Frogs

In the bottomless pit of eco-horror movies that were all the rage during the late ’70s and early ’80s, “Frogs” represents one of least interesting examples of the genre.

Derivative beyond words, the film’s structure is so banal and didactic that it really says a lot about the producers’ efforts and motivations. Indeed, the cut-and-paste pro-environmental theme looks and sounds phony right off the bat. The overall effect is one of a slipshod, heavy-handed effort packed with insipid stereotypes (it resorts to showing familiar settings packed with toads and snakes, casting them as slimy, repulsive creatures meant to gross out the viewer). The whole thing was dead on arrival, in part due to a storyline that’s flat and dull to the point of being soporific, along with a catatonic cast in which the aged and rapidly declining Milland offers a dazed performance, a mere shadow of the once-great actor.

Drowning in a sea of phoned-in dialogue and throw-away lines (stuff like: “What if nature were trying to get back at us?“), a couple of totally insane scenes emerge, probably the product of a feverish brain (the attack of the killer underbrush, the greenhouse assault).

If there had been a lot more cheesy scenes like those, at least we could’ve filed this film under the category “campy trash” and sat back to enjoy the unintentional humor.