Weirdhouse Cinema: Frogs

Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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.

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 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.

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 sanctity of the natural world, and then we're punished by monsters.

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 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,

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.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, there are.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, nuclear weapons testing, and you know, for quite understandable reasons.

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

Yeah, ye, I like it. It's the way I was thinking of it. Was its bio maximum overdrive.

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 be topiery animals chasing people. Something about, like you look around in their animals everywhere.

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.

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.

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.

And somehow the frogs helped inspire King to go in the animal bush direction.

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.

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.

I still believe man is master.

Of the wood.

And then suppose that the human race lost.

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 one hand you might say, well, why not a Floridian,

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.

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.

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 and they're not being swarmed by insects. You don't see anything.

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 months for sure.

Yeah.

Also, there's not a steady It's like sheen of sweat on all the actors at all times.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

Michael Ironside.

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, both with this same actor. But I don't know how

Wait, there's no heads blowing up in the show. Is just that he would be playing a psychic of some kind.

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.

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?

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 that's worth noting.

I think several listeners have asked us to feature doctor Fibes on Weird House at some point.

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.

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.

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 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

He's so handsome in this movie. It's hilarious.

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 film together.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh yeah, I mean he's just got like pyramids of charisma.

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

Yes, yeah, you're wondering, like, are those jeans or is that just body paint?

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.

He's perfect. He's just this grumpy, nasty, hateful old creep.

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 it well. Milan another screen legend. He's in a ton

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 in Florida if your main character traits well, I mean, I guess his main character trait is just that he's

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 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.

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.

Yeah, yeah, you get him confused. I couldn't keep all everybody straight.

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 with the Red Velvet Ropes.

You know this one, Rob, I don't know this one. You mentioned. This one's a boxing one.

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 van ark and they are trying to convince him to box Chuck Connors in this other dimension. And I don't

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.

So I don't know. Wait, who's Gary Lockwood?

He was in two thousand and one of Space Out to See he played doctor Frank Pool.

Oh oh, okay, all right now yeah, well so he's punching in this one.

All right?

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.

I don't remember her, but I played for but yeah, good for her voice acting money.

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.

All right, let's hit another member of the Crockett family.

He does in number two.

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.

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.

Yeah, and is just just waiting for the day when he can inherit something from Grandpa.

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 of him in order to get his inheritance. I will

Yeah. Yeah, at times he does have that bald one look. All right, who else we got? Lay out some more Crockets for us.

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 with Joe Don Baker, the original one in the seventies, and I found she was in a begrimed drag racing

Do every sort of a bewitched kind of a thing.

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

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, 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

Uh huh.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, you're not supposed to like Raymonan, right, right right.

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.

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

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.

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.

This is maybe one of those movies where the second unit director is the real director.

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 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,

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

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, which is a synth powered, easy, easy listening album that's this is quite good. I was just listening to it

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.

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

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 to IMDb, he had a small part in The Exorcist to the Heretic, which is a wonderful connection in Frogs.

Yeah, not nearly as intimidating as all angel eyes, but but yeah, has that kind of look to him.

I mean, he always kind of looks like he's hatching a sneaky plan.

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.

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

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.

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 tunk tunk, and what's happening? Well, that's frogs at your window, buddy.

All right, well, let's let's jump into this picture here. Let's talk about the plot, all right.

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.

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.

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 you call this font? I feel like it's.

Say, blue drippy horror font is what it is.

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.

It's not exactly, Yeah, it's something like Times American International Pictures, so.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But I think the question you need to ask Joe is could it possibly have more?

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.

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.

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, which is the lack of a history to the objects

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. 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.

I can't stop thinking about a wedding at this place now, Like you could walk down the aisle to the cricket servos.

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

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.

I don't know. I mean, it's product placement even if it is litter.

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.

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 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

You can decorate trees at home, trail.

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.

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

But yeah, the frogs are massing, and yeah, there is a an overwhelming sense that the frogs are watching.

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 guy named she introduces as my cousin, Michael Martindale, one

Yeah.

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, he says, and he does not appreciate the taking of

Well, you know, the freelance in can be a little lonely. Sometimes sometimes you just check in with your editor just.

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.

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.

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 didn't mention that Sam Elliott pulls Clint into the water when they go to help him out of the water.

Canoe kind of smacks him one too, I think, yeah, thank you.

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.

Yes, it will.

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

I miss that.

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.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

What spirits that. Maybe they're trying to get messages from the frogs or something.

It's just spelling out ribbit on the board.

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.

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.

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 it's not, or at least we don't see any insects.

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 happy to see the beverage logos here change.

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 frogs than usual this year. And Sam Elliot's like, well, yeah, sometimes animals overpopulate, but they'll die off by next year.

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.

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

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.

Yeah, except he says it in fewer words somehow, Yeah.

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.

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. And then this part's great. There's like a parade of

Yeah, well the movie makeup says he's dead though, because he had like a big old chunk taken out of his.

Face, right, and his face is blue.

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 pretty tame in this film, but it works, you know, It's it's shot and presented well.

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.

But Yeah does a good job with that, you know, and implying the death at least non frogged related deaths.

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

Yeah, to which he replies, we are the ugly rich.

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 the windowsill. That was the sound effect I was talking

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.

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.

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.

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,

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 is man.

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.

Life is hard for old clan here.

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 you know, sixties and seventies where you see this like mixture of sometimes like more modern furniture decorations, but also

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.

Okay, so maybe this dementor is a family heirloom.

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.

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.

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 gecko is interjecting and saying, ah, foolish shield man, I

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 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.

Right, the frogs have announced the first wave to begin, yes, and so it does.

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 on here. Does not seem to be an organized hunting expedition.

Yeah, yeah, just generally being a jerk to nature.

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 nature attacks scenes in this film, but one of the best is what happens here. It is a Spanish moss attack.

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.

Sient Spanish moss.

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 these creatures prefer the tall grass. But weirdly, you still see this association repeated all over the place, despite scientific

Oh that's the scientific term, isn't it questing?

Yes, Yeah, I always because it's such a creepy term, just imagining them moving their little appendages, just questing for flesh.

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.

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.

I think are some of the dead ones.

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.

Oh yeah, that's right, a scorpion crawls over his hand.

Huh.

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.

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.

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 the background, watching, perhaps directing. They're kind of like the generals of The Animal Uprising.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get that. You get the sense that they're the brains behind the operation.

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.

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 looking for something in the greenhouse.

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 everywhere and they start knocking over the chemicals.

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.

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 is going to place some lizards on you, and then we're gonna shoot again. But now it's time for the invasion,

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.

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.

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

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.

But she did give that really ignorant rant earlier about like I should be able to pollute however much I want.

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.

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 like getting choked by vines as she runs through the trees.

Yeah, I think they're in on it, because it is in all nature uprising.

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 snake bite and turns blue instantly, just instantly.

Yep, as the frogs watch on, and.

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.

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.

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

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, that there's a band around the gator's mouth to keep

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

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.

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 that everybody else stay on the island, but he tells Bella, Harrington, Maybelle, and Charles, who are all black, that they can leave

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.

The abandoned luggage and stuff doesn't look good.

No, no, it does not.

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?

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.

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.

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.

And then also you see crabs crawling on her butt after she's dead, so maybe the crabs are pitching in as well.

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?

Right?

We just saw a dead person and we were gonna eat him because that's that's our thingy.

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.

It's a solid cocktail. So I mean, if you got to ride out the end of the world, why.

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.

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.

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.

Well, he's wearing all that denim. You don't want it, you know.

I guess n Yeah, that's right.

Okay, Yeah, the pants stay on.

I guess that's true. I think he needs some equipment to get those jeans off.

Yeah, certainly, once they get wet, I'd be concerned it would just cut off all blood blood flow to his brain.

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.

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.

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 Sam Elliott and everybody else gets in the car, and then we get we get a wonderful twist ending here.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. The frogs don't really do anything to him. It looks

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.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog? Is that kind of thing?

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.

Tremendous Nature strikes Back film.

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. The ones is that they they say the animal photography

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 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

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.

Yeah.

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 Pacific tree frogs, because that's what frogs always sound like in the movies. Cane toads make a trilling sound and

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.

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 say an old Western movie. But if you've been around a rattlesnake, you know that. Yeah, there is kind of

Oh yeah, that's a good point.

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.

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.

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 doing to come get this this big lizard, because they're

But so overall it seems like this movie is unusually accurate, right in terms of what animals it's portraying is found in Florida.

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

So you will see all of these animals when you get married at this park in Florida.

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. 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.

Of course, the classic bigger than normal animal movie.

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.

Agreed.

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.

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.

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.