Saturday, April 14, 2007

Trog (1970)

Oh Trog, you just know things aren't going to go well for the poor fellow. Spelunkers discover a cave not on any maps, and excited by their find, strip down to their underwear to swim under a ledge as far as they can. The first explorer finds... another cave (heavens!), and a large hairy apeman which promptly kills him.

Scientist Joan Crawford leads an expedition, along with one of the surviving spelunkers, to verify the apeman story and gets a fantastic photo of Trog throwing a rock at them. With this undisputable proof, Trog is quickly captured and confined to a cage in Crawfords lab. He's actually quite well behaved considering he's been ripped from his dark underground home and planted in a small cell where strange people stare at him, call him Trog, and attempt to teach him how to play with dolls.

While Trog has a huge ape head with apey hair cascading from it, the rest of his body is that of a man. He is even wearing a fur loin cloth. If he truly is the missing link, he might look a bit less like a man with an ape mask. The sounds he makes are like a cross between a lamb and a squeeky toy.

Crawford insists that Trog's brain holds secrets. In order to learn about evolution and past history, they must find a way to communicate with him. I suppose that could be true, if Trog happens to be a million years, but what if he's only thirty? So they implant a transmitter inside him, which is ridiculous as it doesn't seem like a great idea to operate on the only creature of it's kind when you know nothing about it's anatomy.

Afterwards Trog does manage to say one word, and we see a short film of dinosaurs, which I guess is supposed to be from Trog's memories. But mostly Trog just makes unintelligible noises, which start sounding more and more like a cross between a bad Peter Lorre imitation and a dalek.

You just know things aren't going to end well for Trog, especially after he kills Murdoch - an outspoken Trog hater - and kidnaps a little girl from a playground, taking her back to his home. I must mention that I am quite impressed by Trog's homing technique as I can't imagine how he could find his way back to the cave.

Crawford, whose hair appears to grow bigger and bigger throughout the film, talks Trog into giving back the girl, which means the army can then open fire on poor little Trog. Apparently they are bad shots as they have to shoot about a thousand rounds to even hit Trog, who then falls onto a stalagmite and die.

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