Frogs!

It's been a long time since I sat down and watched Frogs, an early 70's movie about relative weakness of man in the face of the natural world. I think another decent title for this movie might be The Revenge of Rachel Carson, Carson of course being the revolutionary researcher and writer of Silent Spring, the book which in no small order established the modern regime of environmental controls. This movie, with all its offbeat textures tells the story of what happens when nature fights back.

Sam Elliott is a photographer and ultra-cool hunk named Picket Smith who falls in with a discordant family named Roarke. They are a rich southern family with much of the baggage that suggests. The family is gathered to celebrate the birthday of hits patriarch played by Ray Milland. They quickly note the abundance of frogs, but assume that nature is just doing what it does, moving in waves of plenty and scarcity. Little do the people realize the attach as already begun.

Smith finds the body of a workman and before you know it the family members are falling victim to the creatures of the swamp as lizards create toxic gasses in an enclosed space and snakes strike at people constrained by the very vines of the swamp itself. The attack is slow and steady and that's the greatest power of this movie, the relentless power of nature which is presented. The film makers use very little music, just some spare sounds and that relative quiet adds to the power and tension of a movie which by all accounts shouldn't be scary at all.

Frogs is clunky in all sorts of ways, but I was struck by the idea that when nature rises up to strike down the blight of man we'll never see it coming.

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