Trog (1970)

Directed by Freddie Francis [Other horror films: The Brain (1962), The Day of the Triffids (1963), Paranoiac (1963), Nightmare (1964), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), The Skull (1965), The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1966), They Came from Beyond Space (1967), Torture Garden (1967), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (1970), Gebissen wird nur nachts – das Happening der Vampire (1971), Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Creeping Flesh (1973), Son of Dracula (1973), Tales That Witness Madness (1973), Craze (1974), Legend of the Werewolf (1975), The Ghoul (1975), The Doctor and the Devils (1985), Dark Tower (1989)]

A frustrating movie that occasionally has the sense of potential, Trog is, more than anything, a somewhat dry drama with a few horror portions sprinkled in (mainly at the beginning and the end), but it’s not enough to keep my interest, especially since I have to suffer through the idiocy of anti-scientific sentiments from multiple characters (one of them a scientist himself, which is just insulting).

The characters were one of the more frustrating things about the film, to be sure. I’m not saying that the story didn’t have problems, because it certainly did (once the troglodyte got to the research center, I certainly felt the movie went into a bit of a lull despite some moderately interesting looks at how scientists would react at such a discovery), but many of the characters (pretty much everyone who wasn’t either a scientist or Jack May) were entirely against the concept of keeping the discovered troglodyte for research, which really grinded my gears.

Of course, the worst of these characters was played by Michael Gough (who was in plenty of horror films in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, from The Skull and Curse of the Crimson Alter to The Legend of Hell House and Satan’s Slave), who did a good job at playing a detestable, anti-scientific individual. That guy was a bigger danger than 80 troglodytes ever could have been, and almost every death and ounce of destruction caused by the troglodyte could be traced back to his character’s idiocy.

And what’s worse is that, most of the community, and the police, seem to blame the scientists more, specifically Joan Crawford’s character. Crawford (who was in the fantastic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? nearly ten years previously) was great here, playing a scientist who was actually interested in doing all she could to both benefit the Trog (as I’ll call it from now on) and the scientific community. She had sound reasons for everything she was doing, and even instilled that ethic into her daughter, played by Kim Braden. She was a great character, and it’s just a shame that people blamed her for the troubles caused almost exclusively by the anti-science bigots in the film.

To be clear, the story here, even without the characters, wasn’t great. I think the opening was pretty solid (three guys running amok of the Trog while cave-diving – it had a solid, claustrophobic feel to it), and the Trog’s rampage at the end was okay (it would have been better if it was actually a wild animal as opposed to a creature that just felt threatened), but most of the film follows Crawford’s character as she tries to ramp up support for keeping the Trog alive and try to train the Trog to do simple tasks (learning how to use toys, catch balls, understand colors, that type of thing).

The design for the troglodyte was somewhat laughable, and I think that, along with it’s admittedly dry plot, is a lot of the reason this has such a poor reputation. There’s also that ridiculous four-minute flashback that the troglodyte has, which uses claymation, I believe, and was overly tedious.

I didn’t really think that Trog would be a movie I’d end up liking, and it wasn’t. I wish there was more rampage here and less science, and more likable characters than just Crawford and Braden, but for the most part, this is a dry British film that, while the color looks nice, doesn’t have near enough to really hold interest for a long period of time.

4.5/10