
Yesterday as a little break from cleaning, housework, yardwork etc. I put on "Trog," Joan Crawford's hilariously campy antepenultimate, made-for-TV film from 1970, in which her male co-star is a superhumanly powerful neanderthal unlocked from ice in which he'd been preserved. It reminded me a bit of the SNL skit "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" from the 80s (we miss you, Phil). It's really sort of "King Kong" with a smaller budget and made for a smaller screen. It is both sad and funny to see the imperious Joan cling to her last remaining shreds of dignity as she explains to the dense male authority figures that Trog has the mind of a child and only she can reason with him. There is such a look of tightly controlled anguish and despair and tenseness in her face and eyes. I understand that after "Trog," Crawford appeared in two other TV movies, started drinking a quart of vodka a day and then died of cancer in 1977.
One striking scene involves Trog on a rampage in a butcher shop, hanging the butcher on a meathook. Four years before Texas Chain Saw Massacre (one of my lifelong obsessions). Innnnnnteresting.
No comments:
Post a Comment