Trog * (1970, Joan Crawford, Michael Gough, Bernard Kay, Thorley Walters) – Classic Movie Review 3250

Director Freddie Francis’s sensationally forlorn and risible 1970 British effort Trog stars the great Joan Crawford in what proved to be her unhappy last movie, made at the age of 65, though she lived on until 1977.

Trog is a pathetically poor production and a laughably poor horror yarn in which, in spectacularly unlikely casting, she plays Dr Brockton, a scientist investigating some ancient monkey business. It is released in a Cult Camp Classics: Women in Peril series (along with Caged and The Big Cube) to attract some appeal, but it’s marginal, though it is pretty hysterical in places. It is campy but it’s also upsetting for movie buffs to see Crawford in such degrading circumstances. It dangerously advertised itself thus: ‘Here comes Trog. You’ll laugh at yourself for being so scared… but don’t laugh at Trog!’

The titular Trog is the primitive troglodyte prehistoric Ice Age missing link that Crawford’s sympathetic anthropologist Dr Brockton persuades out of his local cave pothole where he is found living (‘Trog! Here, Trog!’). She stands steady with her tranquiliser gun, stuns the caveman into submission, and brings him back to her lab to study him.

Dr Brockton then uses drugs and surgery to try to communicate with the half-caveman, half-ape and tries to train him to play and share, until, as all monsters good or bad do, he rebels and rampages after he is let loose by irate land developer Sam Murdock (Michael Gough).

There is something essentially rancid about this plot that should have warned Crawford not to touch the movie with a transatlantic barge pole. Or maybe she’s just the wrong actress for the daft thing. No wonder she decided to retire afterwards! As ever, the harder the star tries, the harder she falls. Unfortunately, over-emoting just won’t get her through the ordeal successfully. However, she made it as a favour for her friend, producer Herman Cohen, for whom she had also starred in Berserk (1967), which also starred Gough.

The true Brits in the cast like Gough, Thorley Walters (the magistrate), Bernard Kay as the policeman, Inspector Greenham, Kim Braden as Anne Brockton, Jack May as Dr Selbourne are better cast and support the star as best they can, some better than others, though they are probably thrilled at being able to work one final time with a Hollywood great.

Peter Bryan’s and John Gilling’s story isn’t much of an idea and Aben Kandel’s script isn’t much of a screenplay, not offering much of a showcase for the special effects work of the legendary special-effects artists Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. The stop-motion dinosaur sequence in the film is obviously stock footage, originally produced by Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen and used in the 1956 Warner Bros nature documentary The Animal World.

Joe Cornelius who plays Trog was a professional wrestler in England. He performed in the ring for 20 years as The Dazzler and was chosen to as Trog because of his physique and athletic abilities. Sadly Cornelius is made to wear a ratty-looking ape-suit and a pitiful monkey mask, allegedly a left-over monkey outfit from 2001: A Space Odyssey. This does not exactly help him to appear terrifying. Loyally to Joan Crawford, he denies reports that Crawford used ‘idiot cards’ because she couldn’t remember her lines or that she was periodically drunk during filming.

Herman Cohen said: ‘On Trog, Joan Crawford’s drinking was worse than it was when we were doing Berserk. I had to reprimand her a few times for drinking without asking. She had a huge frosted glass that said Pepsi-Cola – but inside was 100-proof vodka! In fact, when she arrived to do Berserk as well as Trog, she arrived with four cases of 100-proof vodka, “’cause you can’t get it in England”.’

Freddie Francis said: ‘I did it because of Joan Crawford, and poor Joan by this time was a very sad old lady. We had to have idiot cards all over the place because she couldn’t remember her lines. It was the last thing she ever did and she shouldn’t have done it. Neither should I.’

Also in the cast are David Griffin, John Hamill, Joe Cornelius, Geoffrey Case, Maurice Good, Paul Hansard, Robert Crewdson, Robert Hutton, David Warbeck, Simon Lack, Chloe Franks, Cleo Sylvestre and Shirley Conklin.

Crawford described Trog as ‘a low-budget picture: I supply most of my own wardrobe.’ That would be her campy, boldly coloured pantsuits.

Freddie Francis recalled: ‘Trog wasn’t my sort of picture. The best thing that happened on that picture was that I formed an association with Herman Cohen. He was delighted with what I did for him on Trog, even though in a case like that you know you’re going to take a beating no matter what you do.’

Cohen recalled that the film was completed on time, came in under budget, and was ‘very successful’.

Dr Brockton was a man in the original script but Cohen rewrote it for Crawford.

Trog was shot at Bray Studios and on location on the English moors, hardly somewhere you’d expect to see Joan Crawford.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 3250

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