Color, 1972, 91m. / Directed by George McCowan / Starring Ray Milland, Sam Elliott / MGM (US R1 NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9)
Ribbit! Though a more accurate title would be Reptiles and Amphibians, this latter day drive-in favourite from AIP fully exploits its ridiculous premise of nature running amok in a swampland, complete with hammy actors as fodder. Yes, it's basically stupid trash, but you won't be able to turn away before the typical "they must be warned" finale. Following a very minor boating incident, good guy photographer Pickett Smith (a clean shaven Sam Elliott) is escorted to the isolated marshland home of the Crocketts, headed by their animal-hating patriarch and birthday boy Jason (Ray Milland). The Crocketts regularly douse their lands with insecticides and repellents, not to mention hauling out the occasional shotgun to dispatch with some of the larger pests. Meanwhile the family toils in a virtual hotbed of soap opera dramatics, with lovely Karen (Knots Landing regular Joan Van Ark) as just one of the many players in this complicated game. (Think of it as Lisa and the Devil, minus the poetic subtext.) The animals have apparently had enough of these shenanigans, so the huge frog population conspires a sort of revenge scheme whereby snakes, gators, and other green critters attack the humans and take over the property. Honest.
By playing its story almost completely straight, Frogs looks and feels like a real horror movie even during its most ridiculous moments. The setting is surprisingly atmospheric, with one swimming sequence that predates Jaws by several years. The environmentalist message is regularly hammered home right from the opening credits, which linger obsessively on the pollution piling up along the waterline. Regular AIP composer and loungemaster Lex Baxter is credited with the music score, which more often than not is indistinguishable from the croaks and ambient swamp noises on the soundtrack. In another bizarre move designed to confound any rational DVD fan, MGM has given Frogs the red carpet treatment on DVD with a brand new anamorphic widescreen transfer. The full frame version of the film opens the matte on the top and bottom but looks very dull, while the letterboxed version is better composed and considerably sharper. The cheapo film stock and erratic lighting produce some weird effects from time to time, but for its vintage the film looks great, almost unrecognizable compared to the muddy old Warner VHS tapes. The disc also includes an inexplicably squeezed theatrical trailer which sells the film in high style. In the end, well, it's cheap and it's a blast. What more could you want?
Color, 1988, 94m. / Directed by John Carpenter / Starring Roddy Piper, Meg Foster / Image (US R1 NTSC) / WS (2.35) (16:9) / DD2.0
Roddy Piper (yes, the wrestler) stars as Nada (as in "nothing," get it?), a homeless drifter who goes from job to job and winds up in a construction position in an unnamed large city. A group of radicals keep breaking in on the TV signals and warning of an evil conspiracy that's been brainwashing the general public, but everyone tends to ignore it. After a series of government attacks on one faction holing out in a local church, Nada uncovers a pair of sunglasses which reveal that the world is not quite as he thought. All advertising and written material contains subliminal messages, such as "Marry and Reproduce," "No Individual Thought," and "This Is Your God" (printed on money). Even worse, it appears all the wealthy people are - surprise! - ugly skeletal-faced aliens in disguise. Pretty soon Nada is suiting up for battle, and the fun begins.
Generally dismissed as one of Carpenter's goofier films (along with Big Trouble in Little China), They Live has some serious things to say about right-wing suppression and the growing apathy near the end of the millennium. Piper's role seems tailor-made for Carpenter buddy in crime Kurt Russell (including such lines as the immortal "I've come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubble gum"), but Piper fills the action hero shoes pretty well. He got a lot of bad press at the time, but after we've endured such action wannabes as Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme, he looks like Laurence Olivier in comparison. In fact, it's surprising how well this film has aged over the past decade, though it does suffer from a few flaws. Piper's idiotic fight scene with Keith David seems thrown in for no good reason at all and drags on way past the breaking point; it seems including solely for the purpose of pleasing wrestling fans. Also, the final sequence is a serious let-down, a knee-jerk jokey finish that wraps the film up on an abrupt, unfinished note. Interestingly, They Live now feels like a dry run for Carpenter's subsequent In the Mouth of Madness, an even more extreme look at the world's seemingly normal sheen being slowly removed to expose a completely different, malicious force lurking underneath (and which also features an unsatisfying ending). As Carpenter has explained, all of his films in one way or another revolve around normal people who become heroes when thrust into situations beyond their control; here, the hero deals with corruption in the aliens and the human beings around him who have sold out for wealth from the invaders. It's one of the most interesting sci-fi conceits of the past few years, and while the execution doesn't always do it justice, there's plenty of food for thought here for the open-minded viewer. The previous Japanese laserdisc version of They Live was incompletely letterboxed (about 1.90:1) and had a colourless, washed-out appearance that failed to do much justice to this satiric sci-fi political actioner. No director takes advantage of the full scope widescreen image more than Carpenter; and this DVD presents the full 2.35 image and features incredibly rich, vibrant colour and deep shadows, along with a fabulous Dolby Digital surround remix. Though it has no extras (the Japanese laser did have a pretty nifty behind-the-scenes featurette, so don't chuck it if you have it), this one was definitely worth the wait.
