Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to wander
Speaker 3: into the swamp and get a little bit muddy. Rob.
Speaker 3: The movie that we're doing today you picked out because
Speaker 3: of some recent Florida brain inspiration.
Speaker 2: That's right. I was in Florida over spring break and
Speaker 2: it just got me inspired. I just really wanted to
Speaker 2: do a Florida movie. Maybe it was driving through Tates
Speaker 2: Hell or Driving out through tates Hell, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: which of the two. But I started brainstorming. I was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: what are the Florida movies, and we may come back
Speaker 2: to some of the other ones that were knocking around
Speaker 2: in my head. But then I started thinking about and
Speaker 2: reading about a particular nineteen seventy two film titled Frogs.
Speaker 2: When I looked into it, I realized, this is a
Speaker 2: movie that is set in Florida, It was filmed in
Speaker 2: Florida in its entirety. This is the film we have
Speaker 2: to do. So this is our first Nature strikes back film,
Speaker 2: but it's also our first Florida film. I think it's
Speaker 2: our first Nature strikes back film.
Speaker 3: I guess I can't think of another one. But I
Speaker 3: find it hard to believe we've made it this far
Speaker 3: on weird house cinema without doing a Nature strikes back movie.
Speaker 3: The classic Nature strikes Back movie has one sort of
Speaker 3: giant animal that represents nature's revenge against humanity for I
Speaker 3: don't know, for having cities or for polluting nature or
Speaker 3: something like that, for doing something that is violating the
Speaker 3: sanctity of the natural world, and then we're punished by monsters.
Speaker 3: This movie has more of a distributed strike back policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I would say Nature strikes Back
Speaker 2: films tend to go either a swarm route or a
Speaker 2: war by champion route. This was a huge deal, especially
Speaker 2: in the seventies. This was a decade that gave us
Speaker 2: Kiranha Prophecy. That's a mutant bear film, Alligator, Grizzly, Empire
Speaker 2: of the Ants, the Swarm, Killer Bees, Willard, that's a
Speaker 2: rat movie, ben Orca. That's a killer whale movie. Squirm
Speaker 2: that's an earthworm movie. That's excellent. That's a Georgia movie,
Speaker 2: though maybe we'll come back to that eventually. And of
Speaker 2: course we also got Jaws out of this, so out
Speaker 2: of nature strikes back, the summer blockbuster itself was born.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, well, so I would say with Jaws, I
Speaker 3: don't particularly see the element of like humanity provoking the thing,
Speaker 3: like you know you're seeing. The Jaws would be a
Speaker 3: very different movie if it started by showing like radioactive
Speaker 3: barrels in the surf and then everything else was the same.
Speaker 3: So I think in Jaws, Jaws weirdly is like the
Speaker 3: best movie of the bunch, but it's also like the
Speaker 3: least defensible from a moral point of view, because it's
Speaker 3: just like, well, this shark's just it's just an animal,
Speaker 3: but it's huge and bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, there are.
Speaker 3: So many movies like this, And I was actually just
Speaker 3: thinking while you were listing those movies there, have you
Speaker 3: ever seen the William Shatner tarantula attack movie Kingdom of
Speaker 3: the Spiders.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've seen it in its entirety, but
Speaker 2: I'm sure I caught part of it on TNT back
Speaker 2: in the day or something.
Speaker 3: I was trying to remember if that one has any
Speaker 3: element of like nature being if the spiders are provoked
Speaker 3: by humanity in any way, or if they just start,
Speaker 3: you know, multiplying out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess in general you might think of Nature
Speaker 2: Strike's Back films, it's been sort of being the cinematic
Speaker 2: outpouring of the public awakening to the damage that we
Speaker 2: are doing to the planet and its natural environments and
Speaker 2: the creatures and the various species that make it up.
Speaker 2: Though given that we're dealing with genre films and often
Speaker 2: be pictures, it's it's sort of a I don't know,
Speaker 2: you often get the impression it's kind of a sense
Speaker 2: of like, oh, well, let's explore this in B movies
Speaker 2: so we don't have to think about it anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: Or here's the imagine revenge. Okay, now we're good. Now
Speaker 2: it can go back to the polluting ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that it actually comes in a
Speaker 3: couple of waves. So you see something that is like
Speaker 3: a precursor to Nature Strikes Back films in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: But there it's all atomic panic, like it's the the
Speaker 3: contaminating human behavior that precipitates the giant animal attack. Is
Speaker 3: some kind of nuclear testing. It's nuclear research, nuclear waste dumping,
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons testing, and you know, for quite understandable reasons.
Speaker 3: That was on people's mind in the nineteen fifties. But
Speaker 3: I think there was a shift in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 3: away from the contamination being nuclear and nature to being
Speaker 3: primarily chemical in nature. And I think this probably had
Speaker 3: something to do with you know, Silent Spring came out
Speaker 3: in the sixties and that sort of alerted people to
Speaker 3: ideas about pesticides and other chemical contamination of nature. So
Speaker 3: the strain of nature strikes Back movies you start seeing
Speaker 3: in the sixties and seventies, I think is more like
Speaker 3: that there's like a pollution of various kinds. There's smog,
Speaker 3: there's like something gross running out of a pipe, and
Speaker 3: then you get giant alligators that eat people or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would say that ultimately the film we're
Speaker 2: going to discuss today, Frogs is it's probably one of
Speaker 2: the more intelligent versions of this in that it is
Speaker 2: not a single incident causing a single incident of nature
Speaker 2: strikes back. It is, as we grow to learn throughout
Speaker 2: the film, seems to be a global reaction to not
Speaker 2: a specific event or even a specific specific technology, but
Speaker 2: to our way of life, And in that it ultimately
Speaker 2: is is perhaps a more nuanced commentary on our relationship
Speaker 2: with the natural world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ye, I like it. It's the way I was
Speaker 3: thinking of it. Was its bio maximum overdrive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, I read somewhere it wasn't in reference
Speaker 2: to maximum overdrive. But I know Stephen King saw frogs,
Speaker 2: and I believe he was a fan of it. I
Speaker 2: think now I remember what it was. It was something
Speaker 2: about when he was riding the Shining, he was trying
Speaker 2: to decide between doing topiery animals and a hedge maze,
Speaker 2: and frogs was what convinced him that it needed to
Speaker 2: be topiery animals chasing people. Something about, like you look
Speaker 2: around in their animals everywhere.
Speaker 3: I guess, wait, wait, what was the other option? You said,
Speaker 3: topiery animals and a hedge maze, But the book has
Speaker 3: a hedge maze, because doesn't the book have both? I
Speaker 3: mainly remember the topiery animals from okay, from the book.
Speaker 3: I don't remember there been It's been a long time.
Speaker 3: I was basically a kid when I read The Shining,
Speaker 3: But yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: I believe it was lacking a maze, or at least
Speaker 2: the maze was not the sexual threat. And then Kubrick
Speaker 2: and his adaptation decided to go full maze.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. Okay, yeah, but the topiery animals, they're
Speaker 3: like bushes that are shaped like lions and stuff that
Speaker 3: literally like they come after Danny in the book to
Speaker 3: attack him.
Speaker 2: And somehow the frogs helped inspire King to go in
Speaker 2: the animal bush direction.
Speaker 3: Very good, very good choice, Stephen. Okay, so I guess
Speaker 3: we've done enough setup to hit the trailer audio. Florida's
Speaker 3: Natural Wildlife Rebels against Humanity in its early seventies environmental
Speaker 3: horror film. Let's hear that audio.
Speaker 4: Suppose nature gave a war and everybody came, the snakes,
Speaker 4: the birds, the lizards, and frogs, and suppose that the polluters,
Speaker 4: the species on earth called man, were the enemy in
Speaker 4: that war.
Speaker 5: I still believe man is master.
Speaker 4: Of the wood.
Speaker 5: And then suppose that the human race lost.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's that's so good. I'm gonna grab my
Speaker 2: thermis here of Florida tapwater that I brought back from
Speaker 2: the beach. Delicious. All right, Well, let's talk about some
Speaker 2: of the people involved in this film. Let's start where
Speaker 2: we tend to start. Let's start talking about the director,
Speaker 2: and it is a Canadian director. This time, which on
Speaker 2: one hand you might say, well, why not a Floridian,
Speaker 2: Why is a Florida Floridian not directing this thing? But
Speaker 2: then on the other hand, I feel like it makes
Speaker 2: sense that a Canadian would come to Florida and perhaps
Speaker 2: that would that would enable this like leaning into the
Speaker 2: ravenous nature of the Floridian wildlife. You know, not that
Speaker 2: you don't have some pretty rough and buggy environments in Canada,
Speaker 2: certainly do, but I don't know. In my back of
Speaker 2: my mind, I'm thinking, like, here's this uh, this Canadian
Speaker 2: director George Mcowan showing up and he's just like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this this place is hellish. This is the
Speaker 2: perfect setting. It seems like the Wow, the wilderness is
Speaker 2: just trying to consume me at all times.
Speaker 3: Right, Mosquitos, the size of hummingbirds, just like gaiters at
Speaker 3: every turn. You can imagine the the like sort of
Speaker 3: the anthropologists level of distance and removed from the from
Speaker 3: looking at Florida like that, but also with it with
Speaker 3: an added sense of horror in this lush, wet, humid
Speaker 3: environment that's full of beasts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I love Florida and Florida has a tremendous wildlife.
Speaker 2: But I've I've gone on nature walks in the heat
Speaker 2: of the summer in Florida before, and it is. It is.
Speaker 2: It is kind of frightening at times. Oppressive might be
Speaker 2: a better word.
Speaker 3: You know. Sometimes this movie has a ridiculous amount of
Speaker 3: large you know, tetrapod animals in various scenes, like you know,
Speaker 3: a number of frogs that I'm sorry is implausible, but
Speaker 3: that's okay. But but the other end of it is
Speaker 3: that it doesn't have enough insects. They are like scenes
Speaker 3: where people are eating outdoors and it's July and Florida
Speaker 3: and they're not being swarmed by insects. You don't see anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't find anything about when they exactly
Speaker 2: filmed this in Florida. It is set on the July fourth,
Speaker 2: the weekend or something, But there's no way this is
Speaker 2: this is July in Florida. Like there's again, like you said,
Speaker 2: these scenes with people outside, there would just be bugs everywhere,
Speaker 2: Like you wouldn't be able to film it. They must have.
Speaker 2: They must have filmed this in one of the cooler
Speaker 2: months for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, there's not a steady It's like sheen of sweat
Speaker 2: on all the actors at all times.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's funny too. Yeah, they're all they're all
Speaker 3: relatively dry, except when they're supposed to be wet from
Speaker 3: having fallen in the disgusting lake water. Yes, but okay,
Speaker 3: So who's this guy? George McCowan director all right.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen ninety five. He
Speaker 2: did a lot of TV work. He also directed the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine sci fi film The Shape of Things
Speaker 2: to Come, starring Jack Palance. I think I watched a
Speaker 2: riff track version of this, or maybe it was something else,
Speaker 2: but I've seen this when one form or another.
Speaker 3: It just makes me think of the line in the
Speaker 3: Mortal Kombat movie The Paul W. S Anderson one from
Speaker 3: the nineties where Sheng Song says no for a taste
Speaker 3: of things to come. Do you remember that scene the
Speaker 3: drums going and the guy with the sock on his
Speaker 3: head gets shattered.
Speaker 2: It's a great sample too. So now here's the main
Speaker 2: thing I knew mcgallan from. He directed a lot of,
Speaker 2: if not all, the episodes of the Canadian broadcasting series
Speaker 2: Seeing Things, which ran on CBC from nineteen eighty one
Speaker 2: through nineteen eighty seven, and as a kid in Canada,
Speaker 2: I remember watching this show with my family. He was
Speaker 2: basically a murder mystery of the week show with a
Speaker 2: psychic reporter doing all of the crime solving.
Speaker 3: And funny, I clicked through to this on IMDb. I've
Speaker 3: never seen this, but immediately it just showed me a
Speaker 3: gigantic picture of the guy from Scanners.
Speaker 2: Yep, Louis del Grande, a Canadian actor best known as
Speaker 2: that bald, mustachioed guy whose head gets blown up in
Speaker 2: that one scene blown up by John not John Saxon,
Speaker 2: Michael Ironside.
Speaker 3: Michael Ironside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, both very strong names, you know, but yeah,
Speaker 2: he was also he was also in this show and
Speaker 2: was one of the creators of this series Seeing Things.
Speaker 2: It had a really snazzy theme song. That's the main
Speaker 2: thing I remember from when I was a kid and
Speaker 2: I was trying to figure this out. Scanners and Seeing
Speaker 2: Things both debuted in nineteen eighty one, both about psychics,
Speaker 2: both with this same actor. But I don't know how
Speaker 2: the connective tissue between the two shows worked. I always
Speaker 2: kind of assumed that this dude's had blew up in
Speaker 2: Scanners and He's like, I can turn this into a
Speaker 2: six season series on CPC, and pitched it as such.
Speaker 2: I suspect that might be how it went, but I
Speaker 2: don't know. The timing is very close.
Speaker 3: Wait, there's no heads blowing up in the show. Is
Speaker 3: just that he would be playing a psychic of some kind.
Speaker 2: You mean, yeah, he would like try and solve a mystery,
Speaker 2: and then he'd get like a premonition, he'd get like
Speaker 2: a vision, and then he'd keep solving the mystery, and
Speaker 2: then there'd be another vision that seemed to be how
Speaker 2: things worked. And I remember digging it for some reason
Speaker 2: as a child, but I was like in kindergarten.
Speaker 3: Wait, if he's a psychic reporter, how does that work
Speaker 3: at the newspaper? Like can he just get a vision
Speaker 3: and then report that in his column or does he
Speaker 3: have to source it somehow?
Speaker 2: You got to get a second source on that. I
Speaker 2: think that's the standard AP route to take. All Right,
Speaker 2: writers on this piece, getting back to gooting back to
Speaker 2: Frogs here, Robert Hutchison and Robert Bleese. Not much really
Speaker 2: to report here, but Bleeze wrote a bit for TV
Speaker 2: Project UFO and he wrote Doctor FIBs Rises again so
Speaker 2: that's worth noting.
Speaker 3: I think several listeners have asked us to feature doctor
Speaker 3: Fibes on Weird House at some point.
Speaker 2: So yeah, maybe we'll have to come back back to that,
Speaker 2: all right, But let's get to the let's get to
Speaker 2: the main beefcake in this particular movie.
Speaker 3: Well, it's our hero. The character's name is Pickett Smith,
Speaker 3: and he is played by the one, the only, the stranger,
Speaker 3: Sam Elliott.
Speaker 2: That is right. Yeah, so Sam Elliott born in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty one, very much still active and you know, getting
Speaker 2: Oscar nominations and the like in recent years. But at
Speaker 2: this picture, he was only thirty one years old. He
Speaker 2: was just full of handsome and swagger, occasionally shirtless and
Speaker 2: with no mustache whatsoever. So you're if you're afraid of
Speaker 2: seeing Sam Elliott without a mustache, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: guess you might want to steer clear of this picture.
Speaker 2: But there's nothing to be afraid of. He's still the
Speaker 2: Sam Elliott you know and love. He's still got that charm,
Speaker 2: he's got that swagger. He was previously in a string
Speaker 2: before this. He was in a string of TV movies
Speaker 2: and TV series. He had a bit role in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine's Butch Casting and the Sundance Kid as his
Speaker 2: card player number two. But this was one of his
Speaker 2: early starring roles.
Speaker 3: He's so handsome in this movie. It's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's just really cool in the film,
Speaker 2: like he's There are a lot of other performances in
Speaker 2: the film that are maybe a little bit more mixed.
Speaker 2: Either they're too hammy or they're too dry, you know,
Speaker 2: they're a little bit too non actory. But Elliott just
Speaker 2: strives with confidence through this picture and you buy everything
Speaker 2: he's saying. Every scene he's in. He helps hold the
Speaker 2: film together.
Speaker 3: There really are no characters with any complexity in this movie,
Speaker 3: but I would say that the characterizations in a very
Speaker 3: shallow horror movie way, are very fun. They're like good
Speaker 3: in that two dimensional sense or one dimensional what's the
Speaker 3: term there a one dimensional sense? Like it doesn't have
Speaker 3: character complexity, but it has very well drawn shallow horror characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sam Elliott is not a cowboy in this nor
Speaker 2: is he a philosophic bouncer like we would see in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine Roadhouse. But he is a freelance photographer,
Speaker 2: nature photographer, and that is it's kind of like being
Speaker 2: a cowboy. So he still has that kind of free
Speaker 2: range and vibe when it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he's a loner. He doesn't need anybody's help.
Speaker 3: He's the strong, silent type. I mean, most of his
Speaker 3: lines in this movie barely register on if you were
Speaker 3: to look at an audiogram of them. You know, the
Speaker 3: character says something to Sam Elliott and he's.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit monotone, I guess,
Speaker 2: But yet there's still a lot of personality there. I
Speaker 2: don't know he's able to pull it off of where's
Speaker 2: I mean, that's probably the key here. That's why he
Speaker 2: went on to become such a cinematic icon.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean he's just got like pyramids of charisma.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we should note that he's really busting out
Speaker 2: all the nineteen seventy two fashions in this one. He
Speaker 2: spends a lot of the time in the film strolling
Speaker 2: around in an all denim wardrobe, so denim long sleeved shirt,
Speaker 2: denim pants, no belt, and the pants are just are
Speaker 2: so tight that he's essentially naked. Like if he had
Speaker 2: a set of car keys or a set of house
Speaker 2: keys in his pocket, you could have taken a still
Speaker 2: from this picture to your local Low's or home depot
Speaker 2: and they could have reproduced the key for you.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you're wondering, like, are those jeans or is
Speaker 3: that just body paint?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly. All right. We'll have more to say on
Speaker 2: Sam Elliott throughout this episode, but let's get on to
Speaker 2: the villain of the piece. Not the frogs, but Ray Milan.
Speaker 3: He's perfect. He's just this grumpy, nasty, hateful old creep.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, wealthy patriarch of this Floridian family hates Nate
Speaker 2: unless it's looks good on a wall in his trophy room,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. Very much thinks that nature should
Speaker 2: be crushed under the heel of human progress and wealthy excess.
Speaker 2: So it's again a very cardboard role, but he does
Speaker 2: it well. Milan another screen legend. He's in a ton
Speaker 2: of pictures and TV shows over the years. His biggest
Speaker 2: roles were probably nineteen forty five is The Lost Weekend,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four's Dial In for Murder, nineteen forty fours,
Speaker 2: The Uninvited, but he also did some really choice genre
Speaker 2: picture work as well. He was in seventy threes Terror
Speaker 2: in the Wax Museum, and he was in Roger Corman's
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three film X The Man with the X
Speaker 2: Ray Eyes.
Speaker 3: I've watched this movie on mute before. I've been thinking
Speaker 3: we should maybe come back to it and watch it
Speaker 3: with the sound. It's pretty fun, or at least looks fun.
Speaker 3: I don't know what they say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did read that apparently Raymonlan did not enjoy
Speaker 2: making this picture. Yeah, he wore a hairpiece for it
Speaker 2: and was like sweating constantly, and I think actually left
Speaker 2: the production early. So there's a pivotal scene at the
Speaker 2: very end, which I think they had to depend on
Speaker 2: a lot of body doubles for.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like the Marlborough Man, Not of this Earth, right,
Speaker 3: he got mad at his prosthetics and the shooting conditions
Speaker 3: and just left. But they're like, yeah, we'll work around it.
Speaker 2: But maybe that's I mean, he's so good in this
Speaker 2: Perhaps part of it is he was using his actual
Speaker 2: irritation and rage at being stuck in Florida doing this picture.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he plays this guy named Jason Crockett, who
Speaker 3: is the grandpa of this giant family who provide most
Speaker 3: of the characters in the film, who live in a
Speaker 3: mansion at the side of a I don't know if
Speaker 3: it's a lake or a river. It's in the swamp
Speaker 3: in Florida. And I don't know why exactly you would
Speaker 3: decide to live at a lakeside mansion in a swamp
Speaker 3: in Florida if your main character traits well, I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess his main character trait is just that he's
Speaker 3: rumpy and he hates everything and everyone. But on top
Speaker 3: of that, his next major character trait is that he
Speaker 3: hates nature. Yeah, well, what are you doing out there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, I think you'll find examples of this
Speaker 2: everywhere though, Right, you know, somebody builds a mansion in
Speaker 2: a swamp or and then expects that nature is just
Speaker 2: going to cooperate with your presence and the degree to
Speaker 2: which you've unbalanced the immediate surroundings. Yeah, all right. Next
Speaker 2: actor of note, Joan van Ark is in this playing
Speaker 2: Karen Crockett, one of the Crockett children in this family.
Speaker 2: She was a Knatz Landing actor who is also in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven's The Last Dinosaur.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess here we're getting into the segment of
Speaker 3: the cast where there are a lot of cousins. I mean,
Speaker 3: as the tarantulas and gaiters and frogs swarm in this movie,
Speaker 3: so does the movie swarm with cousins. There are too
Speaker 3: many cousins and you lose track of the cousins. But
Speaker 3: Karen is one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you get him confused. I couldn't keep all
Speaker 2: everybody straight.
Speaker 3: But she's part of the Crockett brood here. She's one
Speaker 3: of the many cousins. And this actress, Joan van Ark
Speaker 3: I was looking her up. She did a lot of
Speaker 3: TV work. She did like soap operas and some mainstream
Speaker 3: TV stuff like that. The same year she was in Frogs, though,
Speaker 3: I found that she was also in an episode of
Speaker 3: The Night Gallery. It was an episode called The Ring
Speaker 3: with the Red Velvet Ropes.
Speaker 2: You know this one, Rob, I don't know this one.
Speaker 2: You mentioned. This one's a boxing one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the premise is there. Oh, I've forgotten the
Speaker 3: main actor's name. There's a guy who plays a boxer
Speaker 3: in it, who is either right before or right after
Speaker 3: a match, I don't remember. He's like in his locker room,
Speaker 3: and then somehow he gets magically transported to this eerie
Speaker 3: other dimension with a hotel in it where he is
Speaker 3: approached by Chuck Connors and his wife played by Joan
Speaker 3: van ark and they are trying to convince him to
Speaker 3: box Chuck Connors in this other dimension. And I don't
Speaker 3: know why. I think there's a twist ending. It's probably like, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: he was in purgatory or something, you know, one of.
Speaker 2: Those Ah, well, you know you know who it is.
Speaker 2: I just looked it up. It's Gary Lockwood, playing a
Speaker 2: central character in that Night Gallery episode.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. Wait, who's Gary Lockwood?
Speaker 2: He was in two thousand and one of Space Out
Speaker 2: to See he played doctor Frank Pool.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, okay, all right now yeah, well so he's
Speaker 3: punching in this one.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: Oh but one last thing. Joan van ark I also
Speaker 3: found a credit where she was apparently doing some voice
Speaker 3: acting in Fallout four. Like she plays several characters, including
Speaker 3: some character named doctor Roslin Chambers. You remember her, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't remember her, but I played for but yeah,
Speaker 2: good for her voice acting money.
Speaker 3: So it's funny she was in Frogs. But then we
Speaker 3: also have, you know, plenty of audio of her talking
Speaker 3: about synths and stuff.
Speaker 2: All right, let's hit another member of the Crockett family.
Speaker 3: He does in number two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Clint played by Adam Rourke. This guy
Speaker 2: basically a Brooklyn tough guy actor who did a lot
Speaker 2: of work in the sixties, especially in this plays a
Speaker 2: speed boat driving beer chugging meathead son of the Crocket patriarch.
Speaker 3: He's like the uncle character in Napoleon Dynamite, right, Like
Speaker 3: he's obsessed with his former football career and he goes
Speaker 3: around trying to bully people and just like he seems
Speaker 3: to want to be the alpha who dominates all of
Speaker 3: his other cousins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is just just waiting for the day when
Speaker 2: he can inherit something from Grandpa.
Speaker 3: That's right too. Yeah, he's like, we got to play
Speaker 3: our cards right to get stuff. But like I remember
Speaker 3: there's a scene where he starts saying, you know, I
Speaker 3: got to play my cards right so I can get
Speaker 3: that money when Grandpa dies. But the thing he's explaining
Speaker 3: by saying that is why he's got to be out
Speaker 3: in the boat drunk on beer all day. So I
Speaker 3: don't know why, Like that's what he thinks Grandpa expects
Speaker 3: of him in order to get his inheritance. I will
Speaker 3: also say in this movie. Sometimes Adam Rourke sort of
Speaker 3: looks like a Baldwin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, at times he does have that bald one look.
Speaker 2: All right, who else we got? Lay out some more
Speaker 2: Crockets for us.
Speaker 3: He'll go, okay, cousin number three, we got Jenny crowt Oh, wait, no,
Speaker 3: I think this is not a cousin, but for all
Speaker 3: intentsive purposes, she's a cousin. She is. I believe the
Speaker 3: Jenny Crockett is married to Clint in the movie. If
Speaker 3: this matters, you're not going to keep track of this,
Speaker 3: But it's played by Lynn Borden. Lynn Borden did some
Speaker 3: TV and B movie work. She was in Walking Tall
Speaker 3: with Joe Don Baker, the original one in the seventies,
Speaker 3: and I found she was in a begrimed drag racing
Speaker 3: movie starring Peter Fonda called Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry. I've
Speaker 3: never seen this one, but it's a seventies racer film.
Speaker 3: She was also part of the main cast of a
Speaker 3: sixties TV show called Hazel, which looks like a horrid
Speaker 3: in color sixties leave it to Beaver type show. It
Speaker 3: appears to be about a high housekeeper named Hazel played
Speaker 3: by Shirley Booth. Who is apparently just like borderline omnipotent,
Speaker 3: like she can solve every problem. I think this used
Speaker 3: to be a type of TV show where there's just
Speaker 3: like a magic person who is very wise and can.
Speaker 2: Do every sort of a bewitched kind of a thing.
Speaker 3: Then well, except I don't think she's actually magic. I
Speaker 3: think it's you know, the other version of this, where
Speaker 3: there's just like a character who's just very wise and
Speaker 3: knows what to do about everything. Okay, gotcha, Now, I
Speaker 3: guess we're gonna skip over a bunch of the other
Speaker 3: cousin actors. I looked up a lot of them and
Speaker 3: didn't really recognize anything they had done. There was one
Speaker 3: actor in this movie, though, when I started digging into
Speaker 3: her work, I think she's really worth a mention. It's
Speaker 3: a fairly small part in the film, but the actress's
Speaker 3: name is May Mercer, and she plays a character named
Speaker 3: may Bell who works in the household staff in the movie.
Speaker 3: And May Mercer wasn't just an actress. She was actually
Speaker 3: a blues singer. And I looked up her music and
Speaker 3: she was an excellent blues singer. So she lived from
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty two until two thousand and eight, and I
Speaker 3: found a couple of recordings of her music from the
Speaker 3: sixties on YouTube. One is a song that she performs
Speaker 3: with a blues harmonica player named Sonny Boy Williams called
Speaker 3: Careless Love, and I think this is from nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: which is fantastic. Another recording I found of hers was
Speaker 3: a song called Sweet Little Angel, also really good. And
Speaker 3: so I was trying to get some bioraphical information about her.
Speaker 3: I found her La Times obituary from when she passed
Speaker 3: away in two thousand and eight. So apparently she was
Speaker 3: born in nineteen thirty two in Battleborough, North Carolina, to
Speaker 3: a family who worked as tobacco sharecroppers, and she started
Speaker 3: singing in church when she was a teenager, and then
Speaker 3: ran away to New York in nineteen forty seven to
Speaker 3: become a professional singer, and she became successful, not just
Speaker 3: in New York, but eventually internationally. She got well known
Speaker 3: as a blues performer in Paris. Like I was looking
Speaker 3: through Google books and I found her name turning up
Speaker 3: a lot in issues of Jet magazine from the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties on the Paris scratch pad, where she seems to
Speaker 3: have been like a very recognizable figure in the Paris scene,
Speaker 3: so she was based out of Paris. She sang at
Speaker 3: a club called the Blues Bar, and then later she
Speaker 3: actually ran the club. But she also would tour Europe
Speaker 3: sometimes with a group called the Keith Smith Climax Jazz Band.
Speaker 3: She also has a couple of acting credits from the sixties,
Speaker 3: but it looks like she started acting a lot more
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies, and it's not just stuff like frogs.
Speaker 3: She was in some hit movies. She was in Dirty
Speaker 3: Harry with Clint Eastwood, and in nineteen seventy one she
Speaker 3: was a producer on a documentary film about Angela Davis.
Speaker 3: So she passed away in two thousand and eight, but
Speaker 3: I will say her music's really good, really worth looking up.
Speaker 3: May Mercer may spelled m Ae.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, you know another actor who brings some
Speaker 2: much needed diversity to this otherwise undiverse film is Judy Pace,
Speaker 2: who plays Bella Garrington in this born nineteen forty two,
Speaker 2: still around mainstream TV actor and film actor of the day.
Speaker 2: She appeared in this film on the heels of Brian Song,
Speaker 2: which is a famous football film. If you've ever been
Speaker 2: in or around football culture, This one is often held
Speaker 2: up and I think maybe I've seen it and I've
Speaker 2: just forgotten all of it. But it has James Kahn
Speaker 2: and Billy D Williams in it, so it's got a
Speaker 2: solid cast.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: I've never seen it, but I know it's one of
Speaker 3: those movies that people talk about, you know, makes the
Speaker 3: football boys cry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is one of those films that you
Speaker 2: are legally allowed to cry while viewing. This is one
Speaker 2: of the few times in some circles where where men
Speaker 2: are allowed to cry.
Speaker 3: So I will say Judy Pace and Sam Elliott, I
Speaker 3: think are the two most likable actors in this movie.
Speaker 3: I mean, Raymland is good too, but he's playing this nasty,
Speaker 3: hatable guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not supposed to like Raymonan, right, right right.
Speaker 3: She and Sam Elliott, though, are just just lovely and wonderful.
Speaker 3: They've got great charisma and the scenes they're in. She
Speaker 3: plays I think the girlfriend of one of the cousins,
Speaker 3: I think one of the cousins that we haven't talked about.
Speaker 3: But she's there at the mansion with the family and
Speaker 3: it's otherwise obviously this is like and you know, all
Speaker 3: white southern family and I think the implication is that
Speaker 3: Grandpa is racist and is giving her the side eye,
Speaker 3: but she has a very like eye roll posture against
Speaker 3: Grandpa and the others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they never really overtly explore this area, and to
Speaker 2: a certain extent, that's probably for the best, given the
Speaker 2: you know, the way a picture of this period might
Speaker 2: have handled it. But it does show that there was
Speaker 2: there's a lot of potential in this picture as well,
Speaker 2: Like what if they had really gone in like a
Speaker 2: almost you could almost gone into like a Jordan Peele
Speaker 2: direction with this, with this sort of picture, you know,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of interesting cultural elements on the table,
Speaker 2: but in this picture you got to save room on
Speaker 2: the table for the frogs.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, yeah, the frogs are the real star.
Speaker 3: And I think it's literally true that I think the
Speaker 3: frogs get more screen time than any actor in this film.
Speaker 3: I think so like, there's more time where we're just
Speaker 3: looking at cutaways of frogs hopping around or close ups
Speaker 3: of bullfrogs than and you know, I don't know, than
Speaker 3: seeing Sam Elliott on screen.
Speaker 2: You can imagine the director watching different cuts of the
Speaker 2: film and being like, I don't know, I think we
Speaker 2: need more frogs in there. More do we have more
Speaker 2: of that great frog footage that we got, We got
Speaker 2: some more alligator snapping turtle, got some more lizards, Let's
Speaker 2: get it in there.
Speaker 3: This is maybe one of those movies where the second
Speaker 3: unit director is the real director.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Another big name to mention here is
Speaker 2: the composer on this film, Less Baxter. So despite all
Speaker 2: the other elements of the film, I have to say
Speaker 2: that when I was Less Baxter's presence, that kind of
Speaker 2: sealed the deal for me. So let's start by reminding
Speaker 2: everyone just who Less Baxter was. He lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: two through nineteen ninety six, and it's pretty much the
Speaker 2: godfather of exotica music. So if you've ever tuned into
Speaker 2: in for some like retro nostalgic, lounge or tiki music,
Speaker 2: you've probably listened to the music of Less Baxter. You
Speaker 2: have not look him up on your streaming source of choice,
Speaker 2: most of his materials out there, and it's really good stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just really great, easy listening music. If you want
Speaker 2: some sort of like nostalgic you know, kind of you
Speaker 2: know again, kind of a lounge tiki vibe. However, that
Speaker 2: whole genre has nothing to do with frogs. Don't watch
Speaker 2: frogs thinking you're gonna get that kind of music. It's
Speaker 2: not an exotica score in the slightest. So, first of all,
Speaker 2: Baxter was no stranger to doing film scores. He'd done
Speaker 2: quite a bit of work in the film score business
Speaker 2: over the years, mostly b movies. For instance, he scored
Speaker 2: such films as X the Man with the X Ray
Speaker 2: I S that we mentioned earlier. He worked with names
Speaker 2: like Roger Korman and William Castle. He scored Doctor Goldfoot
Speaker 2: in The Bikini Machine in nineteen sixty five, the Dunwich
Speaker 2: Horror in nineteen seventy. He did nineteen sixty three's Black Sabbath.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he scored a bunch of AIP movies American International Pictures.
Speaker 3: I think we haven't talked about that yet, but this
Speaker 3: is an AIP movie. So like a lot of the fifties,
Speaker 3: sixties and seventies Roger Korman movies were AIP movies. You know,
Speaker 3: all the Edgar Allan Poe movies that Corman did and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, but it wasn't just horror. So you know,
Speaker 3: AIP released and Les Baxter did the did the music
Speaker 3: for you already mentioned one of them, of course, the
Speaker 3: peak subgenre of film innovation the bikini movies of the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties. Like, it really doesn't get more creative and
Speaker 3: subversive than you know, the Ghost in the Invisible Bikini
Speaker 3: and films like that.
Speaker 2: So Froggs is notable because it was Baxter's first entirely
Speaker 2: electronic score, So that was the thing that really got
Speaker 2: me excited about it. So Baxter was already into the
Speaker 2: electronic sound. He'd worked with an early electronic organ called
Speaker 2: the novachord in the very early sixties, and he put
Speaker 2: out an album called moog Rock in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: which is a synth powered, easy, easy listening album that's
Speaker 2: this is quite good. I was just listening to it
Speaker 2: yesterday while putting are some notes. Frogs, however, takes things
Speaker 2: into equally synthy, but certainly more terror driven territory. So
Speaker 2: it has a lot of like eerie synth chords going on.
Speaker 3: It doesn't actually a lot of it is not very musical.
Speaker 3: There's not much melody to the music in the film.
Speaker 3: It is more like synthesizers producing almost a sound that
Speaker 3: is somewhere between, you know, sort of crickets or cicadas
Speaker 3: and like servos worrying inside a robot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it's a it's an interesting score, and
Speaker 2: that's probably one of the reasons that I don't think
Speaker 2: this was ever released in full as an album or anything,
Speaker 2: though I know there have been at least there's been
Speaker 2: at least one compilation of certain pieces from Baxter's soundtrack work,
Speaker 2: so it might show up there, but as far as
Speaker 2: I know, there is never a like a or there.
Speaker 2: At least there has yet to be like a Lime
Speaker 2: Green Frog's vinyl release where you get the full less
Speaker 2: Baxter soundtrack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right. I just wanted to mention a couple
Speaker 3: more names that I happen to find something interesting about
Speaker 3: as they came up in the credits there. It is
Speaker 3: impossible to get into all the cousins in this movie,
Speaker 3: but one of the cousins I also wanted to mention
Speaker 3: is this actor named George scaff who plays Stuart Martindale.
Speaker 3: He's an uncle or a cousin or something, but according
Speaker 3: to IMDb, he had a small part in The Exorcist
Speaker 3: to the Heretic, which is a wonderful connection in Frogs.
Speaker 3: He's kind of a sketchy le Van Cleef style cousin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not nearly as intimidating as all angel eyes, but
Speaker 2: but yeah, has that kind of look to him.
Speaker 3: I mean, he always kind of looks like he's hatching
Speaker 3: a sneaky plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he is. He's like he's like a long time.
Speaker 2: You get the impression that he like he has he's
Speaker 2: earned his place in the family. You know, it's like
Speaker 2: it's more about loyalty than blood, certainly when it comes
Speaker 2: to the Crockett patriarch here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another actor is Lance Taylor Senior, who played Charles.
Speaker 3: He also he works for the family in the movie,
Speaker 3: and he was in Blackula the same year as Frogs.
Speaker 3: He also did some TV work on shows like The
Speaker 3: Mod Squad, Sandford and Son, and Police Story. But then
Speaker 3: one name that came up in the credits that I
Speaker 3: thought was interesting was Gene Corso, who did sound effects
Speaker 3: for the movie, and he also did sound effects and
Speaker 3: sound editing for some very mainstream films that would come later,
Speaker 3: such as Star Wars and New Hope, Phantasm, Predator, and
Speaker 3: Deep Star six. Because all roads lead back to the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine underwater.
Speaker 2: Movies, well, you know, it was frogs that got him
Speaker 2: work in all those pictures. So he gave him his
Speaker 2: demo reel of all the awesome frog sound effects right
Speaker 2: from this picture, and they were like, let's get him.
Speaker 2: This is how we imagine the sonic universe beyond our world.
Speaker 3: You know, a number of sound effects from this film
Speaker 3: did really stick with me. And it wasn't just the
Speaker 3: frogs croaking or the gator's bellowing move. It was also
Speaker 3: the sound of when the giant frog sort thumping against
Speaker 3: the glass in the scene when Sam Elliott and Raymonland
Speaker 3: are like talking in private about what's going on on
Speaker 3: the island and suddenly you just hear this kind of
Speaker 3: tunk tunk, and what's happening? Well, that's frogs at your window, buddy.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's let's jump into this picture here.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the plot, all right.
Speaker 3: Well, the opening credits, it is, as we said, it
Speaker 3: has this score by Less Baxter, but it's very light
Speaker 3: on things that are recognizable as melodies. Instead, it's ominous
Speaker 3: ambient electronic sounds. While Sam Elliott paddles around the swamp
Speaker 3: in a red canoe basically just doing it for the gram.
Speaker 3: He is out there in the in the canoe taking
Speaker 3: pictures of everything, and I mean like it in the
Speaker 3: kind of way that you don't actually see real photographers
Speaker 3: doing it, where he's just like aiming the camera in
Speaker 3: every direction and taking pictures all over the place, like Robi.
Speaker 3: I know, you know, you know a bit of more
Speaker 3: about photography that you kind of have to like set
Speaker 3: up a good shot. You don't just sort of like
Speaker 3: turn the camera in every direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there, No, you don't see Sam Elliott here
Speaker 2: like holding himself in place by grabbing onto a branch
Speaker 2: and then taking several shots at the same thing. It's
Speaker 2: it's a much more casual affair.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of the funny things is the way the
Speaker 3: title comes in. So Sam Elliott's he's wandering around the
Speaker 3: swamp taking photos. He's in the canoe, and then there's
Speaker 3: a close up on a frog. The frog ribbits twice
Speaker 3: and then you get sound effect and then Frogs. The
Speaker 3: title comes in and all of the credits are in
Speaker 3: a really funny font that's like a blue what would
Speaker 3: you call this font? I feel like it's.
Speaker 2: Say, blue drippy horror font is what it is.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's on the title for Frogs. But I mean
Speaker 3: the rest of the credits that are just like listing
Speaker 3: people's names. I feel like it's a font that I
Speaker 3: saw I've seen in other like sixties and seventies movie credits,
Speaker 3: but it looks kind of like comic sands.
Speaker 2: It's not exactly, Yeah, it's something like Times American International Pictures, so.
Speaker 3: Exactly, But I don't know. For some reason, the credits
Speaker 3: and this were making me laugh a lot, Like I
Speaker 3: liked the quotation marks are like some of the actors
Speaker 3: just get a name credit, you know, with Sam Elliot
Speaker 3: and so forth. But then there's one part where it
Speaker 3: says and Adam Rourke as so called Clint. It's got
Speaker 3: these quotation marks around Clint that I found very funny.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I also liked how they keep they
Speaker 2: keep giving these credits over pictures of various reptiles and
Speaker 2: amphibians nature and it kind of implies that that snake
Speaker 2: is Adam Rourke as Clint, Like, yeah, I don't know, Yes,
Speaker 2: this is kind of a weird juxtaposition.
Speaker 3: This is, yeah, this is our water viper. His name
Speaker 3: is Clint. But anyway, another thing, there are way too
Speaker 3: many animals in the swamp. It's just panning around. There's
Speaker 3: just animals everywhere. And I know Florida is lush and
Speaker 3: its wildlife is bountable, but no swamp has this much wildlife.
Speaker 3: It's just snakes. Everywhere you turn.
Speaker 2: It is a lot of snakes and a lot of
Speaker 2: frogs and toads. This movie is just jam pat with
Speaker 2: reptiles and amphibians, and in fact, it's one of the
Speaker 2: things that's worth watching about it. A lot of times
Speaker 2: I just enjoyed watching really good footage of reptiles and
Speaker 2: amphibians either moving about in a natural way or certainly
Speaker 2: later in the picture, invading human spaces.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, so there's a lot of that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess I don't know why I'm saying
Speaker 3: there's too many. I mean, what I want there to
Speaker 3: be fewer reptiles in this movie. No, I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: just saying, like at the very beginning, when it hasn't
Speaker 3: yet introduced the idea that the island is being swarmed
Speaker 3: with reptiles because nature is striking back, it seems like
Speaker 3: a ridiculous amount of animals.
Speaker 2: But I think the question you need to ask Joe
Speaker 2: is could it possibly have more?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah? Well, well, speaking of beasts, actually does have
Speaker 3: more because it's not just the reptiles that are the
Speaker 3: beasts in this film. Looking at Sam Elliott in these
Speaker 3: opening credits, he is just an off the charts cool beast.
Speaker 3: Like he's like I said, he has so much animal charisma.
Speaker 3: It's funny. Yeah, look at this dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And again I was prepared to be creeped out
Speaker 2: by lack of a mustache, because I often find that's
Speaker 2: the case with iconic mustachioed actors. Is you see him
Speaker 2: without the mustache, it's like, what are you doing man
Speaker 2: with that giant lip or a giant four lip area.
Speaker 2: But no, he's just as just as charming without it.
Speaker 3: So he's paddling around the swamp, so first he's taking
Speaker 3: pictures of animals, but then after that it seems like
Speaker 3: he's mainly taking pictures of litter. There are just sort
Speaker 3: of barges of litter that are, you know, clogging up
Speaker 3: the byways of the swamp. So I would say this
Speaker 3: movie has an example of something that's actually a kind
Speaker 3: of common problem with set dressing, especially in lower bud movies,
Speaker 3: which is the lack of a history to the objects
Speaker 3: you're looking at. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 3: the garbage in this movie that is littering the swamp
Speaker 3: looks incredibly fresh. All of the paper garbage is still
Speaker 3: crisp and white, and the cans are clean and they're
Speaker 3: not like oxidized or covered in mold. You know, it's
Speaker 3: been pointed out that one of the great innovations of
Speaker 3: those beloved late seventies sci fi movies like Blade Runner
Speaker 3: and Alien and Star Wars was that they made spaceships
Speaker 3: and the future generally look lived in, meaning dirty, worn in,
Speaker 3: and worn out, as opposed to what had been, you know,
Speaker 3: the previous style for futuristic sci fi, which is like
Speaker 3: everything is clean and fresh and the spaces look like
Speaker 3: nobody's ever been in them before. In Frogs, I must
Speaker 3: accuse them of having failed to make the trash look
Speaker 3: lived in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess part of it is that this film
Speaker 2: was filmed in its entirety at Eden Garden State Park
Speaker 2: in Florida, which is in Santa Rosa Beach, which I
Speaker 2: haven't been there, but now it is definitely on my
Speaker 2: list of places to go. You can you can look
Speaker 2: it up Eden Garden State Park, you can visit it,
Speaker 2: and you can you can. You can be married here.
Speaker 2: Oh you know you can. You can a frog wedding, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can. You can paddle around in canoes, you can
Speaker 2: do everything that that our hero does in the film.
Speaker 2: But it makes me suspect that perhaps it was not
Speaker 2: the best place to catch actual footage of real litter,
Speaker 2: like you know, even at the time, it was maybe
Speaker 2: just really well cared for. And so yeah, they had
Speaker 2: to bring their own litter for this shoot, for this
Speaker 2: support part of the film.
Speaker 3: I can't stop thinking about a wedding at this place now,
Speaker 3: Like you could walk down the aisle to the cricket servos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get the big old house that features into this
Speaker 2: and and all the outdoor scenes. It's all at Eden
Speaker 2: Garden State Parks.
Speaker 3: So the ring bearer is an alligator. But so uh,
Speaker 3: several things about the trash here. Also. One of the
Speaker 3: things is do you think Coca Cola paid to have
Speaker 3: their logo shown among all the trash and the swamp
Speaker 3: it's there.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, it's product placement even if
Speaker 2: it is litter.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, one thing that's funny, as the swamp here
Speaker 3: has the single piece of movie garbage that best represents
Speaker 3: ultimate squalor the discarded plastic baby doll, you know the
Speaker 3: trope I'm talking about. Yeah, Like that's that's how you
Speaker 3: know that the place is really abject in a film.
Speaker 3: Is it's not just litter, it's not just trash, it's
Speaker 3: it's a discarded baby doll.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too, given that here in Atlanta we have
Speaker 2: dolls had trail yeah, which I know, I know you've
Speaker 2: been to as well, where an individual has has taken
Speaker 2: to using found garbage from the park itself and in
Speaker 2: many cases toys and baby dolls and recreate them, like
Speaker 2: rearrange them to create art in the natural environment. And
Speaker 2: it works. But part of that is it's stuff that
Speaker 2: was already there. He's not bringing in baby dolls, right,
Speaker 2: and and indeed, I will advise everyone please do not
Speaker 2: bring baby dolls into parks to create things. Also, don't yeah,
Speaker 2: don't bring like Christmas ornaments in on your nature trails
Speaker 2: and just start decorating Christmas trees on the nature trail. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw that over the break And granted, you know,
Speaker 2: people need things to do during the pandemic, and you
Speaker 2: know they're getting more into nature walking, but but don't
Speaker 2: bring out a bunch of Christmas garbage into the onto
Speaker 2: the nature trail and decorate something like, let's keep the
Speaker 2: let's keep the artistic expression to a limit.
Speaker 3: You can decorate trees at home, trail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, decorate trees at home all you want, but I'm
Speaker 2: here to see the actual trees. M hm, doll said.
Speaker 2: Trail is fine though.
Speaker 3: Okay, anyway, that's just the opening credits. We get Sam
Speaker 3: Elliott taking pictures of all the trash in the swamp.
Speaker 3: Then we immediately cut to Jerks in a speedboat and
Speaker 3: this is a couple of cousins here, a couple of
Speaker 3: the main cousins. We get Clint who is Adam Rourke again,
Speaker 3: and we get Karen who is Joan van Ark, and
Speaker 3: they're cutting around the water in a powerboat and Clint
Speaker 3: is chugging a cold one while driving. Yeah, anyway, I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's supposed to be that Clint is
Speaker 3: just a bad boat driver in general, or if it's
Speaker 3: because he's been drinking the beer. But he does not
Speaker 3: see Sam Elliott in his canoe and he just drives
Speaker 3: right by him, capsizes him, and Sam Elliot's all wet,
Speaker 3: and of course Sam Elliott is not amused. They circle
Speaker 3: back and they give they give him a ride and
Speaker 3: they say, you know, we'll tow you back to the house,
Speaker 3: which is a big old mansion with a waterside backyard,
Speaker 3: and they invite him to stay for the fun and games,
Speaker 3: which sounds kind of sinister. Yeah, and it is not
Speaker 3: subtle with the frogs at all. Like, you know, we
Speaker 3: get to the dock and it's just cutting to frogs constantly.
Speaker 3: You know, the characters say a couple of lines cut
Speaker 3: to frogs and they're just sitting there with their eyes
Speaker 3: big ribboning and the you know, the throat sacks bulging,
Speaker 3: and then they're like, hey, would you like to stay
Speaker 3: at our creepy mansion? And then the frogs.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the frogs are massing, and yeah, there is
Speaker 2: a an overwhelming sense that the frogs are watching.
Speaker 3: Yes, so we learned some things. We learned the characters' names.
Speaker 3: Of course, Sam Elliott introduces himself. His character's name once
Speaker 3: again is Pickett Smith. Okay, and Adam Rourks Clint and
Speaker 3: Karen Joan van Allen is Karen, and so Karen takes
Speaker 3: Pickett Smith to meet Grandpa Crockett. They also meet a
Speaker 3: guy named she introduces as my cousin, Michael Martindale, one
Speaker 3: of the mini cousins. This guy looks kind of like
Speaker 3: a fascist pool attendant, Like he's got this cool sort
Speaker 3: of I don't know, like single color resort wear outfit
Speaker 3: with a big collar. But he's also got the cool
Speaker 3: hand Luke sunglasses.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then, my god, the Pickett Smith chest hair. Like
Speaker 3: everybody in this movie wears their shirt unbuttoned a few
Speaker 3: buttons down, and Sam Elliot's chest hair could be put
Speaker 3: in a ponytail. It's unbelievable. But anyway, so there's an
Speaker 3: introduction scene we meet Grandpa Crockett. He is ornery from
Speaker 3: word one. He saw Sam Elliott paddling around and taking pictures,
Speaker 3: he says, and he does not appreciate the taking of
Speaker 3: the pictures. He's like, there's a sign out there says
Speaker 3: private property, and he says that it's illegal for Sam
Speaker 3: Elliott to have been taking pictures. I don't know why
Speaker 3: that would be illegal, But we learned that Sam Elliott
Speaker 3: in fact is here as a private freelance photographer, actually
Speaker 3: he calls it a photographer, and he's taking pictures of
Speaker 3: pollution for an ecology magazine. And the funny thing is,
Speaker 3: so he says this, and this gets cousin Michael immediately
Speaker 3: going on about frogs. So he's like, I've taken pictures.
Speaker 3: I'm a freelance photographer for an ecology magazine. And Michael's like,
Speaker 3: take any pictures of frogs lately? I saw the biggest
Speaker 3: bullfrog earlier, and it just makes you wonder, like what
Speaker 3: other topics of conversation? Cousin Michael will try to steer
Speaker 3: back to the bullfrog anecdote. You know, somebody's like, would
Speaker 3: you like to put on some music? Hey, speaking of music,
Speaker 3: have you ever heard what a bullfrog sounds like? I
Speaker 3: got the biggest bullfrog. But we also learn from this
Speaker 3: conversation that Grandpa Crockett has been spraying poison all around
Speaker 3: his property to try to keep all this disgusting wildlife
Speaker 3: at bay, because there is nothing worse than animals, and
Speaker 3: so he's been using he's been using I guess poisons
Speaker 3: and insecticides to the absolute max to try to put
Speaker 3: an end to it. And it is not working. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so Sam Elliott and Karen go back to the house
Speaker 3: and then there's a funny moment where Sam Elliott who
Speaker 3: again is a freelance photographer for an ecology magazine. He
Speaker 3: has to call his editor immediately from the Stude's house.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the freelance in can be a little lonely.
Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes you just check in with your editor just.
Speaker 3: To say hi, Oh, that's a good I didn't think
Speaker 3: about it like that. Maybe he's just being polite and
Speaker 3: actually he's calling somebody to be like, send help, I'm
Speaker 3: at this creepy house. But of course the phone doesn't
Speaker 3: want because that's a standard feature of Nature Strikes Back movies,
Speaker 3: is that our technological infrastructure fails us when the animals
Speaker 3: begin to rise up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the frogs are I guess we never see them
Speaker 2: actually cut a phone line, but it's implied that they're
Speaker 2: out there doing it.
Speaker 3: Yes, So anyway, in the meantime, we get a little
Speaker 3: walk through to meet a bunch of the rest of
Speaker 3: the cast. We meet Ginny, who is played by Lynn Borden.
Speaker 3: This is Clint's wife who she's showing off some cute
Speaker 3: drawings by the kids. She seems generally irritated. She is
Speaker 3: short tempered, and she is irritated by the news that
Speaker 3: Clint is wet from the water oh yeah, because we
Speaker 3: didn't mention that Sam Elliott pulls Clint into the water
Speaker 3: when they go to help him out of the water.
Speaker 3: I guess is revenge for capsizing his.
Speaker 2: Canoe kind of smacks him one too, I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. Then we also meet aunt Iris, who appears eccentric.
Speaker 3: She enjoys trapping butterflies and a glass bell jar, and
Speaker 3: that lust for butterflies will be her undoing later on.
Speaker 2: Yes, it will.
Speaker 3: We meet cousin kN who is another cousin who has
Speaker 3: no identifying features whatsoever except that he's another one who
Speaker 3: cannot button up his shirt. I guess the only thing
Speaker 3: interesting about cousin Kenneth is that he is the boyfriend
Speaker 3: of Bella Garrington, who is played by Judy Pace. So
Speaker 3: I said, you know, other than Sam Elliott, the most
Speaker 3: likable actor in the movie, and I think she and
Speaker 3: cousin Kenneth they're supposed to be an item. And like
Speaker 3: several other characters, Bella Garrington here seems dressed a little
Speaker 3: warm for July in Florida. She's wearing like this kind
Speaker 3: of long sleeve long pants like rock star outfit when
Speaker 3: we first meet her. Also, did you notice that. When
Speaker 3: we first meet cousin Kenneth and Bella, they are playing
Speaker 3: with a weige aboard.
Speaker 2: I miss that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's on the table between them. They've got their
Speaker 3: hands on the what do you call it, the planchette,
Speaker 3: the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: What spirits that. Maybe they're trying to get messages from
Speaker 3: the frogs or something.
Speaker 2: It's just spelling out ribbit on the board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it means. But so Sam,
Speaker 3: I'm Elliott, and Clint then take showers to wash the
Speaker 3: lake off, and then there's a great scene where they
Speaker 3: just stand around toweling off and talking about Clint's football days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's all Clint has, or the old football days,
Speaker 2: the beer, the speedboats, and the dream of one day
Speaker 2: inheriting some money from the patriarch.
Speaker 3: That's right, So Grandpa Crockett, and then there are other
Speaker 3: uncles and cousins that I didn't even get into yet,
Speaker 3: but too many to talk about. So Grandpa Crockett assembles
Speaker 3: everybody for a buffet lunch on the lawn. And this
Speaker 3: is another scene that in reality would be swarming with insects.
Speaker 3: I've been to Florida in the summer, but of course
Speaker 3: it's not, or at least we don't see any insects.
Speaker 3: We do cut away to frogs a lot. But I
Speaker 3: liked how this buffet lunch is complete with at least
Speaker 3: five different kinds of liquor that we can see on camera,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of logo facing bottles of coke. So
Speaker 3: again I'm wondering what's going on there. But we see
Speaker 3: Gordon's vodka, we see some kind of scotch, and then
Speaker 3: multiple glass decanters with other liquors in them.
Speaker 2: I have to say it's refreshing to see forward facing
Speaker 2: labels on beverage bottles in a motion picture, because at
Speaker 2: times they can get a little obnoxious where you like,
Speaker 2: come on, movie, I know you don't want to show
Speaker 2: me that that's a Coca Cola or show me that
Speaker 2: that is you know, this other brand of a beverage.
Speaker 2: It gets a little two precise at times, so I'm
Speaker 2: happy to see the beverage logos here change.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, also the scene has some good Ginny chewing
Speaker 3: Clint out for drinking a fifth of vodka every night. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But somehow conversation just keeps coming back to frogs everybody's
Speaker 3: trying to talk to so she's like chewing him out
Speaker 3: for drinking vodka. But somehow this gets related to frogs.
Speaker 3: And then Grandpa says to Sam Elliott, you see more
Speaker 3: frogs than usual this year. And Sam Elliot's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: sometimes animals overpopulate, but they'll die off by next year.
Speaker 3: And Grandpa, of course is like, what are you some
Speaker 3: kind of ecologist? And then and there's broader discussion on
Speaker 3: why frogs are bad and what would be the best
Speaker 3: ways to kill.
Speaker 2: Frogs, And this is all great because it's ultimately leading
Speaker 2: up to something like, why is Grandpa even remotely tolerating
Speaker 2: this stranger here who has you know, already seems to
Speaker 2: have unsavory connections to environmentalism. Well, it's because he has
Speaker 2: a need of him. He has a task for him.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Grandpa Crockett wants he takes Sam Elliott
Speaker 3: aside and he's like, I want you to take a
Speaker 3: look around and investigate the frogs, apparently so he can
Speaker 3: put the family's minds at ease about frogs. I think
Speaker 3: there's plenty more cutaways to frogs, Ribert Ribot. But then
Speaker 3: also we get a little secret meeting on the side
Speaker 3: where Grandpa also wants Sam Elliott to go looking for
Speaker 3: his professional frog executioner, Grover, who had been sent out
Speaker 3: earlier that morning to spray for frogs, but who never returned.
Speaker 3: And when he sends Sam Elliott out on this mission
Speaker 3: to find Grover, Grandpa's like, do you want to take
Speaker 3: along a gun? He's just got a room full of
Speaker 3: guns and animal heads mounted on the wall, and he's like,
Speaker 3: you want one of these rifles? And of course not.
Speaker 3: Sam Elliott is far too cool to shoot at a
Speaker 3: frog with a rifle.
Speaker 2: And he also lays out a sick burn on Grandpa's
Speaker 2: trophy room. He's like, no, I don't believe a I
Speaker 2: don't believe a frog head would much improve the space
Speaker 2: or something to that effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, except he says it in fewer words somehow, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and you know it's got that Sam Elliott
Speaker 2: charm to it, so it doesn't it doesn't feel particularly thorny.
Speaker 2: You know. Again, he just he just plays it so
Speaker 2: cool in this film.
Speaker 3: I wonder Sam Elliott, I wonder if he just like
Speaker 3: went through the script with a red pin and he
Speaker 3: like took every time his character spoke and like reduced
Speaker 3: the number of words in the line by half or
Speaker 3: even more. You know, he's he's very laconic. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: So anyway, Sam Elliott, you know, he wanders through the
Speaker 3: woods and he stumbles across a big canister of poison.
Speaker 3: And then this part's great. There's like a parade of
Speaker 3: day animals of every kind. So you see dead frog,
Speaker 3: dead snake, dead eagle, and then like I thought he
Speaker 3: was going to come across a penguin next, but then
Speaker 3: it just gets into a lot of frogs and snakes
Speaker 3: and eventually finds Grover face down in a puddle. Is
Speaker 3: he alive or dead? I guess he is. Whatever you
Speaker 3: are when the script says you're dead, but you are
Speaker 3: obviously still breathing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well the movie makeup says he's dead though, because
Speaker 2: he had like a big old chunk taken out of his.
Speaker 3: Face, right, and his face is blue.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so actually again, stress, you know, this film
Speaker 2: is not particularly grizzly. It is actually righted PG. So
Speaker 2: any scene like this, it's not as horrific as it
Speaker 2: would be in other film. It's not as say a
Speaker 2: horrific as Squirm is. You have a lot of really
Speaker 2: really gross special effects to drive home Nature's vengeance. It's
Speaker 2: pretty tame in this film, but it works, you know,
Speaker 2: It's it's shot and presented well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, the gore is relatively tame. Yeah, though some
Speaker 3: sometimes the deaths like if you were to imagine them,
Speaker 3: the implications are really awful.
Speaker 2: But Yeah does a good job with that, you know,
Speaker 2: and implying the death at least non frogged related deaths.
Speaker 3: Anyway, But anyway, so we come back to the house
Speaker 3: and check in with the other characters that there was
Speaker 3: a nice little scene with May Mercer who plays Maybell
Speaker 3: who works at the house, and then Judy Pace, who
Speaker 3: again plays Bella Herrington. They have a nice little scene
Speaker 3: where they share a drink together and they sort of
Speaker 3: commiserate with a great big eye roll about the family,
Speaker 3: and we find out that Bella Herrington's birth name is
Speaker 3: also Maybell. But anyway, we get to all of the
Speaker 3: floristocrats who are sitting around in the mansion gabbing, and
Speaker 3: Grandpa says he thinks Grover deserves to be dead in
Speaker 3: a ditch. They have not gotten the news that he
Speaker 3: is dead in a ditch. They're just imagining I wonder
Speaker 3: if he's dead in a ditch, which will turn out
Speaker 3: to be true, And he's like, well, I hope he is,
Speaker 3: because he's late coming back. And then Karen is like, Grandpa,
Speaker 3: that's awful. You make us sound like the worst of
Speaker 3: the ugly rich.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to which he replies, we are the ugly rich.
Speaker 3: But then we get a great speech by Aunt Iris
Speaker 3: where she's like, we're entitled to be ugly, Caaren, we
Speaker 3: pay so many taxes. And then she starts going on
Speaker 3: this rant about environmental regulations on her paper mills that
Speaker 3: are costing her a fortune. And anyway, Sam Elliott comes
Speaker 3: back and he informs Grandpa Crockett the Grover is dead,
Speaker 3: and their conversation is interrupted when frogs are thumping against
Speaker 3: the windowsill. That was the sound effect I was talking
Speaker 3: about earlier with the thump thump. And then somebody screams
Speaker 3: from the other room it was maybell, so what could
Speaker 3: it be? And everybody runs in and there is a
Speaker 3: snake hanging from the chandelier in the dining room. Everybody
Speaker 3: just crowds in while ominous music throbs on the soundtrack.
Speaker 3: Snake's right there over the dinner table. And then I
Speaker 3: laughed out loud of this. Grandpa Crocket whips out a revolver,
Speaker 3: shoots the snake, The snake falls dead on the dinner table,
Speaker 3: and then he asks Charles to remove the snake. And
Speaker 3: then he's like, all right, everybody, let's eat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ridiculous because of course there's no reason that
Speaker 2: a snake would be in your chandelier. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a real turtle on a fence post kind of moment.
Speaker 3: But then we get into a bunch of just little
Speaker 3: conversation scenes, like there's this philosophical debate between Sam Elliot
Speaker 3: and Grandpa Crockett about whether man is the master of
Speaker 3: nature or not. Sam Elliott seems to believe that humans
Speaker 3: and frogs can coexist peacefully, how naive he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great scene. I think I ended
Speaker 2: up watching this one twice, you having to rerun just
Speaker 2: to get it because I could tell like, this is
Speaker 2: the heart of the movie. This is where, this is
Speaker 2: where the central argument is being being played out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there's a great part where Sam Elliott.
Speaker 3: Sam Elliott seems to get what's going on. He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I see this is a nature strikes back film. So
Speaker 3: he's like, what if nature we're trying to get back
Speaker 3: at us for all of the pollution and the littering,
Speaker 3: and the response is nonsense, And sam Elliot says, well,
Speaker 3: then how how do you explain it? But note that
Speaker 3: the it that Sam Elliott seems to be at a
Speaker 3: loss to explain otherwise is so far Grover was bitten
Speaker 3: by a snake and died, There are a lot of
Speaker 3: frogs hopping around, and there was a snake on the chandelier.
Speaker 2: Well still, it's it's all adding up to something, I
Speaker 2: guess so, but but but yeah, sam Elliott is his
Speaker 2: whole presentation in this though, is like another actor in
Speaker 2: this role might have been more insistent, you know, and
Speaker 2: more you know, argumentative on this point, but he's just
Speaker 2: kind of like laying it out there. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, what do you think is happening? You know,
Speaker 2: look around us, look at how we're treating the world.
Speaker 2: You know, this this is what this is what it
Speaker 2: is man.
Speaker 3: Gentle wise and charming. He sells it so good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of other conversations going on. We learned, Oh,
Speaker 3: there's a scene with Clint and Jenny arguing there you
Speaker 3: know they're they're talking about how Genny resents that Clint
Speaker 3: spends all day drunk driving a speedboat. And this is
Speaker 3: the part where he retorts that he needs to play
Speaker 3: his cards right so that he can get his inheritance.
Speaker 2: Life is hard for old clan here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some very hardcore flirting between Sam Elliott and
Speaker 3: Joan van Ark. Clearly there's an attraction there. And then
Speaker 3: meanwhile I was noticing there is such creepy decor in
Speaker 3: this house. I feel like this about a lot of
Speaker 3: I think, especially like Southern American houses from this like
Speaker 3: you know, sixties and seventies where you see this like
Speaker 3: mixture of sometimes like more modern furniture decorations, but also
Speaker 3: just like weird, creepy old Antebellum looking stuff. Everything is
Speaker 3: just like haunted daghero types of nineteenth century Florida vampires
Speaker 3: up on the wall. There's this guy I captured one
Speaker 3: of these for us to look at. There's just some
Speaker 3: creep staring at us from Adagero type from nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: four whatever, eighteen fifty four, and I don't know, he
Speaker 3: looks like he wants my blood, he wants my life force.
Speaker 2: So some of this I don't know, they might addressed
Speaker 2: it up a little bit. I couldn't get a lot
Speaker 2: of interior photos online of the mansion here, but yeah,
Speaker 2: this is the Wesley Homestead from Edenarden State Park. Oh Okay.
Speaker 2: It was apparently built in eighteen ninety seven, and then
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three Louis Maxon bought and renovated the
Speaker 2: house quote creating a showplace for her family heirlooms and antiques.
Speaker 3: Okay, so maybe this dementor is a family heirloom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or maybe they felt like they needed to night
Speaker 2: gallery up the joints for the picture. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I could see it going either way.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's a bunch of other just sort of
Speaker 3: like social stuff going on. There's not a lot of
Speaker 3: depth to any of it. There's a sequence where Clint
Speaker 3: is just wandering around bullying people and trying to get
Speaker 3: somebody to play this log jousting game with him, where
Speaker 3: I don't know if you could explain this. They're like
Speaker 3: trying to stand on a log and hit each other
Speaker 3: with pillows, but nobody wants to play with Clint because
Speaker 3: he is drunk and abusive.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think part of is just like Clint
Speaker 2: sucks and you should be okay with it when the
Speaker 2: animals kill him later. But also this was a scene
Speaker 2: where I was I had to laugh at it because yeah,
Speaker 2: he's horsing around on this log, pushing people over and
Speaker 2: proclaiming himself to be the king of the law. And
Speaker 2: then this is juxaposed with an image of like a
Speaker 2: gecko or something walking on a limb, as if the
Speaker 2: gecko is interjecting and saying, ah, foolish shield man, I
Speaker 2: am the king of the log. Clearly, look at look
Speaker 2: at my appendages and how easily I cling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know nothing about stick dominance. Yes, But
Speaker 3: so it's right about So we're here at like halfway
Speaker 3: through the movie, and it's right here that nature really
Speaker 3: starts striking back. I would say, up until now it's
Speaker 3: been mostly set up, but now it just sort of
Speaker 3: turns into a nature killspree at about the forty five
Speaker 3: minute mark, and that doesn't stop until the movie's over.
Speaker 2: Right, the frogs have announced the first wave to begin, yes,
Speaker 2: and so it does.
Speaker 3: Right, So we get Michael Martindale, who one of the
Speaker 3: many cousins after being bullied by Clint, so he gets
Speaker 3: bullied by Clint knocked off the log and then he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll show everybody, and he goes in. He gets a shotgun,
Speaker 3: drives off in a jeep and I guess this is
Speaker 3: maybe this is his favorite hobby. He just starts shooting
Speaker 3: at random birds. I didn't really get what was going
Speaker 3: on here. Does not seem to be an organized hunting expedition.
Speaker 3: He looks more like he's just sort of like working
Speaker 3: out his frustrations on the birds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just generally being a jerk to nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But also while this is going on, we get
Speaker 3: Sam Elliott. Just he goes walking in the woods. He
Speaker 3: sees many, many reptiles, and then we see cousin Michael.
Speaker 3: He starts running for some reason. I don't remember why
Speaker 3: he starts running. I guess he sees an animal that
Speaker 3: scares him and he shoots himself in the leg. And
Speaker 3: then there is I don't know. There are many glorious
Speaker 3: nature attacks scenes in this film, but one of the
Speaker 3: best is what happens here. It is a Spanish moss attack.
Speaker 3: I don't know how else to describe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a straight up Spanish moss attack. Like
Speaker 2: at first, it just seems like, oh, he fell in
Speaker 2: the Spanish moss and now he's gotten entangled in it.
Speaker 2: But no, like the Spanish moss seems to be crawling
Speaker 2: around him. It seems to be animate.
Speaker 3: Sient Spanish moss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the Spanish moss kill scene here is just wonderful.
Speaker 2: It seems to indicate that Spanish moss is just teeming
Speaker 2: with tarantulis, which it is not, though I should know.
Speaker 2: There is an old wives tale that Spanish moss is
Speaker 2: filled with trumbiculade red bugs or chickers as they are
Speaker 2: often called, But apparently there's no truth to this, that
Speaker 2: these creatures prefer the tall grass. But weirdly, you still
Speaker 2: see this association repeated all over the place, despite scientific
Speaker 2: research to the contrary. The only possible connection I can
Speaker 2: find is that perhaps after the moss has touched the
Speaker 2: ground or fallen onto the around, then you can have
Speaker 2: the red bugs the chiggers crawl into the Spanish moss,
Speaker 2: and that's how people could potentially get them. But for
Speaker 2: the most part, these parasites are going to be on
Speaker 2: the grass where they reach out questing for humans or
Speaker 2: other animals to latch onto.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the scientific term, isn't it questing?
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, I always because it's such a creepy term,
Speaker 2: just imagining them moving their little appendages, just questing for flesh.
Speaker 3: But here's Tarantula's so the Spanish the sentient Spanish moss.
Speaker 3: It envelops cousin Michael, whichever cousin this is, he gets
Speaker 3: like drowns in the moss, and then Tarantula's just swarm
Speaker 3: out of it and I think one of them maybe
Speaker 3: crawls into his mouth. They just attack him and he dies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things about this film, and it's
Speaker 2: also been one of the things that is really great,
Speaker 2: is that all the animals are live. I don't think
Speaker 2: we really see any prop animals or puppet animals used.
Speaker 3: I think are some of the dead ones.
Speaker 2: Maybe yeah, for the dead ones, but in terms of
Speaker 2: like there's there's no cutaway and then like a puppet
Speaker 2: biting somebody on the neck, which is one of the
Speaker 2: reasons probably you don't see any Grizzli er death scenes
Speaker 2: in this You know a lot of the gore and
Speaker 2: violence is implied, but it also means you don't have
Speaker 2: any cheesy puppets like those are some straight up tarantulos
Speaker 2: crawling around on him, and at one point a scorpion.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right, a scorpion crawls over his hand.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 2: Super late though, It's like, come on, scorpion, Ye, didn't
Speaker 2: you read the schedule for The Animal Uprising. You're arriving
Speaker 2: late to everything.
Speaker 3: He shows up after the cousin's laying has finished. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: oh and all the while it's great that also, the
Speaker 3: frogs are not getting in on the action. They are
Speaker 3: not in the Spanish moss, but they're they're around, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, yeah, they're not the direct perpetrators of the violence,
Speaker 2: despite the title of the picture and the poster art,
Speaker 2: which I don't think we've mentioned. The poster art for
Speaker 2: this film features a frog with a human hand coming
Speaker 2: out of its mouth like a giant frog. There are
Speaker 2: no giant frogs in this movie, but that was the poster. No,
Speaker 2: but the frogs are normal sized and they're just in
Speaker 2: the background, watching, perhaps directing. They're kind of like the
Speaker 2: generals of The Animal Uprising.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get that. You get the sense
Speaker 3: that they're the brains behind the operation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's they're not inherently scary frogs, which I
Speaker 2: think is maybe one of the main flaws of the picture.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, it starts to work after
Speaker 2: a while where it's like the frogs are watching. The
Speaker 2: frogs are watching, and they're the kind of watching off
Speaker 2: on approvingly, as if to say, yes, this is good.
Speaker 2: Everything is going to plant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Uh okay. So then more
Speaker 3: of the cousins slaying continues. There's another cousin. I think
Speaker 3: maybe this one is cousin Kenneth. This is the one
Speaker 3: who's uh, who's Gudy Pace's boyfriend. And yes, he goes
Speaker 3: to the greenhouse. He's just swaggering around in the greenhouse.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what he's doing there. It's maybe like
Speaker 3: looking for something in the greenhouse.
Speaker 2: But then oh, I think, and what's her name send
Speaker 2: him off to get a particular herb from the greenhouse,
Speaker 2: Oh okay, or something like I know she's gonna make
Speaker 2: a cocktail or something. And so he's in there looking
Speaker 2: around for it. But after at the door didn't close
Speaker 2: all the way. And income the lizards, especially the tigu lizards, yes,
Speaker 2: which are some this are some big boys. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about them in a bit, but they start crawling around
Speaker 2: everywhere and they start knocking over the chemicals.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, that's right. So I can imagine he was
Speaker 3: in there looking for an herb for a cocktail, because
Speaker 3: Grandpa needs his cocktails in this movie multiple times if
Speaker 3: he demands cocktails really inopportune moments. But the Greenhouse death
Speaker 3: scene is great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because basically they just knock over a bunch of
Speaker 2: chemicals and then the chemicals overwhelmed this particular Crockett kid
Speaker 2: and he just like dies, He just falls out. And
Speaker 2: then immediately geckos and other lizards are celebrating by climbing
Speaker 2: on his face. Like clearly they were like, all right,
Speaker 2: you lay here, and then we're gonna our lizard wrangler
Speaker 2: is going to place some lizards on you, and then
Speaker 2: we're gonna shoot again. But now it's time for the invasion,
Speaker 2: Like you say, is really heating up. Now, this is
Speaker 2: where we get one of my favorite scenes where there's
Speaker 2: an American flag birthday cake out there because it's oh,
Speaker 2: Grandpa's birthday and it's fourth of July, and as the
Speaker 2: frogs start invading, the frogs are are treading on the
Speaker 2: flag on the birthday cake.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I got to say that that is some
Speaker 3: stiff icing, Like it really holds up to a big
Speaker 3: old frog crawling over it. It just makes me think
Speaker 3: that should be like a I don't know, category of
Speaker 3: directions and how to you know, whip egg white. So
Speaker 3: you got your soft peaks, you got your stiff peaks,
Speaker 3: and then you got your bullfrog supporting peaks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this would indeed make a great wedding cake for
Speaker 2: anybody who gets married at this location is get yourself
Speaker 2: an American flag sheet cake with a fancy like cake
Speaker 2: frog on top of it. Maybe cake cupcakes on top
Speaker 2: of it. I don't know. I'll let the cake people
Speaker 2: figure it out.
Speaker 3: Here comes the froghoo. So at this point, it seems
Speaker 3: like people start to kind of take things seriously. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: it looks like people are dying. Sam Elliott starts to
Speaker 3: lead the charge to investigate what's going on. Meanwhile, Aunt
Speaker 3: Iris is wandering around in the woods. Of course, you
Speaker 3: know she's going to her doom with a butterfly net.
Speaker 3: We saw her with the butterfly in the bell jar earlier,
Speaker 3: and I guess she's just going up to catch more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the I think the first real victim
Speaker 2: in the film where you begin to question whose side
Speaker 2: you're on, because you know she's she's not She's sure
Speaker 2: she catches butterflies, but she's not really bad. She has
Speaker 2: she's been nice to everybody.
Speaker 3: But she did give that really ignorant rant earlier about
Speaker 3: like I should be able to pollute however much I want.
Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, that's true. Okay, maybe so maybe she
Speaker 2: had it coming. At any rate, Nature really puts her
Speaker 2: through the ringer here, because she's just one of these
Speaker 2: scenes where like nature moves in on her and then
Speaker 2: she's falling, she's screaming, things are crawling on her.
Speaker 3: Yes, though the funny thing is the majority of her suffering,
Speaker 3: at least early on in the sequence, seems to be
Speaker 3: at the hands of vines, and it makes you wonder, Okay,
Speaker 3: so are the plan also taking part in this nature
Speaker 3: striking back? It's mostly animals, but the Spanish Moss descends
Speaker 3: on one of the earlier cousins and iris. Really she's
Speaker 3: like getting choked by vines as she runs through the trees.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they're in on it, because it is
Speaker 2: in all nature uprising.
Speaker 3: Okay, But then after that. It's one of those movies
Speaker 3: like the Wet Pit of Death. You know, she falls
Speaker 3: in a puddle, and you just know that that's a
Speaker 3: death sentence in a horror movie chase scene in the
Speaker 3: woods if you fall in a puddle, like it's over.
Speaker 3: So she's in a puddle, she's all wet, she's got
Speaker 3: leeches all over her, Snakes, frogs, baby, alligators, they're just
Speaker 3: all over the place. And then she gets a fatal
Speaker 3: snake bite and turns blue instantly, just instantly.
Speaker 2: Yep, as the frogs watch on, and.
Speaker 3: Then with no weight at all, we get Cousin Stewart.
Speaker 3: I think this might be the Levan Cleef cousin. You know,
Speaker 3: he wanders in to see what's going on and he
Speaker 3: falls prey to a gator attack.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, we have a gator attack scene. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty intimidated. Those are intimidating animals. You don't have
Speaker 2: to you don't have to to gussie them up any
Speaker 2: like the frogs. I mean, the gator is instantly intimidating.
Speaker 3: So I was wondering about this scene because there is
Speaker 3: a claim on the IMDb page for frogs. Don't know
Speaker 3: if it's true, but it at least claims that some
Speaker 3: footage in this gator attack scene is originally from a
Speaker 3: Roger Korman movie from nineteen seventy called Bloody Mama. But
Speaker 3: if that's true, it's integrated pretty well. I couldn't see,
Speaker 3: you know, anything that didn't look like it fit, though
Speaker 3: obviously you can't see the actor who's wrestling with the gator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a website called California herbs dot com that
Speaker 2: has a great section of their website devoted to reptiles
Speaker 2: and amphibians and movies, and they have a write up
Speaker 2: on frogs, and I'll get to some of what they
Speaker 2: have to share later. They highlighted this scene, pointing out
Speaker 2: that like it's a real gator, somebody's wrestling with it,
Speaker 2: stump man, and you can see if you look closely,
Speaker 2: that there's a band around the gator's mouth to keep
Speaker 2: it from actually biting. But they don't mention they don't
Speaker 2: mention any connection here with another film, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but i'd imagine a lot of herpetologists
Speaker 3: are not are not in love with the idea of
Speaker 3: actually wrestling with a gator for a film. Production. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I guess retroactive best wishes to that gator. I
Speaker 3: hope you were unscathed. But anyway, so back at the house,
Speaker 3: you've got Karen saying, you know, we've got to get
Speaker 3: out of here. I think it's clear that people are
Speaker 3: dying at this point, and she's like, we need to
Speaker 3: leave this island. And then Grandpa is just straight up
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm not gonna let one dead cousin spoil
Speaker 3: my party. We should carry on with the fun. Somebody
Speaker 3: make me a drink. We're gonna we're gonna eat our
Speaker 3: food and it's going to be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is where I think Sam Elliott has
Speaker 2: to remind him it's two dead people. Remember the other
Speaker 2: dead guy, your your frog executioner. Yes, it's like multiple
Speaker 2: dead people. And Grandpa's like, still, I'm not having to
Speaker 2: stay ruined, right.
Speaker 3: So Grandpa's he's even more ornery than he was before,
Speaker 3: and he's like, no, I want to have my birthday.
Speaker 3: So Sam Elliott and Judy Pace are the main voices
Speaker 3: of reason here and then and then May Mercer and
Speaker 3: Lance Taylor Senior join in. I think there is a
Speaker 3: scene where there's again some sort of implied racism on
Speaker 3: the part of Nasty Grandpa as he sort of demands
Speaker 3: that everybody else stay on the island, but he tells Bella, Harrington, Maybelle,
Speaker 3: and Charles, who are all black, that they can leave
Speaker 3: whenever they want. So they do leave, and Clint has
Speaker 3: to powerboat them across the water to the other side.
Speaker 3: So I was I was thinking, Okay, maybe the three
Speaker 3: of them successfully escape. I'm not sure. Later we see
Speaker 3: their like we see them being sort of menaced by
Speaker 3: birds as they are making their escape, and then later
Speaker 3: we see their abandoned luggage and stuff. So I think
Speaker 3: it does not bode well for them, but we don't.
Speaker 3: We don't ever see anything happen to them. It's I
Speaker 3: guess it's left unclear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ultimately I like that better than the movie
Speaker 2: simply like sacrificing them all to the birds. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's worth I will say.
Speaker 3: The abandoned luggage and stuff doesn't look good.
Speaker 2: No, no, it does not.
Speaker 3: But then also Clint is out there driving the boat.
Speaker 3: He I think somebody somehow like his boat becomes untied
Speaker 3: from the dock where he has tied it up while
Speaker 3: while taking everybody across the water, so he has to
Speaker 3: swim back to his boat, but he's not swimming alone.
Speaker 3: Something swims up on it and I've lost track of
Speaker 3: all the animals at this point. Is it a snake?
Speaker 3: Something swims at him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this may there are let us there's snakes in
Speaker 2: the water at this point. They're gators. This is not
Speaker 2: the alligator snapping turtle scene though, right, that's coming out.
Speaker 3: That's on Lynn Borden, who is Clint's wife, who again
Speaker 3: too many characters to keep track of, but she goes
Speaker 3: out to like watch her Clint being executed in the
Speaker 3: water by whatever animal it is, and she starts screaming,
Speaker 3: and then she's crawling in the water, and then you
Speaker 3: see an alligator snapping turtle going after Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and which of course is also ridiculous because as
Speaker 2: neat as alligator snapping turtles are, these are harmless critters.
Speaker 2: They're not going to come hunt you for sport in
Speaker 2: the certainly in the shallice, right.
Speaker 3: And then also you see crabs crawling on her butt
Speaker 3: after she's dead, so maybe the crabs are pitching in
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I had a question about that because
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is just crabs doing what crabs do.
Speaker 2: Like crabs might not have gotten the memo, Like the
Speaker 2: frogs could be like, thank you crabs for joining in
Speaker 2: the uprising, and the crabs are like, what uprising?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: We just saw a dead person and we were gonna
Speaker 2: eat him because that's that's our thingy.
Speaker 3: But as with earlier, even after all of this death
Speaker 3: and mayhem, Grandpa Crockett just wants everybody else to stay
Speaker 3: and keep partying. He's very angry. He's very angry. He's
Speaker 3: angry about frogs. He's inconvenienced by the deaths of his
Speaker 3: family members, and he demands an old fashioned and Karen
Speaker 3: makes it for him, which again I laughed out loud at.
Speaker 2: It's a solid cocktail. So I mean, if you got
Speaker 2: to ride out the end of the world, why.
Speaker 3: Not, huh. But then there's a final escape where Sam
Speaker 3: Elliott and Joan van Ark and then the two kids
Speaker 3: who are not their kids, they're I think Clint and
Speaker 3: Jenny's kids. They paddle away on a canoe to escape
Speaker 3: the island, and Grandpa stays behind ray miland he's like,
Speaker 3: I am going to party by myself. I'm not leaving,
Speaker 3: so they.
Speaker 2: I will just bitterly drink my cocktails. And eventually he's
Speaker 2: not even drinking cocktails. He's just sloshing bourbon into a glass.
Speaker 2: But he's like, nothing can make me leave. I'm staying
Speaker 2: here to the bitter end.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Throughout the rest of the movie, whenever you see Raymland,
Speaker 3: he's just frantically getting more drunk. But then Sam Elliott
Speaker 3: is paddling them away on a canoe, and there's a
Speaker 3: great part where Sam Elliott, you know, he's might as
Speaker 3: well take your shirt off while you're battling some snakes
Speaker 3: in the water, which he does.
Speaker 2: Well, he's wearing all that denim. You don't want it,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I guess n Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, the pants stay on.
Speaker 3: I guess that's true. I think he needs some equipment
Speaker 3: to get those jeans off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly, once they get wet, I'd be concerned it
Speaker 2: would just cut off all blood blood flow to his brain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you need some like a prie bar or something
Speaker 3: to remove them. But then so there's this final escape
Speaker 3: sequence where they're trying to get across the water and
Speaker 3: then get across the land. Once they get to the
Speaker 3: other side, and.
Speaker 2: It's a bit's pretty good, especially again for a movie
Speaker 2: in which you can't really have too much in terms
Speaker 2: of human on animal interaction, but it's still pretty good.
Speaker 2: He fight the fights off the water snakes with the paddle.
Speaker 2: They make it out to the highway and they're just
Speaker 2: trying to flag somebody, anybody down to get him out
Speaker 2: of here.
Speaker 3: It's a Texas chainsaw masker ending, right, you know, it's
Speaker 3: like escaping, trying to flag down a car that will
Speaker 3: take them away, and the first car they see stops.
Speaker 3: This lady stomps for the hitchhiker, which is again a wet,
Speaker 3: clean shaven Sam Elliott carrying a shotgun, and she's like, yes,
Speaker 3: I'll pull over. You get in the car, And so
Speaker 3: Sam Elliott and everybody else gets in the car, and
Speaker 3: then we get we get a wonderful twist ending here.
Speaker 2: That's right, there's this that there's a kid in the
Speaker 2: front seat, because again this is the seventies, and the
Speaker 2: kids like, I just came back from summer camp. Look
Speaker 2: at this here frog I got and holds this frog
Speaker 2: back for them to see in the back seat, and
Speaker 2: with the camera zooms in on the frog's face and
Speaker 2: we get this awesome freeze frame, and I think a
Speaker 2: little bit of that electronic musical zing.
Speaker 3: So again, like with the other characters earlier, we do
Speaker 3: not see them die, but I think the implication is
Speaker 3: that even all these characters are killed as.
Speaker 2: Well well, because I don't know, well, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's a situation where then that frog like laughs and
Speaker 2: the car blows up. But it was briefly implied earlier
Speaker 2: and is definitely driven home here that this is not
Speaker 2: a regional uprising of nature. This is a global uprising.
Speaker 2: Like people are vanishing. The people in the car here
Speaker 2: haven't seen anybody else around like all morning or whatever
Speaker 2: on their drive, so they're doomed. This is like the
Speaker 2: end of Stephen King's The Mist, the original short story,
Speaker 2: where the people have escaped the immediate danger, but they're
Speaker 2: setting off into a world in which there are no
Speaker 2: longer any safe harbors.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. When you use you return from the underworld,
Speaker 3: but you find that the world you know has changed, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: So I think the implication probably is that no one survives.
Speaker 3: It's just nature takes back the earth and humanity is
Speaker 3: crushed between a below the flipper of the.
Speaker 2: Frog, right and this I should say, this feels like
Speaker 2: it should have been the end of the film. But
Speaker 2: you have to have to realize that the whole time
Speaker 2: we've been promised a scene in which frogs eat Ray Milan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and gosh darn it, this movie's gonna give it to us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, I mean, he's like, he is there
Speaker 3: to be this nasty grump who will be punished by
Speaker 3: nature for all of his nastiness. And yeah, if the
Speaker 3: movie didn't show it to you, it would be a
Speaker 3: real bummer. So of course he's back home by himself,
Speaker 3: frantically getting more drunk, and then eventually the frogs penetrate
Speaker 3: his fortress. They're like hopping around in the room with him.
Speaker 3: The frogs don't really do anything to him. It looks
Speaker 3: like he dies of a heart attack or something. He
Speaker 3: just sort of freaks out and he's like he falls
Speaker 3: on the floor and then there are frogs hopping all
Speaker 3: over him.
Speaker 2: Yep, and then that's that's the end of the picture.
Speaker 2: We roll some very brief credits and there's a fun
Speaker 2: little state or there at the end, so that you
Speaker 2: got to stay for. Basically, a cartoon frog hops across
Speaker 2: the screen and he has a human hand sticking out
Speaker 2: of his mouth, which he then swallows and hops on.
Speaker 3: Jeremiah was a bullfrog? Is that kind of thing?
Speaker 2: It's kind of a reverse pink panther. I guess instead
Speaker 2: of having the cute cartoon at the beginning, you have
Speaker 2: it at the very end. And also maybe it's there illegally,
Speaker 2: so if anybody's like, gosh darn it, this movie poster
Speaker 2: had a frog eating a person's arm. I didn't see
Speaker 2: it in the picture. They can say, well, technically at
Speaker 2: the very end, if you stay through the credits, you'll
Speaker 2: get to see this in cartoon form.
Speaker 3: Tremendous Nature strikes Back film.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I really enjoyed it. Now I want to
Speaker 2: touch on a little bit more about the frogs and
Speaker 2: the toads and the various reptiles and amphibians we see
Speaker 2: here again. Californiaherbs dot Com has a great section on
Speaker 2: their website devoted to herbs and movies, and indeed a
Speaker 2: write up on frogs with photos, and I just want
Speaker 2: to touch on some of the things they point out.
Speaker 2: The ones is that they they say the animal photography
Speaker 2: in this film is actually quite good on the whole. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and most of them seem to have been filmed for
Speaker 2: the movie, so they didn't seem to reply on a
Speaker 2: lot of stock footage or anything like that. And again
Speaker 2: they seem to have avoided the use of puppets and fakes.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's one of my favorite old things about
Speaker 3: Edwood movies and stuff is that, like, yeah, you'd have
Speaker 3: a character go into quote, the jungle in an Edwood
Speaker 3: movie like Bride of the Monster, which is actually it
Speaker 3: just looks like, you know, some trees beside a road,
Speaker 3: but so like they get out of their car and
Speaker 3: the jungle and then you see the actress look up
Speaker 3: and gasp and then it cuts to not even a
Speaker 3: not even slightly a match but stock footage of like
Speaker 3: an eagle and a snake in from something else, nature
Speaker 3: documentary or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so none of that in here, Like it
Speaker 2: all matches the film quality really well. And yeah, if
Speaker 2: you I enjoyed just watching animals in this film, it
Speaker 2: was weird. It's like going to the reptile house.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So on californiaherbs dot Com, I want to read this
Speaker 2: section where they get into the frogs and the toads
Speaker 2: quote to the credit of the filmmakers, the frogs and
Speaker 2: toads we see in the movie are all species that
Speaker 2: could be found in Florida. Most of them are cane toads,
Speaker 2: but there are a few leopard toads also thrown in
Speaker 2: at the end. Unfortunately, they all make the sounds of
Speaker 2: Pacific tree frogs, because that's what frogs always sound like
Speaker 2: in the movies. Cane toads make a trilling sound and
Speaker 2: leopard frogs make a chuckling sound. But if the audience
Speaker 2: heard these sounds, sadly, they wouldn't understand what they are hearing.
Speaker 3: Ah, it's like how cows don't look like cows and
Speaker 3: movies you got to use horses. Yeah, so here this
Speaker 3: is the audio equivalent of taping a bunch of cats
Speaker 3: together to create a horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or I think we've talked about this before. What
Speaker 2: was it we were talking about? You see this occasionally
Speaker 2: with animal sounds. Oh, I know what it was. It's rattlesnakes.
Speaker 2: Maybe we didn't talk. Maybe I'm talking about a conversation
Speaker 2: I had There wasn't on a podcasts, But rattlesnakes all
Speaker 2: make a particular rattling sound when you encounter them in
Speaker 2: say an old Western movie. But if you've been around
Speaker 2: a rattlesnake, you know that. Yeah, there is kind of
Speaker 2: like that height of the rattle. But there are like
Speaker 2: some other sounds, other rattling sounds as well, that you
Speaker 2: just don't hear in the movies. And so then, having
Speaker 2: only encountered rattlesnakes in film, if you encounter one in
Speaker 2: real life, you might not recognize the sound immediately.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: What is this weird device I'm hearing? Yeah, anyway, they
Speaker 2: also point out that cane toads are not native to Florida,
Speaker 2: but they have just they've just been they've been abundant
Speaker 2: in the state for such a long time, so they're
Speaker 2: essentially natural residents.
Speaker 3: Oh well, there's another major player in the film that
Speaker 3: is found in Florida, but it's not native to Florida.
Speaker 3: It's the tagu lizards or the Tigu name. They are
Speaker 3: like a non indigenous species. I think they're originally from
Speaker 3: South America.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I want to say Argentina. And yeah, they're
Speaker 2: quite invasive and they've they've even made it up to Atlanta.
Speaker 2: This is fun and friend of the show. Mark Mandica
Speaker 2: of the Amphibian Foundation. He's been on the local news
Speaker 2: in the past year here in Atlanta talking about like
Speaker 2: what to do if you see one, and in general,
Speaker 2: the advice is like, get somebody who knows what they're
Speaker 2: doing to come get this this big lizard, because they're
Speaker 2: they're tough critters. In this, Mark says, quote, I would
Speaker 2: not approach one without the gear that I would need
Speaker 2: to do so safely. And again, Mark Mandika is an
Speaker 2: expert at at at at approaching and in some cases
Speaker 2: handling reptiles and amphibians, so he knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 2: This is not something that the average person needs to
Speaker 2: get anywhere near, right, don't go into battle with to
Speaker 2: take you. Yeah, anyway, go go check out California HRBS
Speaker 2: dot com if you want more information about the various
Speaker 2: snakes and other creatures you see in this I've looked
Speaker 2: at this website in the past as well. It's just
Speaker 2: a good place to go if you find some snakes
Speaker 2: and turtles what have you popping up in a film
Speaker 2: and you're like, I wonder what that is. I wonder
Speaker 2: if that is even remotely appropriate for the setting or
Speaker 2: the time period, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But so overall it seems like this movie is unusually accurate,
Speaker 3: right in terms of what animals it's portraying is found
Speaker 3: in Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be the case. Yeah again that
Speaker 2: they're not all native creatures of Florida, but the invasive
Speaker 2: species are ones that were already invasive there at the
Speaker 2: time and remain invasive to this day. And yeah, so
Speaker 2: again there is kind of a natural quality to this film,
Speaker 2: like it is you know that again, these are these
Speaker 2: are actual Florida denizens that you're observing as they crawl
Speaker 2: and hop around, climbing up under the birthday cake and
Speaker 2: everything amazing.
Speaker 3: So you will see all of these animals when you
Speaker 3: get married at this park in Florida.
Speaker 2: Yes, go to Eden Gardens State Park and demand a
Speaker 2: swarm of toads and frogs at your wedding ceremony. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: this is a really fun picture. So some of you
Speaker 2: might be wondering how can I see it as well? Well,
Speaker 2: you can find it and the normal digital sources are
Speaker 2: all in play here places to buy or rent it digitally.
Speaker 2: I think it's also been illicitly uploaded at some very
Speaker 2: obvious places and has just for whatever reason, been allowed
Speaker 2: to remain there for years. But I would say you can.
Speaker 2: I have to stress you can buy a copy of
Speaker 2: this for yourself, and if you happen to own a
Speaker 2: Florida rental property, I demand that you do so buy
Speaker 2: it on DVD and or Blu ray and stock your
Speaker 2: vacation rental with this film. Because eighty eight Films has
Speaker 2: an addition that even includes an interview featurette with a
Speaker 2: featurette with the director. And if that's not good enough,
Speaker 2: Shout Factory put it out as a double feature with
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy six nineteen seventy six Nature Strikes Back
Speaker 2: picture The Food of the Gods, which is a bird
Speaker 2: Eye Gordon film about giant rats.
Speaker 3: Of course, the classic bigger than normal animal movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, so check those out. There's good ways to pick
Speaker 2: it up physically, and again if if you want to
Speaker 2: get digitally, there several different ways to do so. It's
Speaker 2: out there, it's ready for you. It's it's worth it's
Speaker 2: worth saying. It's a fun flick. It's it's definitely a
Speaker 2: great Florida movie.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna go ahead and close it out
Speaker 2: there then, but we'd love to hear from you have
Speaker 2: you seen frogs? Did you see it back in the seventies?
Speaker 2: What was that like? Were you part of the the
Speaker 2: uprising of Nature strikes Back pictures? And either way, what's
Speaker 2: your favorite Nature strikes Back movie? You know? Is it?
Speaker 2: What kind of animals? Does it? You know? Revolve around.
Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you, and in the meantime,
Speaker 2: you can check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always stour excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this podcast or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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