REVIEW DATE: 3:27:9:9

There are a lot of differences between British and American movies. Hundreds of them, in fact. Thousands, a gaggle, a googol, a googol plex a. . .where was I? Oh yes, lots of differences, but only two concern us today.

Firstly, British movies are cheap. "Rock bottom" wouldn't begin to describe some of the special effects on display in your typical British movie. Secondly, the British seam to be pretentious about their movies. If an America makes a bad movie that American usually knows its a bad movie by the time it's done (unless that American's name is Ed Wood, Band or Michael Bay). Remember those stories you here about directors looking at their movies and going "Oh, man, this sucks"? British directors seam to think their actually making good cinema. . .even with something like Trog.

Just what kind of bad cinema is Trog. Oh, you'll know. By the end of this review you'll know lots about Trog. So much in fact, that I hope to god you'll have no desire to go out and subject yourself to it.

Yes, its that bad. To bad director Freddie Francis couldn't see that.

While the credits roll we see three British youths go caving in the country side. Soon they happen upon an uncharted cave, and the caveman that happens to live there. After a meeting with the man of the house, er cave, one spelunker is left dead, and a second is reduced to a sniveling pantywaist, leaving number bachelor number 3 to pick up the pieces.

Number three, Malcolm (David Griffin), takes his sniveling friend to the Brockton Institute run by (big shock here) Dr. Brockton (Joan Crawlord, whom we'll talk about shortly). Brockton is quite fascinated by the story and gets even further into it when she an Malcolm return to the cave. Once their they manage to catch our harry protagonist on camera.

The picture gets everybody  in a stir, a stir that is egged on when a real live Troglodyte (or "Trog" for short) is captured. Brockton, convinced that this creature is the missing link between animal and man, puts Trog in a cage and studies him. Sort of a reverse of Planet of the Apes. . .only without any redeeming features.

Long (to long) story short: Mr. Murdock (Michael Gough) in true conservative bad guy fashion, sets Trog free, and pisses him off in the process with predicable results. Finally, after what seams like hours (the movie runs only 96 minuets) Trog goes on a little rampage. No, I'm not trying to sound cute, it literally is a little rampage. Barley 10 minuets long, it isn't nearly enough to pay us back for the 70 minuets of crap we were forced to sit through. To bad, if writers Peter Bryan and Aben Kandel had realized that, this might have been a better movie.

To make matters worse, the parts of the script which aren't derivative never go anywhere. Trog's "training"? Nope. Teaching Trog to speak? Nope. This really strange sequence with crappy shot motion dinosaurs shot through a blue and/or red filter? Nope.

Anyway, after the rampage the army is called in an Trog is shot in true King Kong fashion. Do we care? No. The end.

Sound familiar? Can you say Mighty Joe Young? Can you say Konga? Can you say King Kong? Yes, here we address a long standing problem in the world of sci-fi: monkey movies just aren't original. The monster is always simply misunderstood, there's always a female somewhere, and the monster almost always meets with a horrible end at the hands of the military. There is nothing in Trog that you haven't seen before. Snore

Trog itself is brought to life by that time old technique of putting a man in not a rubber suit, but crappy make up which seams to be a de-evolved version of the make up used in Planet of the Apes.   Boy, we've never see that before.

But we've seen these actors before, oh yes. Joan Crawford, who once acted with the greats of Hollywood, is reduced to spewing out cliche hugging dialogue that could have been pined by. . . well, a couple thousand monkeys working on a couple thousand typewriters (it was actually just 2 monkeys). This was her last screen roll, sadly. With the quality of this movie, its pretty obvious why. Michael Goth on the other hand. . .oh you'll see lots of him. He would go on to bigger and much better things as Alfred, faithful butler of none other then the Batman series. I bet he didn't put this on his résumé.

Every other actor sleeps there way through the movie. Kinda like me.

Trog isn't the worst movie ever made. . .it isn't bad enough for that. It isn't anything. . .just a waste of my time. I don't care enough about it to hate it. Hopefully you won't care enough to see it.

RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

SNORE.

   HOME  VAULT  RATINGS  MISSION STATEMENT  LINKS

Email the sleeper.