Frogs (1972) - George McCowan

Jason Crockett is an old, crotchety man who lives alone in his beautiful mansion positioned directly in the middle of the Everglades.   Jason invites his entire family to his island estate to celebrate his latest birthday.  Meanwhile, Pickett Smith, a freelance photographer, is doing a pollution study on this land for an ecology magazine.  The two men's paths cross when Jason's son nearly runs over Pickett in the family speed boat.  Obliged to make up for their mistake, Pickett is invited to the families estate where he learns of Jason's incendiary relationship with nature.  Jason routinely poisons anything that even crawls close to his property but on the eve of his birthday, the frogs and other animals of nature begin to fight back.  George McCowan's Frogs is another film in the "Nature fights back" subgenre that isn't nearly as terrible as one would expect.  Sure the narrative in general is lacking, with lots of cheesy and overly-pointed moments but for a horror film atmosphere is the most important attribute, something Frogs has in spades.  Frogs understands the important of atmosphere and setting, using great use of the swampland ambiance to create a tense tone that envelopes the entire film.  From an early state it's clear that something sinister is brewing and George McCowan uses this ambience, along with overly-pointed sound effects to make the impending doom on the horizon very clear.  From an actual horror perspective, Frogs isn't a particularly scary film but it's guaranteed to terrify those of you who have a fear of any reptile or amphibian creepy-crawlers.  Geroge McCowan's Frogs is a pretty cheesy affair that wears its heavy-handed pollution message on its sleeve, and while it leaves something to be desired from a horror perspective, it's a fun and worthy film for any fans of the "nature fights back" subgenre.  

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