''Trog'' is a 1970 British
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univers ...
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, ap ...
directed by
Freddie Francis
Frederick William Francis (22 December 1917 – 17 March 2007) was an English cinematographer and film director. He achieved his greatest successes as a cinematographer. He started his career with British films such as Jack Cardiff's ''Sons and L ...
, and starring
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...
in a story about the discovery of a
troglodyte (or
Ice Age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...
"caveman") in twentieth-century United Kingdom. The screenplay was written by Peter Bryan,
John Gilling, and
Aben Kandel
Aben Kandel (15 August 1897 – 28 January 1993) was an American screenwriter, novelist, and (earlier in life) boxer. He was screenwriter on such classic B movies as ''I Was A Teenage Werewolf'', Joan Crawford's final movie '' Trog'', and one of ...
. ''Trog'' marks Crawford's last movie appearance.
Plot
Set in contemporary Britain, the film follows Dr. Brockton (
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...
), a renowned
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and v ...
who learns that in the caves of the countryside a lone male
troglodyte is alive and might be able to be helped and even domesticated. In the interest of science and the potential groundbreaking discovery of the
missing link, she gets the creature to the surface; and while the rest of the townsfolk and police scatter in terror, Brockton stands steady with her tranquilizer gun and stuns the caveman into submission. She brings him back to her lab for study, but runs into trouble as a few people oppose the presence of a "monster" in the town, especially Sam Murdock (
Michael Gough
Francis Michael Gough ( ; 23 November 1916 – 17 March 2011) was a British character actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances. He is known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from 1958, with his first role as Sir Art ...
), a local businessman who is not only afraid of the negative commercial consequences but is also suspicious of a woman heading a research facility. In the meantime, the creature, given the name of "Trog", is taught by Brockton to play and share; and the capacity for language is induced by a number of surgeries and a mysterious hypnotic device that causes Trog to see or relive his distant past, including clashes between various animals.
Still disturbed by Brockton's experiments, and enraged at a municipal court's decision to protect Trog, Murdock releases Trog in the middle of the night, hoping the caveman will be confronted and killed by either local residents or well-armed authorities. His plan ultimately succeeds. After being released, Trog wanders into town and kills the first three people he meets (a grocer, a butcher, and a citizen in a car), but not before he beats Murdock to death. Trog then snatches a little girl from a playground and takes her to his cave. Dr. Brockton, the police, and army personnel soon gather at the cave's entrance. After pleading fruitlessly with the authorities to let her reason with Trog and safely retrieve the girl, Brockton suddenly acts on her own and charges down into the cave, where she finds the girl cowering in a corner. Trog initially behaves aggressively at the sight of the doctor in his refuge, but after a stern reprimand and a plea by Brockton, Trog surrenders the girl to her. Shortly after the doctor and girl exit the cave, all of Brockton's work on behalf of science is shattered when soldiers ignite explosives before assaulting the cave. Trog is quickly wounded in a barrage of gunfire, falls, and is impaled on a
stalagmite
A stalagmite (, ; from the Greek , from , "dropping, trickling")
is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings. Stalagmites are typically co ...
. The film then ends with an on-site news reporter asking the doctor to comment on the death of the missing link, but Brockton is either unwilling or unable at that moment to express her profound disappointment and grief over the loss of Trog, so she simply pushes aside the reporter's microphone and slowly walks away from the scene by herself.
Cast
*
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...
as Dr. Brockton
*
Michael Gough
Francis Michael Gough ( ; 23 November 1916 – 17 March 2011) was a British character actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances. He is known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from 1958, with his first role as Sir Art ...
as Sam Murdock
*
Bernard Kay
Bernard Frederic Bemrose Kay (23 February 1928 – 25 December 2014) was an English actor with an extensive theatre, television, and film repertoire.
Career
Kay began his working life as a reporter for the '' Bolton Evening News'', and a st ...
as Inspector Greenham
*
Kim Braden
Kim Braden (born November 1948) is a British-born U.S.-based former actress.
Biography
Braden is a daughter of the actor and broadcaster Bernard Braden and the actress Barbara Kelly, both originally from Canada.
Braden came to prominence in ...
as Anne Brockton
*
David Griffin as Malcolm Travers
*
John Hamill as Cliff
*
Thorley Walters
Thorley Swinstead Walters (12 May 1913 – 6 July 1991) was an English character actor. He is probably best remembered for his comedy film roles such as in ''Two-Way Stretch'' and '' Carlton-Browne of the FO''.
Early life
Walters was born in Te ...
as Magistrate
*
Jack May as Dr. Selbourne
* Geoffrey Case as Bill
*
Simon Lack as Lt. Colonel Vickers
*
Chloe Franks as Little Girl
* Joe Cornelius as Trog
* Rachel Stephens as Child in the Park
* Maurice Good as television reporter
Production
Based on an original story by Peter Biyan and John Gilling, the film was initially developed by
Tony Tenser at
Tigon Films, which sold the project to producer
Herman Cohen
Herman Cohen (August 27, 1925 – June 2, 2002) was an American producer of B-movies during the 1950s, and helped to popularize the teen horror movie genre with films like the cult classic ''I Was a Teenage Werewolf''.
Career
Born in Detroit, ...
.
In July 1968, Cohen announced he had signed a contract with Warner Bros-Seven Arts to produce ''
Crooks and Coronets'' and ''Trog'', with the latter to begin filming in September.
Filming was delayed for several months, until after
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...
agreed to star in the production in May 1969.
[Martin, Betty (1969). "MOVIE CALL SHEET: Mariette Hartley to Star", ''Los Angeles Times'', 22 May 1969: e22.] ''Trog'' was the second of two films that she starred in for Cohen, the first being ''
Berserk!'' in 1967. It also paired her again with
Michael Gough
Francis Michael Gough ( ; 23 November 1916 – 17 March 2011) was a British character actor who made more than 150 film and television appearances. He is known for his roles in the Hammer Horror Films from 1958, with his first role as Sir Art ...
, who costarred with Crawford in that earlier film. Crawford's character in the original script had been a man but Cohen rewrote it specifically for Crawford.
The director Freddie Francis later commented on the benefits and challenges that he experienced working on the film:
Filming
Crawford described ''Trog'' as "a low budget picture", adding "I supply most of my own wardrobe." Just weeks after she committed to performing in the project, the film began shooting on 30 June 1969. The production also features actor
David Warbeck, who has a small role as Alan Davis.
In a 1992 interview with the horror-film fan magazine ''
Fangoria
''Fangoria'' is an internationally distributed American horror film fan magazine, in publication since 1979. It is published four times a year by Fangoria Publishing, LLC and is edited by Phil Nobile Jr.
The magazine was originally released i ...
'', Cohen notes that ''Trog'', which was shot at
Bray Studios and on location on the English
moors
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
Moors are not a distinct or ...
, was more expensive to produce than ''Berserk!''
Cohen in that same interview also recalls the problems he had with Crawford's increased use of alcohol during filming:
The
stop-motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
dinosaur sequence in the film is
stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...
originally produced by special-effects artists
Willis O'Brien
Willis Harold O'Brien (March 2, 1886 – November 8, 1962) was an American motion picture special effects and stop-motion animation pioneer, who according to ASIFA-Hollywood "was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history, ...
and
Ray Harryhausen
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for '' Mig ...
and used in the 1956
Warner Bros. nature documentary ''
The Animal World''. Also, according to
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of A ...
, the "ratty ape-suit" used to create Trog's caveman appearance was a "leftover monkey outfit" from
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
's epic 1968 film ''
2001: A Space Odyssey''.
Freddie Francis later referred to ''Trog'' as "a terrible film" and as one he regretted directing:
Joe Cornelius, who plays the feature's title character, provides a quite different perspective on Crawford's actions and demeanor during filming. As a professional wrestler in England, Cornelius performed in the ring for 20 years as "The Dazzler" and was chosen to portray Trog due to his physique and athletic abilities.
["John Waters introduces Trog, BFI"](_blank)
interview with Joe Cornelius by John Walters prior to screening of ''Trog'', published on YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...
October 28, 2015. British Film Institute (BFI), London, U.K. Retrieved September 4, 2019. His role provided him with numerous opportunities to observe Crawford both on and off camera. Forty-five years after the release of the film, in an interview arranged and video-recorded by the
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...
(BFI), he shared publicly for the first time his experiences working on the production and more specifically with the veteran actress.
["John Waters season set for BFI Southbank"](_blank)
program announcement, July 3, 2015, BFI website. Retrieved September 5, 2019. That interview occurred in September 2015, just prior to a screening of ''Trog'' by BFI in one of its film retrospectives. It was conducted by the American director and writer
John Waters
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including '' Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), '' Pink Flamingos'' (1972) and '' Fe ...
, a notable promoter and creator of
underground
Underground most commonly refers to:
* Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth
Underground may also refer to:
Places
* The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston
* The Underground ...
or "
transgressive cult films", as well as a fan of many other types of low-budget, more mainstream productions like ''Trog''.
In his interview with Waters, Cornelius takes exception to reports that Crawford used "idiot cards" and was periodically drunk during filming. The former wrestler says he saw no use of such cards by her; and he describes Crawford as "great" to work with, consistently on time and "lovely" on the set, as generous in giving gifts to the crew, and how for years after completing ''Trog'' she sent him a personal card every Christmas.
While he concedes that Crawford "possibly" had vodka in her Pepsi-Cola container, he also states that he never saw her drunk or unable to perform for any reason during the film's production.
Reception
Recalling his work on the film in 1992, Cohen noted that the film was completed on time, came in under budget, and was in his opinion "very successful". Many 1970 reviews of the film, however, were not favorable. In September that year, after previewing ''Trog'', critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
begins his assessment of the film with a question:
In October 1970, only a few days after the film's nationwide release in the United States, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
s review at least offers two faintly positive observations about Crawford's involvement in the low-budget production:
In the decades since its premiere, ''Trog'' has achieved a near
cult status
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
among some movie fans, especially those who enjoy watching low-budget horror and
sci-fi
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univers ...
productions for their outlandish plots or for their sheer
campiness, that a particular film is "'so bad it's good'". The British Film Institute in the promotion of its 2015 retrospective program on ''Trog'' provided attendees with an updated or more current take on the film's appeal:
Warner Bros., the film's distributor in 1970, also chose "mind-boggling" to describe ''Trog'' during the company's "31 Days of Horror" promotion to sell copies of it in October 2015.
["31 DAYS OF HORROR, VOL. 1: 20 Horror-fying Oscar Winning Actors"](_blank)
news article in archives of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Los Angeles, California, October 1, 2015. Retrieved September 7, 2019. In part of that promotion leading up to
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observan ...
, Warner Bros. assures "campy cult fans" they will "delight" in the film and that both the troglodyte's makeup and "Crawford's boldly colored pantsuits" are "hilariously bad".
The film is listed in
Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's 2005 book ''
The Official Razzie Movie Guide'' as one of "The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made".
In 2012, several years before his previously described
BFI interview with Joe Cornelius, John Waters recognized ''Trog'' as one of his favorite films on the streaming service
MUBI
Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...
.
Releases
The film was released theatrically in both the United States and United Kingdom by
Warner Bros. in 1970. For home viewing and film collectors,
Warner Home Video
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc. (formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the home video distribution division of Warner Bros.
It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Vide ...
began marketing VHS copies of ''Trog'' in 1995 and in DVD format in 2007.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
Interview, Attack of the Monster Movie Makers: Herman Cohen, Crazed Trog Goes Berzerk!
{{DEFAULTSORT:Trog
1970 horror films
1970 films
1970s science fiction horror films
1970s monster movies
British science fiction horror films
British monster movies
Films directed by Freddie Francis
Films scored by John Scott (composer)
Films set in England
Films shot at Bray Studios
Films using stop-motion animation
Films about cavemen
1970s English-language films
1970s British films