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.

FROGS (1972) is one of the quintessential animal attack movies of the 1970s and one I've had a hankering to see for a long time. As is often the case, the actual experience turns out to be rather disappointing, with the narrative rather stodgy and lacking in the kind of suspense you'd want to see generated by the premise, which involves a rich, polluting family being trapped on their estate by vengeful wildlife and other assorted critters.

I put the blame down to the TV director, who has no aptitude for the material, but the writing is also at fault here with a large cast of interchangeable characters you just don't give a damn about. The only stand-outs are a wheelchair-bound Ray Milland as the crotchety patriarch and a youthful Sam Elliott as the strapping hero. There are so many animal shots that this feels like a safari documentary at times, but the attack scenes are pitifully staged and only in the last twenty minutes do you start to feel the menace. I did like the ending, but the rest? Bog standard.

There are plenty of jolts and screams to be had in American International's answer to the old commercial with the Native American chief shedding a single tear while looking upon God's green earth covered with trash. Like the owl said in another commercial, "Give a Hoot! Don't Polute!" That's what freelance photographer Sam Elliott is thinking as he takes pictures of some very disgusting swamp land. Powerful industrialist Ray Milland, a wheel-chair bound grump, has invited his eccentric family home for the usual Independence Day celebration which encompasses several family birthdays, including his own. The icing on the cake gets covered by frogs, and Milland won't like what else he unwraps. Try not to make Kermit the Frog or gecko jokes (as I did) with the large number of creatures that torture this family.

The frogs are actually more of a "Greek Chorus" and provide nature's symphony to the snakes, lizards, leeches and spiders who actually do the nasty to this whacked-out family. The scares come fast and furious, and the squeamish may not make it through the film. I wonder how many cars had to be swept up from all the dirty popcorn thrown after a fright night at the local drive-in. Milland, typecast as nothing but nasty millionaires during his last decade in films, continues that trend here. "Knot's Landing's" Joan Van Ark has the heroine role, while Holly Irving is delightfully dotty as the butterfly chasing aunt that has a different horror in the final print of the film than she did in the trailer. One note of concern was the lack of conclusion for the two black servants and the black house-guest who disappeared without a trace except for their luggage, discovered by survivors on the road. Stay through the final credits for a hysterical last gag.