A group of hapless victims celebrate a birthday on an island estate crawling with evil frogs.

By no means should this be considered a good film, but it has a certain charm that is hard to replicate. American International made some gems, and this is one of them. Later it was picked up by MGM. And, I believe, a Blu-ray was released by Scream Factory. Though you can never have enough special features.

Ray Milland is a joy to watch, whether in his best work ("Lost Weekend") or some of his worst. Indeed, towards the end of his career, he seemed to appear in just about anything. We also get Sam Elliott, though he is almost unrecognizable without his trademark mustache.

A lame entry in the `eco-horror' genre of the 70s, FROGS details the exploits of the hard-drinkin' Crockett family, who's annual Fourth of July celebration is invaded by frogs, or rather, clumsily inserted shots of frogs. The filmmakers keep insisting that just because there are images of frogs on screen, it's scary. Every scene in this movie (which mostly consist of the unpleasant family's pointless squabbling) features some drop-ins of frogs, and their croaking is on the soundtrack for 80% of the flick. It's an interesting motif, but not really all that scary.

And even though the movie is called FROGS, all of the killing are preformed by the other swampland critters. The movie could've been called LEECHES, SNAKES, SPIDERS, ALLIGATORS, TURTLE or LIZARDS, and it wouldn't have made any difference. The titular animals don't really do anything menacing, just sit around while the humans die in stupid ways. People in this movie could've survived if they tried employing radical measures like `running', `opening unlocked doors', or `not being total freakin' morons'. One great scene has the doddering butterfly enthusiast lady running through the swamp and managing to walk into every tree, vine, bush, or puddle she can find, doing more damage than the animals ever could. The snake just killed her to put her out of her misery. I did learn, however, not to store open jars of poison in my greenhouse (although the greenhouse scene in SLUGS is much better). Late in the game the frogs do get into the act, but their one skill is waiting until their victim fall over and then hopping on them. But for all this movie's pitfalls there is some great photography and a great, funny, nihilistic ending.

The mostly unlikable cast is saved by a mustache-less Sam Elliot (who has a great voice) as the sensible, denim-clad hero, Judy Pace as the only sympathetic character (and she's really hot, too), and Ray `Mr. X' Milland as the wheelchair-bound, cantankerous millionaire who owns the island. However, since they keep cutting back between Ray and bullfrogs, I kept expecting Ray to inflate all the dangling extra flesh on HIS neck.

So if you catch this AIP opus on TV, pop open a couple of beers and enjoy, although you'd be better off watching the hilarious SLUGS, the worm-movie SQUIRM, GRIZZLY, or even NIGHT OF THE LEPUS. Be sure to stick around after the credits for a brief appearance by a cartoon frog.

Millionaire patriarch Ray Milland and his extended family gather together at his private island mansion to celebrate the 4th of July and have much more to worry about than photographer and ecologist Sam Elliott snooping around getting material for a magazine layout on pollution. You see, Elliott isn't the only one who's fed up with Milland's environmental poisoning, as a horde of frogs wise up and lead their swampland buddies (alligators, snakes, lizards, turtles, birds, leeches, spiders and more) in a violent revolt.

Thanks to the piercing sounds of Les Baxter's score and sheer variety of creepy crawlers on display, you are likely to cringe somewhere along the line in this ridiculous and often awkwardly directed, but nonetheless entertaining effort.