Trog (1970)

Very disappointing...

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The first must-see film of the year.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

"Trog" might have been a camp classic (there are certainly scenes intentionally played for laughs, like the one which demonstrates that Trog vastly prefers classical music to rock) if the pacing weren't so tedious. The butcher's dispatching is a gory highlight. Notable as Joan Crawford's final theatrical film, but Joe Cornelious, as the eponymous cave dweller, actually gives the best performance (it's not surprising to find out that he was a pro-wrestler in real life). ** out of 4.

Let's just keep Joan Crawford out of this for a minute. I just never cared for her as an actress anyway and Hollywood could be heartless to those that made a lot of money for them. This film is bad in nearly every respect. Beyond the obvious acting and special effects, is a messed up script, containing unnatural lines and plot malfunctions. When this was going to be on television one night, one of my college roommates said, "You've got to see this. It is such a great movie." I sat with him in silence, waiting. When I die, I am going to want that hour and a half back.

And make no mistake, Joan's last feature is pretty bad, a horror cheapie that tried to pass itself off as sci-fi. But scattered about the random violence and hilariously wicked villains and Joan's stoicism are some actual issues. She plays an anthropologist who, with the help of some unappetizing young Brit scientists, discovers a troglodyte who evidently was cryogenically frozen and melted back to life millennia later. (Giggle-inducing goof: A line of dialogue theorizes Trog is several thousand years old, then, in an under-the-influence-of- sodium-pentathol scene, he "remembers" a series of Claymation dinosaur battles, which would have to have happened at least 60 million years ago.) The script's ludicrous, the direction by Hammer vet Freddie Francis undistinguished, the acting confined mostly to snarls and screams. But there is, buried somewhere within, a viable conflict: Should this gift from the past be allowed to live, or his existence too risky? The body count does pile pretty high, and valid arguments are made on both sides. But then the movie just ends, seemingly in mid-scene, with Joan trudging off into oblivion. You'd think the cameraman just ran out of film.

TROG scared the bejeezus out of me when I was a kid. It featured what had to be one of the most horrifying creatures to ever come creeping hideously across the Big Screen. I'm talking about Joan Crawford, of course. (And, yes, that WAS a joke.) I recently revisited this one for the first time since my childhood and, while a lot of it just doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, it's still a fun movie. (I KNEW it! According to the IMDb, the mask worn by Joe Cornelius as TROG was originally one of the ape-men from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I would've bet money on that even before reading the IMDb trivia.) The scene that shook me up most as a kid (aside from the creepy cavern scenes early on) was the scene where Trog surprises Michael Gough as he's about to flee the scene of the crime. I also found the scenes where our hero lopes about the countryside at night in search of the entrance to his underground home pretty scary. Sigh. They just don't make 'em like this any more...