Frogs

So "Frogs" was made in the 70's when everybody was all up in arms about pollution. Too bad they didn't have a groovy Al Gore make a movie called "The Swinging But Inconvenient Truth". Believe it or not, this is an attempt to cash in on the anti-pollution craze. This doesn't really figure into the plot, however. We mainly get cranky old guys, drunk people, and lots of amphibians.

We meet Pickett Smith (Sam Elliot sans mustache), a random photographer who's taking pictures of animals. The annoying thing is everytime Pickett snaps the picture, a movie credit pops up. I'm sure his editor isn't gonna be too happy with this.

"SMITH! Why are the words "A Samuel Z. Arkoff Productions" over this picture of a lizard!"

Anyway, Pickett eventually finds a lot of garbage and starts taking pictures of that. There's so much trash in fact it had me wondering if The Rolling Stones did a show there the night before or something. So Smith is snapping along when Clint and Karen, drunk on their asses, are doing water donuts. They stupidly run him over on their speedboat. At least these two had the courteously to stop and offer to take him to their island to dry off.



There Smith meets the cranky old man Jason, who's having a Fourth of July/birthday party. He basically bosses his family around and yells at everyone for no reason. He yells at Smith for trespassing on his property, but eventually welcomes him, in his own way. He tells Smith that some weird ass shit has been going down on this here swamp/island and he wants to know if Smith will help him figure it out. And some dude named Grover is missing. I'm guessing he's out somewhere figuring out the differences between near and far. Smith agrees for some odd reason. Jason didn't offer him money or his daughter or anything. So I don't know what Smith is getting out of this deal.

After Smith meets the rest of the family (each one of them weirder than the next), Smith goes poking around. He finds Grover dead, which coulda been avoided if he only turned into Super Grover. Smith decides to gank his Jeep and reports back to Jason, who seems upset by this. We never find out who Grover was exactly. Was this dude his son? Bodyguard? Driver? Secret lover? No one says.

In the midst of all this, and through the rest of the movie I might add, we get random shots of frogs just croaking. That's basically all the frogs do in this movie, hop around and croak. Karen comments that the frogs been getting loud over the past few days they been on the island, and that they have the habit of trying to claw their way through the windows. And we also see Clint (along with everyone else) drink and hit on Bella, the black model chick who tends to dress like Erykah Badu at times. There's some kids there to add to the tension and suspense. Will the kids make it out alive? Does anybody care?



The next day, everyone is celebrating the 4th and Jason's 100th birthday (They never really say how old he is. Judging by his crankiness, he's gotta be pushing 100). Clint decides to play a game called "King of the Log" and randomly attacks Michael with a pillow, knocking him off the log. Michael's dad Stewart is like "KICK HIS ASS!!" but Michael pussies out. Clint hits on Bella some more in front of his wife and it makes me think I'm watching Lifetime.



Before I think that for too long, the animals on the island finally go berserk and slowly attack. First some smart salamanders, and possible a gecko, sneak into a greenhouse and manage to push over tons of bottles of poison that just happens to be there, killing Kenneth. Michael is out doing something when, I swear to God, a bunch of trees attack him. I think what's suppose to be happening is spiders are killing him, but we just see leafy things attacking him until he's dead. Iris' death kinda cracked me up cause the entire time the animals weren't doing anything but just standing there going "hiss" or whatever and Iris goes "AHHHHH" and she runs into a tree, some thorns, a bear trap, glue and feathers, vines, etc. Finally, she's bitten by a snake and her body decomposes at an alarming rate. Stewart, meanwhile, gets chomped by a alligator and/or crocodile, which is the most plausible thing to happen out of everything in this whole movie.

Pickett discovers Kenneth's body and says everyone should leave. Jason says fuck that, yo! Then I pick up on some racist undertones when Bella, Charles, and Maybelle want to leave and Jason basically treats them like shit. But he allows them to leave (Oh thank you Mr. White Man) and Clint decides to take them.

Clint takes the freed islanders to the other side of the lake and is looking for someone when an animal bites the rope from his boat, which causes it to drift 500 feet. I didn't know a boat can drift that far within a matter of minutes. But Clint decides to swim for the boat and he's attacked...by something. Somehow Jenny sees all this and has a freak herself. Running into the water she runs into the most dangerous animal of them all: A TURTLE! OH NOES!!!!!!111!

Smith and Karen take off with the kids, but Jason refuses to go. Smith and Company says "See ya!" and take off. After a very anti-climatic scene in the water when the boat is stuck on something, they make it across. They find Bella's luggage but no sign of them, so I dunno what happened to them.

After being on a road for hours, they get picked up by a lady and her son...and a toad. AHHH!!!!!

Later that night, Jason is by himself in his house. He has a freak out himself and falls out of his wheelchair. The scene fades, credits roll and we see that a giant cartoon frog has eaten Jason. Seriously.



After watching this movie a second time, I quite enjoyed it. Maybe it's cause over the past two years I've subjected myself to worse crap than this, or something, I dunno. But I laughed at all the crazy shit that happened in this movie more times then I could count. So next time you see this commercial, remember: they could kill ya! Or...have other animals do it for them. Whatever.


-Jason