.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
It just makes me think of the line in the
Mortal Kombat movie The Paul W. S Anderson one from
the nineties where Sheng Song says no for a taste
of things to come. Do you remember that scene the
drums going and the guy with the sock on his
head gets shattered.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's a great sample too. So now here's the main
thing I knew mcgallan from. He directed a lot of,
if not all, the episodes of the Canadian broadcasting series
Seeing Things, which ran on CBC from nineteen eighty one
through nineteen eighty seven, and as a kid in Canada,

(11:56):
I remember watching this show with my family. He was
basically a murder mystery of the week show with a
psychic reporter doing all of the crime solving.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
And funny, I clicked through to this on IMDb. I've
never seen this, but immediately it just showed me a
gigantic picture of the guy from Scanners.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yep, Louis del Grande, a Canadian actor best known as
that bald, mustachioed guy whose head gets blown up in
that one scene blown up by John not John Saxon,
Michael Ironside.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Michael Ironside.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, yeah, both very strong names, you know, but yeah,
he was also he was also in this show and
was one of the creators of this series Seeing Things.
It had a really snazzy theme song. That's the main
thing I remember from when I was a kid and
I was trying to figure this out. Scanners and Seeing
Things both debuted in nineteen eighty one, both about psychics,

(12:52):
both with this same actor. But I don't know how
the connective tissue between the two shows worked. I always
kind of assumed that this dude's had blew up in
Scanners and He's like, I can turn this into a
six season series on CPC, and pitched it as such.
I suspect that might be how it went, but I
don't know. The timing is very close.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Wait, there's no heads blowing up in the show. Is
just that he would be playing a psychic of some kind.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
You mean, yeah, he would like try and solve a mystery,
and then he'd get like a premonition, he'd get like
a vision, and then he'd keep solving the mystery, and
then there'd be another vision that seemed to be how
things worked. And I remember digging it for some reason
as a child, but I was like in kindergarten.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Wait, if he's a psychic reporter, how does that work
at the newspaper? Like can he just get a vision
and then report that in his column or does he
have to source it somehow?

Speaker 2 (13:42):
You got to get a second source on that. I
think that's the standard AP route to take. All Right,
writers on this piece, getting back to gooting back to
Frogs here, Robert Hutchison and Robert Bleese. Not much really
to report here, but Bleeze wrote a bit for TV
Project UFO and he wrote Doctor FIBs Rises again so

(14:04):
that's worth noting.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
I think several listeners have asked us to feature doctor
Fibes on Weird House at some point.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
So yeah, maybe we'll have to come back back to that,
all right, But let's get to the let's get to
the main beefcake in this particular movie.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Well, it's our hero. The character's name is Pickett Smith,
and he is played by the one, the only, the stranger,
Sam Elliott.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
That is right. Yeah, so Sam Elliott born in nineteen
forty one, very much still active and you know, getting
Oscar nominations and the like in recent years. But at
this picture, he was only thirty one years old. He
was just full of handsome and swagger, occasionally shirtless and
with no mustache whatsoever. So you're if you're afraid of

(14:48):
seeing Sam Elliott without a mustache, I don't know. I
guess you might want to steer clear of this picture.
But there's nothing to be afraid of. He's still the
Sam Elliott you know and love. He's still got that charm,
he's got that swagger. He was previously in a string
before this. He was in a string of TV movies
and TV series. He had a bit role in nineteen
sixty nine's Butch Casting and the Sundance Kid as his

(15:11):
card player number two. But this was one of his
early starring roles.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
He's so handsome in this movie. It's hilarious.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, I mean, he's just really cool in the film,
like he's There are a lot of other performances in
the film that are maybe a little bit more mixed.
Either they're too hammy or they're too dry, you know,
they're a little bit too non actory. But Elliott just
strives with confidence through this picture and you buy everything
he's saying. Every scene he's in. He helps hold the

(15:44):
film together.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
There really are no characters with any complexity in this movie,
but I would say that the characterizations in a very
shallow horror movie way, are very fun. They're like good
in that two dimensional sense or one dimensional what's the
term there a one dimensional sense? Like it doesn't have
character complexity, but it has very well drawn shallow horror characters.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah. Sam Elliott is not a cowboy in this nor
is he a philosophic bouncer like we would see in
nineteen eighty nine Roadhouse. But he is a freelance photographer,
nature photographer, and that is it's kind of like being
a cowboy. So he still has that kind of free
range and vibe when it works.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah. Yeah, he's a loner. He doesn't need anybody's help.
He's the strong, silent type. I mean, most of his
lines in this movie barely register on if you were
to look at an audiogram of them. You know, the
character says something to Sam Elliott and he's.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit monotone, I guess,
But yet there's still a lot of personality there. I
don't know he's able to pull it off of where's
I mean, that's probably the key here. That's why he
went on to become such a cinematic icon.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Oh yeah, I mean he's just got like pyramids of charisma.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah. So we should note that he's really busting out
all the nineteen seventy two fashions in this one. He
spends a lot of the time in the film strolling
around in an all denim wardrobe, so denim long sleeved shirt,
denim pants, no belt, and the pants are just are
so tight that he's essentially naked. Like if he had

(17:23):
a set of car keys or a set of house
keys in his pocket, you could have taken a still
from this picture to your local Low's or home depot
and they could have reproduced the key for you.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yes, yeah, you're wondering, like, are those jeans or is
that just body paint?

Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah? Exactly. All right. We'll have more to say on
Sam Elliott throughout this episode, but let's get on to
the villain of the piece. Not the frogs, but Ray Milan.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
He's perfect. He's just this grumpy, nasty, hateful old creep.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah yeah, wealthy patriarch of this Floridian family hates Nate
unless it's looks good on a wall in his trophy room,
that sort of thing. Very much thinks that nature should
be crushed under the heel of human progress and wealthy excess.
So it's again a very cardboard role, but he does

(18:15):
it well. Milan another screen legend. He's in a ton
of pictures and TV shows over the years. His biggest
roles were probably nineteen forty five is The Lost Weekend,
nineteen fifty four's Dial In for Murder, nineteen forty fours,
The Uninvited, but he also did some really choice genre
picture work as well. He was in seventy threes Terror

(18:35):
in the Wax Museum, and he was in Roger Corman's
nineteen sixty three film X The Man with the X
Ray Eyes.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
I've watched this movie on mute before. I've been thinking
we should maybe come back to it and watch it
with the sound. It's pretty fun, or at least looks fun.
I don't know what they say.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, I did read that apparently Raymonlan did not enjoy
making this picture. Yeah, he wore a hairpiece for it
and was like sweating constantly, and I think actually left
the production early. So there's a pivotal scene at the
very end, which I think they had to depend on
a lot of body doubles for.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Oh, it's like the Marlborough Man, Not of this Earth, right,
he got mad at his prosthetics and the shooting conditions
and just left. But they're like, yeah, we'll work around it.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
But maybe that's I mean, he's so good in this
Perhaps part of it is he was using his actual
irritation and rage at being stuck in Florida doing this picture.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, So he plays this guy named Jason Crockett, who
is the grandpa of this giant family who provide most
of the characters in the film, who live in a
mansion at the side of a I don't know if
it's a lake or a river. It's in the swamp
in Florida. And I don't know why exactly you would
decide to live at a lakeside mansion in a swamp

(19:55):
in Florida if your main character traits well, I mean,
I guess his main character trait is just that he's
rumpy and he hates everything and everyone. But on top
of that, his next major character trait is that he
hates nature. Yeah, well, what are you doing out there?

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah? I mean, I think you'll find examples of this
everywhere though, Right, you know, somebody builds a mansion in
a swamp or and then expects that nature is just
going to cooperate with your presence and the degree to
which you've unbalanced the immediate surroundings. Yeah, all right. Next
actor of note, Joan van Ark is in this playing

(20:31):
Karen Crockett, one of the Crockett children in this family.
She was a Knatz Landing actor who is also in
nineteen seventy seven's The Last Dinosaur.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
Yeah, I guess here we're getting into the segment of
the cast where there are a lot of cousins. I mean,
as the tarantulas and gaiters and frogs swarm in this movie,
so does the movie swarm with cousins. There are too
many cousins and you lose track of the cousins. But
Karen is one of them.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, yeah, you get him confused. I couldn't keep all
everybody straight.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
But she's part of the Crockett brood here. She's one
of the many cousins. And this actress, Joan van Ark
I was looking her up. She did a lot of
TV work. She did like soap operas and some mainstream
TV stuff like that. The same year she was in Frogs, though,
I found that she was also in an episode of
The Night Gallery. It was an episode called The Ring

(21:21):
with the Red Velvet Ropes.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know this one, Rob, I don't know this one.
You mentioned. This one's a boxing one.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, so the premise is there. Oh, I've forgotten the
main actor's name. There's a guy who plays a boxer
in it, who is either right before or right after
a match, I don't remember. He's like in his locker room,
and then somehow he gets magically transported to this eerie
other dimension with a hotel in it where he is
approached by Chuck Connors and his wife played by Joan

(21:51):
van ark and they are trying to convince him to
box Chuck Connors in this other dimension. And I don't
know why. I think there's a twist ending. It's probably like, oh, oh,
he was in purgatory or something, you know, one of.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Those Ah, well, you know you know who it is.
I just looked it up. It's Gary Lockwood, playing a
central character in that Night Gallery episode.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
So I don't know. Wait, who's Gary Lockwood?

Speaker 2 (22:12):
He was in two thousand and one of Space Out
to See he played doctor Frank Pool.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Oh oh, okay, all right now yeah, well so he's
punching in this one.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
All right?

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Oh but one last thing. Joan van ark I also
found a credit where she was apparently doing some voice
acting in Fallout four. Like she plays several characters, including
some character named doctor Roslin Chambers. You remember her, I don't.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
I don't remember her, but I played for but yeah,
good for her voice acting money.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
So it's funny she was in Frogs. But then we
also have, you know, plenty of audio of her talking
about synths and stuff.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
All right, let's hit another member of the Crockett family.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
He does in number two.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, this is Clint played by Adam Rourke. This guy
basically a Brooklyn tough guy actor who did a lot
of work in the sixties, especially in this plays a
speed boat driving beer chugging meathead son of the Crocket patriarch.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
He's like the uncle character in Napoleon Dynamite, right, Like
he's obsessed with his former football career and he goes
around trying to bully people and just like he seems
to want to be the alpha who dominates all of
his other cousins.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, and is just just waiting for the day when
he can inherit something from Grandpa.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
That's right too. Yeah, he's like, we got to play
our cards right to get stuff. But like I remember
there's a scene where he starts saying, you know, I
got to play my cards right so I can get
that money when Grandpa dies. But the thing he's explaining
by saying that is why he's got to be out
in the boat drunk on beer all day. So I
don't know why, Like that's what he thinks Grandpa expects

(23:48):
of him in order to get his inheritance. I will
also say in this movie. Sometimes Adam Rourke sort of
looks like a Baldwin.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah. Yeah, at times he does have that bald one look.
All right, who else we got? Lay out some more
Crockets for us.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
He'll go, okay, cousin number three, we got Jenny crowt Oh, wait, no,
I think this is not a cousin, but for all
intentsive purposes, she's a cousin. She is. I believe the
Jenny Crockett is married to Clint in the movie. If
this matters, you're not going to keep track of this,
But it's played by Lynn Borden. Lynn Borden did some
TV and B movie work. She was in Walking Tall

(24:20):
with Joe Don Baker, the original one in the seventies,
and I found she was in a begrimed drag racing
movie starring Peter Fonda called Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. I've
never seen this one, but it's a seventies racer film.
She was also part of the main cast of a
sixties TV show called Hazel, which looks like a horrid

(24:41):
in color sixties leave it to Beaver type show. It
appears to be about a high housekeeper named Hazel played
by Shirley Booth. Who is apparently just like borderline omnipotent,
like she can solve every problem. I think this used
to be a type of TV show where there's just
like a magic person who is very wise and can.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Do every sort of a bewitched kind of a thing.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
Then well, except I don't think she's actually magic. I
think it's you know, the other version of this, where
there's just like a character who's just very wise and
knows what to do about everything. Okay, gotcha, Now, I
guess we're gonna skip over a bunch of the other
cousin actors. I looked up a lot of them and
didn't really recognize anything they had done. There was one
actor in this movie, though, when I started digging into

(25:24):
her work, I think she's really worth a mention. It's
a fairly small part in the film, but the actress's
name is May Mercer, and she plays a character named
may Bell who works in the household staff in the movie.
And May Mercer wasn't just an actress. She was actually
a blues singer. And I looked up her music and
she was an excellent blues singer. So she lived from

(25:47):
nineteen thirty two until two thousand and eight, and I
found a couple of recordings of her music from the
sixties on YouTube. One is a song that she performs
with a blues harmonica player named Sonny Boy Williams called
Careless Love, and I think this is from nineteen sixty five,
which is fantastic. Another recording I found of hers was

(26:07):
a song called Sweet Little Angel, also really good. And
so I was trying to get some bioraphical information about her.
I found her La Times obituary from when she passed
away in two thousand and eight. So apparently she was
born in nineteen thirty two in Battleborough, North Carolina, to
a family who worked as tobacco sharecroppers, and she started
singing in church when she was a teenager, and then

(26:29):
ran away to New York in nineteen forty seven to
become a professional singer, and she became successful, not just
in New York, but eventually internationally. She got well known
as a blues performer in Paris. Like I was looking
through Google books and I found her name turning up
a lot in issues of Jet magazine from the nineteen
sixties on the Paris scratch pad, where she seems to

(26:52):
have been like a very recognizable figure in the Paris scene,
so she was based out of Paris. She sang at
a club called the Blues Bar, and then later she
actually ran the club. But she also would tour Europe
sometimes with a group called the Keith Smith Climax Jazz Band.
She also has a couple of acting credits from the sixties,
but it looks like she started acting a lot more

(27:12):
in the nineteen seventies, and it's not just stuff like frogs.
She was in some hit movies. She was in Dirty
Harry with Clint Eastwood, and in nineteen seventy one she
was a producer on a documentary film about Angela Davis.
So she passed away in two thousand and eight, but
I will say her music's really good, really worth looking up.
May Mercer may spelled m Ae.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
All right. Well, you know another actor who brings some
much needed diversity to this otherwise undiverse film is Judy Pace,
who plays Bella Garrington in this born nineteen forty two,
still around mainstream TV actor and film actor of the day.
She appeared in this film on the heels of Brian Song,

(27:56):
which is a famous football film. If you've ever been
in or around football culture, This one is often held
up and I think maybe I've seen it and I've
just forgotten all of it. But it has James Kahn
and Billy D Williams in it, so it's got a
solid cast.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
I've never seen it, but I know it's one of
those movies that people talk about, you know, makes the
football boys cry.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those films that you
are legally allowed to cry while viewing. This is one
of the few times in some circles where where men
are allowed to cry.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
So I will say Judy Pace and Sam Elliott, I
think are the two most likable actors in this movie.
I mean, Raymland is good too, but he's playing this nasty,
hatable guy.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, you're not supposed to like Raymonan, right, right right.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
She and Sam Elliott, though, are just just lovely and wonderful.
They've got great charisma and the scenes they're in. She
plays I think the girlfriend of one of the cousins,
I think one of the cousins that we haven't talked about.
But she's there at the mansion with the family and
it's otherwise obviously this is like and you know, all
white southern family and I think the implication is that

(29:02):
Grandpa is racist and is giving her the side eye,
but she has a very like eye roll posture against
Grandpa and the others.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, they never really overtly explore this area, and to
a certain extent, that's probably for the best, given the
you know, the way a picture of this period might
have handled it. But it does show that there was
there's a lot of potential in this picture as well,
Like what if they had really gone in like a

(29:31):
almost you could almost gone into like a Jordan Peele
direction with this, with this sort of picture, you know,
there are a lot of interesting cultural elements on the table,
but in this picture you got to save room on
the table for the frogs.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
So yeah, I mean, yeah, the frogs are the real star.
And I think it's literally true that I think the
frogs get more screen time than any actor in this film.
I think so like, there's more time where we're just
looking at cutaways of frogs hopping around or close ups
of bullfrogs than and you know, I don't know, than
seeing Sam Elliott on screen.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
You can imagine the director watching different cuts of the
film and being like, I don't know, I think we
need more frogs in there. More do we have more
of that great frog footage that we got, We got
some more alligator snapping turtle, got some more lizards, Let's
get it in there.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
This is maybe one of those movies where the second
unit director is the real director.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, all right. Another big name to mention here is
the composer on this film, Less Baxter. So despite all
the other elements of the film, I have to say
that when I was Less Baxter's presence, that kind of
sealed the deal for me. So let's start by reminding
everyone just who Less Baxter was. He lived nineteen twenty

(30:43):
two through nineteen ninety six, and it's pretty much the
godfather of exotica music. So if you've ever tuned into
in for some like retro nostalgic, lounge or tiki music,
you've probably listened to the music of Less Baxter. You
have not look him up on your streaming source of choice,
most of his materials out there, and it's really good stuff.
It's just really great, easy listening music. If you want

(31:06):
some sort of like nostalgic you know, kind of you
know again, kind of a lounge tiki vibe. However, that
whole genre has nothing to do with frogs. Don't watch
frogs thinking you're gonna get that kind of music. It's
not an exotica score in the slightest. So, first of all,
Baxter was no stranger to doing film scores. He'd done

(31:31):
quite a bit of work in the film score business
over the years, mostly b movies. For instance, he scored
such films as X the Man with the X Ray
I S that we mentioned earlier. He worked with names
like Roger Korman and William Castle. He scored Doctor Goldfoot
in The Bikini Machine in nineteen sixty five, the Dunwich
Horror in nineteen seventy. He did nineteen sixty three's Black Sabbath.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yeah, he scored a bunch of AIP movies American International Pictures.
I think we haven't talked about that yet, but this
is an AIP movie. So like a lot of the fifties,
sixties and seventies Roger Korman movies were AIP movies. You know,
all the Edgar Allan Poe movies that Corman did and
stuff like that, but it wasn't just horror. So you know,
AIP released and Les Baxter did the did the music

(32:16):
for you already mentioned one of them, of course, the
peak subgenre of film innovation the bikini movies of the
nineteen sixties. Like, it really doesn't get more creative and
subversive than you know, the Ghost in the Invisible Bikini
and films like that.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
So Froggs is notable because it was Baxter's first entirely
electronic score, So that was the thing that really got
me excited about it. So Baxter was already into the
electronic sound. He'd worked with an early electronic organ called
the novachord in the very early sixties, and he put
out an album called moog Rock in nineteen sixty nine,

(32:53):
which is a synth powered, easy, easy listening album that's
this is quite good. I was just listening to it
yesterday while putting are some notes. Frogs, however, takes things
into equally synthy, but certainly more terror driven territory. So
it has a lot of like eerie synth chords going on.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
It doesn't actually a lot of it is not very musical.
There's not much melody to the music in the film.
It is more like synthesizers producing almost a sound that
is somewhere between, you know, sort of crickets or cicadas
and like servos worrying inside a robot.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, yeah, so it's a it's an interesting score, and
that's probably one of the reasons that I don't think
this was ever released in full as an album or anything,
though I know there have been at least there's been
at least one compilation of certain pieces from Baxter's soundtrack work,
so it might show up there, but as far as
I know, there is never a like a or there.

(33:50):
At least there has yet to be like a Lime
Green Frog's vinyl release where you get the full less
Baxter soundtrack.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, all right. I just wanted to mention a couple
more names that I happen to find something interesting about
as they came up in the credits there. It is
impossible to get into all the cousins in this movie,
but one of the cousins I also wanted to mention
is this actor named George scaff who plays Stuart Martindale.
He's an uncle or a cousin or something, but according

(34:19):
to IMDb, he had a small part in The Exorcist
to the Heretic, which is a wonderful connection in Frogs.
He's kind of a sketchy le Van Cleef style cousin.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, not nearly as intimidating as all angel eyes, but
but yeah, has that kind of look to him.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
I mean, he always kind of looks like he's hatching
a sneaky plan.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah, because he is. He's like he's like a long time.
You get the impression that he like he has he's
earned his place in the family. You know, it's like
it's more about loyalty than blood, certainly when it comes
to the Crockett patriarch here.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Yeah. Another actor is Lance Taylor Senior, who played Charles.
He also he works for the family in the movie,
and he was in Blackula the same year as Frogs.
He also did some TV work on shows like The
Mod Squad, Sandford and Son, and Police Story. But then
one name that came up in the credits that I
thought was interesting was Gene Corso, who did sound effects

(35:17):
for the movie, and he also did sound effects and
sound editing for some very mainstream films that would come later,
such as Star Wars and New Hope, Phantasm, Predator, and
Deep Star six. Because all roads lead back to the
nineteen eighty nine underwater.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Movies, well, you know, it was frogs that got him
work in all those pictures. So he gave him his
demo reel of all the awesome frog sound effects right
from this picture, and they were like, let's get him.
This is how we imagine the sonic universe beyond our world.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
You know, a number of sound effects from this film
did really stick with me. And it wasn't just the
frogs croaking or the gator's bellowing move. It was also
the sound of when the giant frog sort thumping against
the glass in the scene when Sam Elliott and Raymonland
are like talking in private about what's going on on
the island and suddenly you just hear this kind of

(36:10):
tunk tunk, and what's happening? Well, that's frogs at your window, buddy.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
All right, well, let's let's jump into this picture here.
Let's talk about the plot, all right.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Well, the opening credits, it is, as we said, it
has this score by Less Baxter, but it's very light
on things that are recognizable as melodies. Instead, it's ominous
ambient electronic sounds. While Sam Elliott paddles around the swamp
in a red canoe basically just doing it for the gram.
He is out there in the in the canoe taking

(36:50):
pictures of everything, and I mean like it in the
kind of way that you don't actually see real photographers
doing it, where he's just like aiming the camera in
every direction and taking pictures all over the place, like Robi.
I know, you know, you know a bit of more
about photography that you kind of have to like set
up a good shot. You don't just sort of like
turn the camera in every direction.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, like there, No, you don't see Sam Elliott here
like holding himself in place by grabbing onto a branch
and then taking several shots at the same thing. It's
it's a much more casual affair.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yeah. One of the funny things is the way the
title comes in. So Sam Elliott's he's wandering around the
swamp taking photos. He's in the canoe, and then there's
a close up on a frog. The frog ribbits twice
and then you get sound effect and then Frogs. The
title comes in and all of the credits are in
a really funny font that's like a blue what would

(37:47):
you call this font? I feel like it's.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Say, blue drippy horror font is what it is.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Yes, that's on the title for Frogs. But I mean
the rest of the credits that are just like listing
people's names. I feel like it's a font that I
saw I've seen in other like sixties and seventies movie credits,
but it looks kind of like comic sands.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
It's not exactly, Yeah, it's something like Times American International Pictures, so.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Exactly, But I don't know. For some reason, the credits
and this were making me laugh a lot, Like I
liked the quotation marks are like some of the actors
just get a name credit, you know, with Sam Elliot
and so forth. But then there's one part where it
says and Adam Rourke as so called Clint. It's got
these quotation marks around Clint that I found very funny.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
For some reason, I also liked how they keep they
keep giving these credits over pictures of various reptiles and
amphibians nature and it kind of implies that that snake
is Adam Rourke as Clint, Like, yeah, I don't know, Yes,
this is kind of a weird juxtaposition.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
This is, yeah, this is our water viper. His name
is Clint. But anyway, another thing, there are way too
many animals in the swamp. It's just panning around. There's
just animals everywhere. And I know Florida is lush and
its wildlife is bountable, but no swamp has this much wildlife.
It's just snakes. Everywhere you turn.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
It is a lot of snakes and a lot of
frogs and toads. This movie is just jam pat with
reptiles and amphibians, and in fact, it's one of the
things that's worth watching about it. A lot of times
I just enjoyed watching really good footage of reptiles and
amphibians either moving about in a natural way or certainly
later in the picture, invading human spaces.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot of that.
I mean, I guess I don't know why I'm saying
there's too many. I mean, what I want there to
be fewer reptiles in this movie. No, I mean, I'm
just saying, like at the very beginning, when it hasn't
yet introduced the idea that the island is being swarmed
with reptiles because nature is striking back, it seems like
a ridiculous amount of animals.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
But I think the question you need to ask Joe
is could it possibly have more?

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Right? Yeah? Well, well, speaking of beasts, actually does have
more because it's not just the reptiles that are the
beasts in this film. Looking at Sam Elliott in these
opening credits, he is just an off the charts cool beast.
Like he's like I said, he has so much animal charisma.
It's funny. Yeah, look at this dude.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah. And again I was prepared to be creeped out
by lack of a mustache, because I often find that's
the case with iconic mustachioed actors. Is you see him
without the mustache, it's like, what are you doing man
with that giant lip or a giant four lip area.
But no, he's just as just as charming without it.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
So he's paddling around the swamp, so first he's taking
pictures of animals, but then after that it seems like
he's mainly taking pictures of litter. There are just sort
of barges of litter that are, you know, clogging up
the byways of the swamp. So I would say this
movie has an example of something that's actually a kind
of common problem with set dressing, especially in lower bud movies,

(41:01):
which is the lack of a history to the objects
you're looking at. And what I mean by that is
the garbage in this movie that is littering the swamp
looks incredibly fresh. All of the paper garbage is still
crisp and white, and the cans are clean and they're
not like oxidized or covered in mold. You know, it's
been pointed out that one of the great innovations of
those beloved late seventies sci fi movies like Blade Runner

(41:24):
and Alien and Star Wars was that they made spaceships
and the future generally look lived in, meaning dirty, worn in,
and worn out, as opposed to what had been, you know,
the previous style for futuristic sci fi, which is like
everything is clean and fresh and the spaces look like
nobody's ever been in them before. In Frogs, I must

(41:46):
accuse them of having failed to make the trash look
lived in.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, I guess part of it is that this film
was filmed in its entirety at Eden Garden State Park
in Florida, which is in Santa Rosa Beach, which I
haven't been there, but now it is definitely on my
list of places to go. You can you can look
it up Eden Garden State Park, you can visit it,
and you can you can. You can be married here.

(42:11):
Oh you know you can. You can a frog wedding, Yeah,
you can. You can paddle around in canoes, you can
do everything that that our hero does in the film.
But it makes me suspect that perhaps it was not
the best place to catch actual footage of real litter,
like you know, even at the time, it was maybe
just really well cared for. And so yeah, they had

(42:32):
to bring their own litter for this shoot, for this
support part of the film.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
I can't stop thinking about a wedding at this place now,
Like you could walk down the aisle to the cricket servos.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, get the big old house that features into this
and and all the outdoor scenes. It's all at Eden
Garden State Parks.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
So the ring bearer is an alligator. But so uh,
several things about the trash here. Also. One of the
things is do you think Coca Cola paid to have
their logo shown among all the trash and the swamp
it's there.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
I don't know. I mean, it's product placement even if
it is litter.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yeah. Also, one thing that's funny, as the swamp here
has the single piece of movie garbage that best represents
ultimate squalor the discarded plastic baby doll, you know the
trope I'm talking about. Yeah, Like that's that's how you
know that the place is really abject in a film.
Is it's not just litter, it's not just trash, it's
it's a discarded baby doll.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
It's interesting too, given that here in Atlanta we have
dolls had trail yeah, which I know, I know you've
been to as well, where an individual has has taken
to using found garbage from the park itself and in
many cases toys and baby dolls and recreate them, like
rearrange them to create art in the natural environment. And

(43:52):
it works. But part of that is it's stuff that
was already there. He's not bringing in baby dolls, right,
and and indeed, I will advise everyone please do not
bring baby dolls into parks to create things. Also, don't yeah,
don't bring like Christmas ornaments in on your nature trails
and just start decorating Christmas trees on the nature trail. Yeah.
I saw that over the break And granted, you know,

(44:16):
people need things to do during the pandemic, and you
know they're getting more into nature walking, but but don't
bring out a bunch of Christmas garbage into the onto
the nature trail and decorate something like, let's keep the
let's keep the artistic expression to a limit.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
You can decorate trees at home, trail.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah, decorate trees at home all you want, but I'm
here to see the actual trees. M hm, doll said.
Trail is fine though.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
Okay, anyway, that's just the opening credits. We get Sam
Elliott taking pictures of all the trash in the swamp.
Then we immediately cut to Jerks in a speedboat and
this is a couple of cousins here, a couple of
the main cousins. We get Clint who is Adam Rourke again,
and we get Karen who is Joan van Ark, and
they're cutting around the water in a powerboat and Clint

(45:01):
is chugging a cold one while driving. Yeah, anyway, I
don't know if it's supposed to be that Clint is
just a bad boat driver in general, or if it's
because he's been drinking the beer. But he does not
see Sam Elliott in his canoe and he just drives
right by him, capsizes him, and Sam Elliot's all wet,
and of course Sam Elliott is not amused. They circle

(45:22):
back and they give they give him a ride and
they say, you know, we'll tow you back to the house,
which is a big old mansion with a waterside backyard,
and they invite him to stay for the fun and games,
which sounds kind of sinister. Yeah, and it is not
subtle with the frogs at all. Like, you know, we
get to the dock and it's just cutting to frogs constantly.

(45:43):
You know, the characters say a couple of lines cut
to frogs and they're just sitting there with their eyes
big ribboning and the you know, the throat sacks bulging,
and then they're like, hey, would you like to stay
at our creepy mansion? And then the frogs.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
But yeah, the frogs are massing, and yeah, there is
a an overwhelming sense that the frogs are watching.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yes, so we learned some things. We learned the characters' names.
Of course, Sam Elliott introduces himself. His character's name once
again is Pickett Smith. Okay, and Adam Rourks Clint and
Karen Joan van Allen is Karen, and so Karen takes
Pickett Smith to meet Grandpa Crockett. They also meet a

(46:24):
guy named she introduces as my cousin, Michael Martindale, one
of the mini cousins. This guy looks kind of like
a fascist pool attendant, Like he's got this cool sort
of I don't know, like single color resort wear outfit
with a big collar. But he's also got the cool
hand Luke sunglasses.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
But then, my god, the Pickett Smith chest hair. Like
everybody in this movie wears their shirt unbuttoned a few
buttons down, and Sam Elliot's chest hair could be put
in a ponytail. It's unbelievable. But anyway, so there's an
introduction scene we meet Grandpa Crockett. He is ornery from
word one. He saw Sam Elliott paddling around and taking pictures,

(47:06):
he says, and he does not appreciate the taking of
the pictures. He's like, there's a sign out there says
private property, and he says that it's illegal for Sam
Elliott to have been taking pictures. I don't know why
that would be illegal, But we learned that Sam Elliott
in fact is here as a private freelance photographer, actually
he calls it a photographer, and he's taking pictures of

(47:29):
pollution for an ecology magazine. And the funny thing is,
so he says this, and this gets cousin Michael immediately
going on about frogs. So he's like, I've taken pictures.
I'm a freelance photographer for an ecology magazine. And Michael's like,
take any pictures of frogs lately? I saw the biggest
bullfrog earlier, and it just makes you wonder, like what
other topics of conversation? Cousin Michael will try to steer

(47:52):
back to the bullfrog anecdote. You know, somebody's like, would
you like to put on some music? Hey, speaking of music,
have you ever heard what a bullfrog sounds like? I
got the biggest bullfrog. But we also learn from this
conversation that Grandpa Crockett has been spraying poison all around
his property to try to keep all this disgusting wildlife

(48:12):
at bay, because there is nothing worse than animals, and
so he's been using he's been using I guess poisons
and insecticides to the absolute max to try to put
an end to it. And it is not working. But anyway,
so Sam Elliott and Karen go back to the house
and then there's a funny moment where Sam Elliott who
again is a freelance photographer for an ecology magazine. He

(48:36):
has to call his editor immediately from the Stude's house.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Well, you know, the freelance in can be a little lonely.
Sometimes sometimes you just check in with your editor just.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
To say hi, Oh, that's a good I didn't think
about it like that. Maybe he's just being polite and
actually he's calling somebody to be like, send help, I'm
at this creepy house. But of course the phone doesn't
want because that's a standard feature of Nature Strikes Back movies,
is that our technological infrastructure fails us when the animals
begin to rise up.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Yeah, the frogs are I guess we never see them
actually cut a phone line, but it's implied that they're
out there doing it.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
Yes, So anyway, in the meantime, we get a little
walk through to meet a bunch of the rest of
the cast. We meet Ginny, who is played by Lynn Borden.
This is Clint's wife who she's showing off some cute
drawings by the kids. She seems generally irritated. She is
short tempered, and she is irritated by the news that
Clint is wet from the water oh yeah, because we

(49:35):
didn't mention that Sam Elliott pulls Clint into the water
when they go to help him out of the water.
I guess is revenge for capsizing his.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Canoe kind of smacks him one too, I think, yeah,
thank you.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Yeah yeah. Then we also meet aunt Iris, who appears eccentric.
She enjoys trapping butterflies and a glass bell jar, and
that lust for butterflies will be her undoing later on.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
Yes, it will.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
We meet cousin kN who is another cousin who has
no identifying features whatsoever except that he's another one who
cannot button up his shirt. I guess the only thing
interesting about cousin Kenneth is that he is the boyfriend
of Bella Garrington, who is played by Judy Pace. So
I said, you know, other than Sam Elliott, the most
likable actor in the movie, and I think she and

(50:20):
cousin Kenneth they're supposed to be an item. And like
several other characters, Bella Garrington here seems dressed a little
warm for July in Florida. She's wearing like this kind
of long sleeve long pants like rock star outfit when
we first meet her. Also, did you notice that. When
we first meet cousin Kenneth and Bella, they are playing

(50:41):
with a weige aboard.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
I miss that.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, it's on the table between them. They've got their
hands on the what do you call it, the planchette,
the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
What spirits that. Maybe they're trying to get messages from
the frogs or something.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
It's just spelling out ribbit on the board.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it means. But so Sam,
I'm Elliott, and Clint then take showers to wash the
lake off, and then there's a great scene where they
just stand around toweling off and talking about Clint's football days.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Yeah, because that's all Clint has, or the old football days,
the beer, the speedboats, and the dream of one day
inheriting some money from the patriarch.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
That's right, So Grandpa Crockett, and then there are other
uncles and cousins that I didn't even get into yet,
but too many to talk about. So Grandpa Crockett assembles
everybody for a buffet lunch on the lawn. And this
is another scene that in reality would be swarming with insects.
I've been to Florida in the summer, but of course

(51:38):
it's not, or at least we don't see any insects.
We do cut away to frogs a lot. But I
liked how this buffet lunch is complete with at least
five different kinds of liquor that we can see on camera,
and a bunch of logo facing bottles of coke. So
again I'm wondering what's going on there. But we see
Gordon's vodka, we see some kind of scotch, and then

(51:59):
multiple glass decanters with other liquors in them.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
I have to say it's refreshing to see forward facing
labels on beverage bottles in a motion picture, because at
times they can get a little obnoxious where you like,
come on, movie, I know you don't want to show
me that that's a Coca Cola or show me that
that is you know, this other brand of a beverage.
It gets a little two precise at times, so I'm

(52:24):
happy to see the beverage logos here change.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah. Oh, also the scene has some good Ginny chewing
Clint out for drinking a fifth of vodka every night. Yeah,
But somehow conversation just keeps coming back to frogs everybody's
trying to talk to so she's like chewing him out
for drinking vodka. But somehow this gets related to frogs.
And then Grandpa says to Sam Elliott, you see more

(52:47):
frogs than usual this year. And Sam Elliot's like, well, yeah,
sometimes animals overpopulate, but they'll die off by next year.
And Grandpa, of course is like, what are you some
kind of ecologist? And then and there's broader discussion on
why frogs are bad and what would be the best
ways to kill.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
Frogs, And this is all great because it's ultimately leading
up to something like, why is Grandpa even remotely tolerating
this stranger here who has you know, already seems to
have unsavory connections to environmentalism. Well, it's because he has
a need of him. He has a task for him.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
That's right. So Grandpa Crockett wants he takes Sam Elliott
aside and he's like, I want you to take a
look around and investigate the frogs, apparently so he can
put the family's minds at ease about frogs. I think
there's plenty more cutaways to frogs, Ribert Ribot. But then
also we get a little secret meeting on the side
where Grandpa also wants Sam Elliott to go looking for

(53:46):
his professional frog executioner, Grover, who had been sent out
earlier that morning to spray for frogs, but who never returned.
And when he sends Sam Elliott out on this mission
to find Grover, Grandpa's like, do you want to take
along a gun? He's just got a room full of
guns and animal heads mounted on the wall, and he's like,

(54:07):
you want one of these rifles? And of course not.
Sam Elliott is far too cool to shoot at a
frog with a rifle.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
And he also lays out a sick burn on Grandpa's
trophy room. He's like, no, I don't believe a I
don't believe a frog head would much improve the space
or something to that effect.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Yeah, except he says it in fewer words somehow, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Yeah, And and you know it's got that Sam Elliott
charm to it, so it doesn't it doesn't feel particularly thorny.
You know. Again, he just he just plays it so
cool in this film.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
I wonder Sam Elliott, I wonder if he just like
went through the script with a red pin and he
like took every time his character spoke and like reduced
the number of words in the line by half or
even more. You know, he's he's very laconic. Yeah, okay,
So anyway, Sam Elliott, you know, he wanders through the
woods and he stumbles across a big canister of poison.

(54:56):
And then this part's great. There's like a parade of
day animals of every kind. So you see dead frog,
dead snake, dead eagle, and then like I thought he
was going to come across a penguin next, but then
it just gets into a lot of frogs and snakes
and eventually finds Grover face down in a puddle. Is
he alive or dead? I guess he is. Whatever you

(55:17):
are when the script says you're dead, but you are
obviously still breathing.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, well the movie makeup says he's dead though, because
he had like a big old chunk taken out of his.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
Face, right, and his face is blue.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah yeah, so actually again, stress, you know, this film
is not particularly grizzly. It is actually righted PG. So
any scene like this, it's not as horrific as it
would be in other film. It's not as say a
horrific as Squirm is. You have a lot of really
really gross special effects to drive home Nature's vengeance. It's

(55:49):
pretty tame in this film, but it works, you know,
It's it's shot and presented well.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Yeah. Yeah, the gore is relatively tame. Yeah, though some
sometimes the deaths like if you were to imagine them,
the implications are really awful.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
But Yeah does a good job with that, you know,
and implying the death at least non frogged related deaths.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Anyway, But anyway, so we come back to the house
and check in with the other characters that there was
a nice little scene with May Mercer who plays Maybell
who works at the house, and then Judy Pace, who
again plays Bella Herrington. They have a nice little scene
where they share a drink together and they sort of
commiserate with a great big eye roll about the family,
and we find out that Bella Herrington's birth name is

(56:32):
also Maybell. But anyway, we get to all of the
floristocrats who are sitting around in the mansion gabbing, and
Grandpa says he thinks Grover deserves to be dead in
a ditch. They have not gotten the news that he
is dead in a ditch. They're just imagining I wonder
if he's dead in a ditch, which will turn out
to be true, And he's like, well, I hope he is,

(56:53):
because he's late coming back. And then Karen is like, Grandpa,
that's awful. You make us sound like the worst of
the ugly rich.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah, to which he replies, we are the ugly rich.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
But then we get a great speech by Aunt Iris
where she's like, we're entitled to be ugly, Caaren, we
pay so many taxes. And then she starts going on
this rant about environmental regulations on her paper mills that
are costing her a fortune. And anyway, Sam Elliott comes
back and he informs Grandpa Crockett the Grover is dead,
and their conversation is interrupted when frogs are thumping against

(57:28):
the windowsill. That was the sound effect I was talking
about earlier with the thump thump. And then somebody screams
from the other room it was maybell, so what could
it be? And everybody runs in and there is a
snake hanging from the chandelier in the dining room. Everybody
just crowds in while ominous music throbs on the soundtrack.
Snake's right there over the dinner table. And then I

(57:51):
laughed out loud of this. Grandpa Crocket whips out a revolver,
shoots the snake, The snake falls dead on the dinner table,
and then he asks Charles to remove the snake. And
then he's like, all right, everybody, let's eat.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeah, it's ridiculous because of course there's no reason that
a snake would be in your chandelier. Yeah, you know,
it's a real turtle on a fence post kind of moment.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
But then we get into a bunch of just little
conversation scenes, like there's this philosophical debate between Sam Elliot
and Grandpa Crockett about whether man is the master of
nature or not. Sam Elliott seems to believe that humans
and frogs can coexist peacefully, how naive he is.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Yeah, this is a great scene. I think I ended
up watching this one twice, you having to rerun just
to get it because I could tell like, this is
the heart of the movie. This is where, this is
where the central argument is being being played out.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Yeah, and then there's a great part where Sam Elliott.
Sam Elliott seems to get what's going on. He's like, oh,
I see this is a nature strikes back film. So
he's like, what if nature we're trying to get back
at us for all of the pollution and the littering,
and the response is nonsense, And sam Elliot says, well,
then how how do you explain it? But note that
the it that Sam Elliott seems to be at a

(59:04):
loss to explain otherwise is so far Grover was bitten
by a snake and died, There are a lot of
frogs hopping around, and there was a snake on the chandelier.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Well still, it's it's all adding up to something, I
guess so, but but but yeah, sam Elliott is his
whole presentation in this though, is like another actor in
this role might have been more insistent, you know, and
more you know, argumentative on this point, but he's just
kind of like laying it out there. He's like, well,
you know, what do you think is happening? You know,
look around us, look at how we're treating the world.
You know, this this is what this is what it

(59:38):
is man.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Gentle wise and charming. He sells it so good. Yeah,
and a bunch of other conversations going on. We learned, Oh,
there's a scene with Clint and Jenny arguing there you
know they're they're talking about how Genny resents that Clint
spends all day drunk driving a speedboat. And this is
the part where he retorts that he needs to play
his cards right so that he can get his inheritance.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Life is hard for old clan here.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Yeah, there's some very hardcore flirting between Sam Elliott and
Joan van Ark. Clearly there's an attraction there. And then
meanwhile I was noticing there is such creepy decor in
this house. I feel like this about a lot of
I think, especially like Southern American houses from this like

(01:00:25):
you know, sixties and seventies where you see this like
mixture of sometimes like more modern furniture decorations, but also
just like weird, creepy old Antebellum looking stuff. Everything is
just like haunted daghero types of nineteenth century Florida vampires
up on the wall. There's this guy I captured one

(01:00:47):
of these for us to look at. There's just some
creep staring at us from Adagero type from nineteen fifty
four whatever, eighteen fifty four, and I don't know, he
looks like he wants my blood, he wants my life force.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
So some of this I don't know, they might addressed
it up a little bit. I couldn't get a lot
of interior photos online of the mansion here, but yeah,
this is the Wesley Homestead from Edenarden State Park. Oh Okay.
It was apparently built in eighteen ninety seven, and then
in nineteen sixty three Louis Maxon bought and renovated the
house quote creating a showplace for her family heirlooms and antiques.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
Okay, so maybe this dementor is a family heirloom.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Yeah, or maybe they felt like they needed to night
gallery up the joints for the picture. I don't know.
I could see it going either way.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
So yeah, there's a bunch of other just sort of
like social stuff going on. There's not a lot of
depth to any of it. There's a sequence where Clint
is just wandering around bullying people and trying to get
somebody to play this log jousting game with him, where
I don't know if you could explain this. They're like
trying to stand on a log and hit each other
with pillows, but nobody wants to play with Clint because
he is drunk and abusive.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Well, yeah, I think part of is just like Clint
sucks and you should be okay with it when the
animals kill him later. But also this was a scene
where I was I had to laugh at it because yeah,
he's horsing around on this log, pushing people over and
proclaiming himself to be the king of the law. And
then this is juxaposed with an image of like a
gecko or something walking on a limb, as if the

(01:02:19):
gecko is interjecting and saying, ah, foolish shield man, I
am the king of the log. Clearly, look at look
at my appendages and how easily I cling.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Yeah, yeah, you know nothing about stick dominance. Yes, But
so it's right about So we're here at like halfway
through the movie, and it's right here that nature really
starts striking back. I would say, up until now it's

(01:02:49):
been mostly set up, but now it just sort of
turns into a nature killspree at about the forty five
minute mark, and that doesn't stop until the movie's over.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Right, the frogs have announced the first wave to begin, yes,
and so it does.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Right, So we get Michael Martindale, who one of the
many cousins after being bullied by Clint, so he gets
bullied by Clint knocked off the log and then he's like, well,
I'll show everybody, and he goes in. He gets a shotgun,
drives off in a jeep and I guess this is
maybe this is his favorite hobby. He just starts shooting
at random birds. I didn't really get what was going

(01:03:26):
on here. Does not seem to be an organized hunting expedition.
He looks more like he's just sort of like working
out his frustrations on the birds.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah, yeah, just generally being a jerk to nature.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Yeah. But also while this is going on, we get
Sam Elliott. Just he goes walking in the woods. He
sees many, many reptiles, and then we see cousin Michael.
He starts running for some reason. I don't remember why
he starts running. I guess he sees an animal that
scares him and he shoots himself in the leg. And
then there is I don't know. There are many glorious

(01:03:59):
nature attacks scenes in this film, but one of the
best is what happens here. It is a Spanish moss attack.
I don't know how else to describe it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, it is a straight up Spanish moss attack. Like
at first, it just seems like, oh, he fell in
the Spanish moss and now he's gotten entangled in it.
But no, like the Spanish moss seems to be crawling
around him. It seems to be animate.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Sient Spanish moss.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Yeah, so the Spanish moss kill scene here is just wonderful.
It seems to indicate that Spanish moss is just teeming
with tarantulis, which it is not, though I should know.
There is an old wives tale that Spanish moss is
filled with trumbiculade red bugs or chickers as they are
often called, But apparently there's no truth to this, that

(01:04:43):
these creatures prefer the tall grass. But weirdly, you still
see this association repeated all over the place, despite scientific
research to the contrary. The only possible connection I can
find is that perhaps after the moss has touched the
ground or fallen onto the around, then you can have
the red bugs the chiggers crawl into the Spanish moss,

(01:05:05):
and that's how people could potentially get them. But for
the most part, these parasites are going to be on
the grass where they reach out questing for humans or
other animals to latch onto.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Oh that's the scientific term, isn't it questing?

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Yes, Yeah, I always because it's such a creepy term,
just imagining them moving their little appendages, just questing for flesh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
But here's Tarantula's so the Spanish the sentient Spanish moss.
It envelops cousin Michael, whichever cousin this is, he gets
like drowns in the moss, and then Tarantula's just swarm
out of it and I think one of them maybe
crawls into his mouth. They just attack him and he dies.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Yeah. One of the things about this film, and it's
also been one of the things that is really great,
is that all the animals are live. I don't think
we really see any prop animals or puppet animals used.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
I think are some of the dead ones.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Maybe yeah, for the dead ones, but in terms of
like there's there's no cutaway and then like a puppet
biting somebody on the neck, which is one of the
reasons probably you don't see any Grizzli er death scenes
in this You know a lot of the gore and
violence is implied, but it also means you don't have
any cheesy puppets like those are some straight up tarantulos
crawling around on him, and at one point a scorpion.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
Oh yeah, that's right, a scorpion crawls over his hand.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Super late though, It's like, come on, scorpion, Ye, didn't
you read the schedule for The Animal Uprising. You're arriving
late to everything.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
He shows up after the cousin's laying has finished. Yes, yeah,
oh and all the while it's great that also, the
frogs are not getting in on the action. They are
not in the Spanish moss, but they're they're around, you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Know, yeah, yeah, they're not the direct perpetrators of the violence,
despite the title of the picture and the poster art,
which I don't think we've mentioned. The poster art for
this film features a frog with a human hand coming
out of its mouth like a giant frog. There are
no giant frogs in this movie, but that was the poster. No,
but the frogs are normal sized and they're just in

(01:07:03):
the background, watching, perhaps directing. They're kind of like the
generals of The Animal Uprising.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get that. You get the sense
that they're the brains behind the operation.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yeah, and it's they're not inherently scary frogs, which I
think is maybe one of the main flaws of the picture.
But on the other hand, it starts to work after
a while where it's like the frogs are watching. The
frogs are watching, and they're the kind of watching off
on approvingly, as if to say, yes, this is good.
Everything is going to plant.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Uh okay. So then more
of the cousins slaying continues. There's another cousin. I think
maybe this one is cousin Kenneth. This is the one
who's uh, who's Gudy Pace's boyfriend. And yes, he goes
to the greenhouse. He's just swaggering around in the greenhouse.
I don't remember what he's doing there. It's maybe like

(01:07:53):
looking for something in the greenhouse.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
But then oh, I think, and what's her name send
him off to get a particular herb from the greenhouse,
Oh okay, or something like I know she's gonna make
a cocktail or something. And so he's in there looking
around for it. But after at the door didn't close
all the way. And income the lizards, especially the tigu lizards, yes,
which are some this are some big boys. We'll talk
about them in a bit, but they start crawling around

(01:08:16):
everywhere and they start knocking over the chemicals.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
Yep, yep, that's right. So I can imagine he was
in there looking for an herb for a cocktail, because
Grandpa needs his cocktails in this movie multiple times if
he demands cocktails really inopportune moments. But the Greenhouse death
scene is great.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Yeah, because basically they just knock over a bunch of
chemicals and then the chemicals overwhelmed this particular Crockett kid
and he just like dies, He just falls out. And
then immediately geckos and other lizards are celebrating by climbing
on his face. Like clearly they were like, all right,
you lay here, and then we're gonna our lizard wrangler

(01:08:53):
is going to place some lizards on you, and then
we're gonna shoot again. But now it's time for the invasion,
Like you say, is really heating up. Now, this is
where we get one of my favorite scenes where there's
an American flag birthday cake out there because it's oh,
Grandpa's birthday and it's fourth of July, and as the
frogs start invading, the frogs are are treading on the

(01:09:16):
flag on the birthday cake.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Yes, And I got to say that that is some
stiff icing, Like it really holds up to a big
old frog crawling over it. It just makes me think
that should be like a I don't know, category of
directions and how to you know, whip egg white. So
you got your soft peaks, you got your stiff peaks,
and then you got your bullfrog supporting peaks.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Yeah, this would indeed make a great wedding cake for
anybody who gets married at this location is get yourself
an American flag sheet cake with a fancy like cake
frog on top of it. Maybe cake cupcakes on top
of it. I don't know. I'll let the cake people
figure it out.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Here comes the froghoo. So at this point, it seems
like people start to kind of take things seriously. They're like, oh,
it looks like people are dying. Sam Elliott starts to
lead the charge to investigate what's going on. Meanwhile, Aunt
Iris is wandering around in the woods. Of course, you
know she's going to her doom with a butterfly net.

(01:10:12):
We saw her with the butterfly in the bell jar earlier,
and I guess she's just going up to catch more.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Yeah, this is the I think the first real victim
in the film where you begin to question whose side
you're on, because you know she's she's not She's sure
she catches butterflies, but she's not really bad. She has
she's been nice to everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
But she did give that really ignorant rant earlier about
like I should be able to pollute however much I want.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
That's true. Yeah, that's true. Okay, maybe so maybe she
had it coming. At any rate, Nature really puts her
through the ringer here, because she's just one of these
scenes where like nature moves in on her and then
she's falling, she's screaming, things are crawling on her.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Yes, though the funny thing is the majority of her suffering,
at least early on in the sequence, seems to be
at the hands of vines, and it makes you wonder, Okay,
so are the plan also taking part in this nature
striking back? It's mostly animals, but the Spanish Moss descends
on one of the earlier cousins and iris. Really she's

(01:11:11):
like getting choked by vines as she runs through the trees.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Yeah, I think they're in on it, because it is
in all nature uprising.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
Okay, But then after that. It's one of those movies
like the Wet Pit of Death. You know, she falls
in a puddle, and you just know that that's a
death sentence in a horror movie chase scene in the
woods if you fall in a puddle, like it's over.
So she's in a puddle, she's all wet, she's got
leeches all over her, Snakes, frogs, baby, alligators, they're just
all over the place. And then she gets a fatal

(01:11:40):
snake bite and turns blue instantly, just instantly.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Yep, as the frogs watch on, and.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Then with no weight at all, we get Cousin Stewart.
I think this might be the Levan Cleef cousin. You know,
he wanders in to see what's going on and he
falls prey to a gator attack.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
Yep, yep, we have a gator attack scene. And yeah,
it's pretty intimidated. Those are intimidating animals. You don't have
to you don't have to to gussie them up any
like the frogs. I mean, the gator is instantly intimidating.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
So I was wondering about this scene because there is
a claim on the IMDb page for frogs. Don't know
if it's true, but it at least claims that some
footage in this gator attack scene is originally from a
Roger Korman movie from nineteen seventy called Bloody Mama. But
if that's true, it's integrated pretty well. I couldn't see,

(01:12:31):
you know, anything that didn't look like it fit, though
obviously you can't see the actor who's wrestling with the gator.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Yeah, there's a website called California herbs dot com that
has a great section of their website devoted to reptiles
and amphibians and movies, and they have a write up
on frogs, and I'll get to some of what they
have to share later. They highlighted this scene, pointing out
that like it's a real gator, somebody's wrestling with it,
stump man, and you can see if you look closely,

(01:12:58):
that there's a band around the gator's mouth to keep
it from actually biting. But they don't mention they don't
mention any connection here with another film, So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
I don't know, but i'd imagine a lot of herpetologists
are not are not in love with the idea of
actually wrestling with a gator for a film. Production. Yeah,
but I guess retroactive best wishes to that gator. I
hope you were unscathed. But anyway, so back at the house,
you've got Karen saying, you know, we've got to get
out of here. I think it's clear that people are
dying at this point, and she's like, we need to

(01:13:31):
leave this island. And then Grandpa is just straight up
He's like, I'm not gonna let one dead cousin spoil
my party. We should carry on with the fun. Somebody
make me a drink. We're gonna we're gonna eat our
food and it's going to be great.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Yeah, And this is where I think Sam Elliott has
to remind him it's two dead people. Remember the other
dead guy, your your frog executioner. Yes, it's like multiple
dead people. And Grandpa's like, still, I'm not having to
stay ruined, right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
So Grandpa's he's even more ornery than he was before,
and he's like, no, I want to have my birthday.
So Sam Elliott and Judy Pace are the main voices
of reason here and then and then May Mercer and
Lance Taylor Senior join in. I think there is a
scene where there's again some sort of implied racism on
the part of Nasty Grandpa as he sort of demands

(01:14:19):
that everybody else stay on the island, but he tells Bella, Harrington, Maybelle,
and Charles, who are all black, that they can leave
whenever they want. So they do leave, and Clint has
to powerboat them across the water to the other side.
So I was I was thinking, Okay, maybe the three
of them successfully escape. I'm not sure. Later we see

(01:14:39):
their like we see them being sort of menaced by
birds as they are making their escape, and then later
we see their abandoned luggage and stuff. So I think
it does not bode well for them, but we don't.
We don't ever see anything happen to them. It's I
guess it's left unclear.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
Yeah, and ultimately I like that better than the movie
simply like sacrificing them all to the birds. Yeah, so yeah,
but it's worth I will say.

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
The abandoned luggage and stuff doesn't look good.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
No, no, it does not.

Speaker 3 (01:15:05):
But then also Clint is out there driving the boat.
He I think somebody somehow like his boat becomes untied
from the dock where he has tied it up while
while taking everybody across the water, so he has to
swim back to his boat, but he's not swimming alone.
Something swims up on it and I've lost track of
all the animals at this point. Is it a snake?
Something swims at him?

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Yeah, this may there are let us there's snakes in
the water at this point. They're gators. This is not
the alligator snapping turtle scene though, right, that's coming out.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
That's on Lynn Borden, who is Clint's wife, who again
too many characters to keep track of, but she goes
out to like watch her Clint being executed in the
water by whatever animal it is, and she starts screaming,
and then she's crawling in the water, and then you
see an alligator snapping turtle going after Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Yeah, and which of course is also ridiculous because as
neat as alligator snapping turtles are, these are harmless critters.
They're not going to come hunt you for sport in
the certainly in the shallice, right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
And then also you see crabs crawling on her butt
after she's dead, so maybe the crabs are pitching in
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
I don't know. I had a question about that because
I'm like, this is just crabs doing what crabs do.
Like crabs might not have gotten the memo, Like the
frogs could be like, thank you crabs for joining in
the uprising, and the crabs are like, what uprising?

Speaker 5 (01:16:22):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
We just saw a dead person and we were gonna
eat him because that's that's our thingy.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
But as with earlier, even after all of this death
and mayhem, Grandpa Crockett just wants everybody else to stay
and keep partying. He's very angry. He's very angry. He's
angry about frogs. He's inconvenienced by the deaths of his
family members, and he demands an old fashioned and Karen
makes it for him, which again I laughed out loud at.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
It's a solid cocktail. So I mean, if you got
to ride out the end of the world, why.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
Not, huh. But then there's a final escape where Sam
Elliott and Joan van Ark and then the two kids
who are not their kids, they're I think Clint and
Jenny's kids. They paddle away on a canoe to escape
the island, and Grandpa stays behind ray miland he's like,
I am going to party by myself. I'm not leaving,
so they.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
I will just bitterly drink my cocktails. And eventually he's
not even drinking cocktails. He's just sloshing bourbon into a glass.
But he's like, nothing can make me leave. I'm staying
here to the bitter end.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
Yeah. Throughout the rest of the movie, whenever you see Raymland,
he's just frantically getting more drunk. But then Sam Elliott
is paddling them away on a canoe, and there's a
great part where Sam Elliott, you know, he's might as
well take your shirt off while you're battling some snakes
in the water, which he does.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Well, he's wearing all that denim. You don't want it,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
I guess n Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
Okay, Yeah, the pants stay on.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
I guess that's true. I think he needs some equipment
to get those jeans off.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Yeah, certainly, once they get wet, I'd be concerned it
would just cut off all blood blood flow to his brain.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Yeah, you need some like a prie bar or something
to remove them. But then so there's this final escape
sequence where they're trying to get across the water and
then get across the land. Once they get to the
other side, and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
It's a bit's pretty good, especially again for a movie
in which you can't really have too much in terms
of human on animal interaction, but it's still pretty good.
He fight the fights off the water snakes with the paddle.
They make it out to the highway and they're just
trying to flag somebody, anybody down to get him out
of here.

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
It's a Texas chainsaw masker ending, right, you know, it's
like escaping, trying to flag down a car that will
take them away, and the first car they see stops.
This lady stomps for the hitchhiker, which is again a wet,
clean shaven Sam Elliott carrying a shotgun, and she's like, yes,
I'll pull over. You get in the car, And so

(01:18:38):
Sam Elliott and everybody else gets in the car, and
then we get we get a wonderful twist ending here.

Speaker 2 (01:18:43):
That's right, there's this that there's a kid in the
front seat, because again this is the seventies, and the
kids like, I just came back from summer camp. Look
at this here frog I got and holds this frog
back for them to see in the back seat, and
with the camera zooms in on the frog's face and
we get this awesome freeze frame, and I think a
little bit of that electronic musical zing.

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
So again, like with the other characters earlier, we do
not see them die, but I think the implication is
that even all these characters are killed as.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Well well, because I don't know, well, I don't think
it's a situation where then that frog like laughs and
the car blows up. But it was briefly implied earlier
and is definitely driven home here that this is not
a regional uprising of nature. This is a global uprising.
Like people are vanishing. The people in the car here
haven't seen anybody else around like all morning or whatever

(01:19:35):
on their drive, so they're doomed. This is like the
end of Stephen King's The Mist, the original short story,
where the people have escaped the immediate danger, but they're
setting off into a world in which there are no
longer any safe harbors.

Speaker 3 (01:19:50):
Yes, that's right. When you use you return from the underworld,
but you find that the world you know has changed, right, Yes,
So I think the implication probably is that no one survives.
It's just nature takes back the earth and humanity is
crushed between a below the flipper of the.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Frog, right and this I should say, this feels like
it should have been the end of the film. But
you have to have to realize that the whole time
we've been promised a scene in which frogs eat Ray Milan. Yeah,
and gosh darn it, this movie's gonna give it to us.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
Yeah, of course, I mean, he's like, he is there
to be this nasty grump who will be punished by
nature for all of his nastiness. And yeah, if the
movie didn't show it to you, it would be a
real bummer. So of course he's back home by himself,
frantically getting more drunk, and then eventually the frogs penetrate
his fortress. They're like hopping around in the room with him.

(01:20:43):
The frogs don't really do anything to him. It looks
like he dies of a heart attack or something. He
just sort of freaks out and he's like he falls
on the floor and then there are frogs hopping all
over him.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Yep, and then that's that's the end of the picture.
We roll some very brief credits and there's a fun
little state or there at the end, so that you
got to stay for. Basically, a cartoon frog hops across
the screen and he has a human hand sticking out
of his mouth, which he then swallows and hops on.

Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
Jeremiah was a bullfrog? Is that kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (01:21:16):
It's kind of a reverse pink panther. I guess instead
of having the cute cartoon at the beginning, you have
it at the very end. And also maybe it's there illegally,
so if anybody's like, gosh darn it, this movie poster
had a frog eating a person's arm. I didn't see
it in the picture. They can say, well, technically at
the very end, if you stay through the credits, you'll
get to see this in cartoon form.

Speaker 3 (01:21:35):
Tremendous Nature strikes Back film.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
Yes, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Now I want to
touch on a little bit more about the frogs and
the toads and the various reptiles and amphibians we see
here again. Californiaherbs dot Com has a great section on
their website devoted to herbs and movies, and indeed a
write up on frogs with photos, and I just want
to touch on some of the things they point out.

(01:21:59):
The ones is that they they say the animal photography
in this film is actually quite good on the whole. Yeah,
and most of them seem to have been filmed for
the movie, so they didn't seem to reply on a
lot of stock footage or anything like that. And again
they seem to have avoided the use of puppets and fakes.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
Oh man, that's one of my favorite old things about
Edwood movies and stuff is that, like, yeah, you'd have
a character go into quote, the jungle in an Edwood
movie like Bride of the Monster, which is actually it
just looks like, you know, some trees beside a road,
but so like they get out of their car and
the jungle and then you see the actress look up

(01:22:36):
and gasp and then it cuts to not even a
not even slightly a match but stock footage of like
an eagle and a snake in from something else, nature
documentary or something.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
Yeah. Yeah, so none of that in here, Like it
all matches the film quality really well. And yeah, if
you I enjoyed just watching animals in this film, it
was weird. It's like going to the reptile house.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
So on californiaherbs dot Com, I want to read this
section where they get into the frogs and the toads
quote to the credit of the filmmakers, the frogs and
toads we see in the movie are all species that
could be found in Florida. Most of them are cane toads,
but there are a few leopard toads also thrown in
at the end. Unfortunately, they all make the sounds of

(01:23:19):
Pacific tree frogs, because that's what frogs always sound like
in the movies. Cane toads make a trilling sound and
leopard frogs make a chuckling sound. But if the audience
heard these sounds, sadly, they wouldn't understand what they are hearing.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
Ah, it's like how cows don't look like cows and
movies you got to use horses. Yeah, so here this
is the audio equivalent of taping a bunch of cats
together to create a horse.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Yeah. Or I think we've talked about this before. What
was it we were talking about? You see this occasionally
with animal sounds. Oh, I know what it was. It's rattlesnakes.
Maybe we didn't talk. Maybe I'm talking about a conversation
I had There wasn't on a podcasts, But rattlesnakes all
make a particular rattling sound when you encounter them in

(01:24:04):
say an old Western movie. But if you've been around
a rattlesnake, you know that. Yeah, there is kind of
like that height of the rattle. But there are like
some other sounds, other rattling sounds as well, that you
just don't hear in the movies. And so then, having
only encountered rattlesnakes in film, if you encounter one in
real life, you might not recognize the sound immediately.

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
Oh yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
What is this weird device I'm hearing? Yeah, anyway, they
also point out that cane toads are not native to Florida,
but they have just they've just been they've been abundant
in the state for such a long time, so they're
essentially natural residents.

Speaker 3 (01:24:39):
Oh well, there's another major player in the film that
is found in Florida, but it's not native to Florida.
It's the tagu lizards or the Tigu name. They are
like a non indigenous species. I think they're originally from
South America.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Right, Yeah, I want to say Argentina. And yeah, they're
quite invasive and they've they've even made it up to Atlanta.
This is fun and friend of the show. Mark Mandica
of the Amphibian Foundation. He's been on the local news
in the past year here in Atlanta talking about like
what to do if you see one, and in general,
the advice is like, get somebody who knows what they're

(01:25:14):
doing to come get this this big lizard, because they're
they're tough critters. In this, Mark says, quote, I would
not approach one without the gear that I would need
to do so safely. And again, Mark Mandika is an
expert at at at at approaching and in some cases
handling reptiles and amphibians, so he knows what he's talking about.

(01:25:35):
This is not something that the average person needs to
get anywhere near, right, don't go into battle with to
take you. Yeah, anyway, go go check out California HRBS
dot com if you want more information about the various
snakes and other creatures you see in this I've looked
at this website in the past as well. It's just
a good place to go if you find some snakes
and turtles what have you popping up in a film

(01:25:56):
and you're like, I wonder what that is. I wonder
if that is even remotely appropriate for the setting or
the time period, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
But so overall it seems like this movie is unusually accurate,
right in terms of what animals it's portraying is found
in Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
Yeah, that seems to be the case. Yeah again that
they're not all native creatures of Florida, but the invasive
species are ones that were already invasive there at the
time and remain invasive to this day. And yeah, so
again there is kind of a natural quality to this film,
like it is you know that again, these are these

(01:26:33):
are actual Florida denizens that you're observing as they crawl
and hop around, climbing up under the birthday cake and
everything amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:26:41):
So you will see all of these animals when you
get married at this park in Florida.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Yes, go to Eden Gardens State Park and demand a
swarm of toads and frogs at your wedding ceremony. All right, Well,
this is a really fun picture. So some of you
might be wondering how can I see it as well? Well,
you can find it and the normal digital sources are
all in play here places to buy or rent it digitally.

(01:27:06):
I think it's also been illicitly uploaded at some very
obvious places and has just for whatever reason, been allowed
to remain there for years. But I would say you can.
I have to stress you can buy a copy of
this for yourself, and if you happen to own a
Florida rental property, I demand that you do so buy
it on DVD and or Blu ray and stock your

(01:27:29):
vacation rental with this film. Because eighty eight Films has
an addition that even includes an interview featurette with a
featurette with the director. And if that's not good enough,
Shout Factory put it out as a double feature with
the nineteen seventy six nineteen seventy six Nature Strikes Back
picture The Food of the Gods, which is a bird

(01:27:50):
Eye Gordon film about giant rats.

Speaker 3 (01:27:52):
Of course, the classic bigger than normal animal movie.

Speaker 2 (01:27:55):
Yes, so check those out. There's good ways to pick
it up physically, and again if if you want to
get digitally, there several different ways to do so. It's
out there, it's ready for you. It's it's worth it's
worth saying. It's a fun flick. It's it's definitely a
great Florida movie.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
Agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
All right, we're gonna go ahead and close it out
there then, but we'd love to hear from you have
you seen frogs? Did you see it back in the seventies?
What was that like? Were you part of the the
uprising of Nature strikes Back pictures? And either way, what's
your favorite Nature strikes Back movie? You know? Is it?
What kind of animals? Does it? You know? Revolve around.

(01:28:36):
We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime,
you can check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema
every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.

Speaker 3 (01:28:44):
Huge thanks as always stour excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this podcast or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff To Blow Your Mind News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Robert Lamb

Joe McCormick

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema: Frogs