This is a movie about killer frogs. Now, if this sounds awesome to you, please do watch this movie. If it doesn't, this movie simply just isn't your thing and it's best to skip it.
Back in the '70's there was a true revival of killer animal movies, with of course as the best known example "Jaws". All of these movies have a lot in common, besides from the obvious fact that they involve killer animals, or just one, in them. What they further more have in common is its buildup. All of these movies are basically constructed the same and therefore also too often offer far too little surprises.
But I could have forgiven the movie for this, if it at least was a bit more entertaining to watch. It's a bit weird, it seems that at first the movie wasn't taking itself that seriously but about half way through during the production of it, they decided to go for a serious approach instead. But really, who could ever take a movie about killer frogs serious?
I don't know if you ever looked at a frog closely but they are just far from scary looking creatures. Boring would be a better way to describe them really. All they do is sit still and stare. I can understand if you find them disgusting looking creatures but that's of course not the same as finding them scary. So why not have some fun with it instead? The movie unfortunately decided otherwise, which was one of the biggest disappointments and bad choices this movie made.
It's not only just a not so entertaining movie, it also is a bit of a boring one. It literally takes forever for something to finally happen en it truly takes a while for the first killing to occur. The movie is all buildup for most part, without ever having a real good pay off.
Now, I do admit that the movie get pretty awesome and original when the killings do occur. It's only half true that this movie is featuring killer frogs really, since it aren't the actual frogs who are committing the murders. They use telepathic powers to get other, bigger, stronger, more lethal and more menacing looking creatures to do the killings for them. So here we have some spiders, alligators, snakes, a turtle (yes, really) and a couple of lizard like looking animals doing all of the killings for them. Those moments were truly the highlight of this movie but it just takes too long for the movie to finally get there and the moments themselves are also quite short of course.
Another thing that I found to be odd about this movie; it's pretty clear from the start on already that the frogs are being the 'bad guys' and the cause of all troubles, yet none of the characters is ever making an attempt to kill any of them, not even when their relatives and friends are getting killed. And really, how hard is it for a human to kill a couple of frogs. I'm not kidding but during this entire movie not a single frog gets killed or even injured, by any of the characters. No wonder they were all getting killed, one by one. The frogs really deserved to win!
It doesn't really help that the characters are being played by some great actors. Sure, it's fun to still see a young Sam Elliott and an old Ray Milland in this but I can't really say that their presence helped to carry this movie to greater heights.
I still kind of liked the eerie musical score though. It got composed by genre expert Les Baxter and it perhaps sounded like it was more suitable for a haunted house movie but I still really liked it.
If you're into these sort of movies it will still be worth your time and as far as the genre goes, it also really isn't the worst or most ridicules (believe me, it is not!) movie out there. Not that it's great or even much good really but it luckily is not a complete wreck either. Let's just say that things could had been far worse!
5/10
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