It's hard to imagine how "Trog" ever got green-lighted to go into production. Was it entirely down to the inclusion on Joan Crawford? Because on paper it must have looked like a joke, and the production of it scarcely rises above that.The plot is simple...a prehistoric ape-man is discovered living in a deep cave. he is captured and studied by a research institute but after some progress is made he eventually escapes and runs riot.The low budget is evident, although the film is made with proficiency and most of the acting is ok. Joan Crawford delivers a committed performance as the director of the institution. But the monster costume for Trog himself is highly unconvincing (nothing below the neck is made up). As are many whacky and implausible experiments done on him, especially Crawford's "training" which consists of giving him toys, rolling a ball towards him, and showing him coloured discs while shouting out the names of them. There is then some bonkers medical procedure carried out that enables him to talk (and apparently learn English), during which time we are treated to ridiculous flashbacks of Trog's memories (rubber dinosaurs being wiped out by a volcanic eruption).It all goes horribly wrong though, as eventually Trog gets loose and terrorises a village, which consists of a single street with no people whatsoever in it. You'll watch in terror as Trog: Eats an Orange! Throws a person through a window! Tosses fruit and vegetables about! Rolls the only car that is actually moving VERY gently onto it's side, which somehow causes it to burst into flames)! Observes a children's playground!Things don't end well for Trog, but worse really is the incredible stupidity of the people who want him killed even though anyone with a brain would realise he's not violent unless provoked. It's a very weak ending, but it fits with the film, which is pretty weak all the way through. Joan Crawford deserved better for her last movie.

Whenever I watch a big star on his or her last legs, degrading oneself to such a dreadful film, I always feel a bit dead inside. Roger Moore finally exhausted himself as James Bond in A View To a Kill, for one thing. Here, Joan Crawford, one of the most renowned actress of Classic Hollywood, finds herself being degraded to playing an anthropologist playing "Mommy" to a caveman in a cheap-looking ape costume.The film begins with three freelance geology students exploring a new cave in the English countryside. One of them is killed by an unknown creature and another is in shock and heavily wounded. Joan Crawford's Dr. Brockton and the third student go down to the cave and find the troglodyte that is hiding there. They eventually lure him out with the press watching, and Brockton captures him with the hope to civilize him like a normal human being.Let me start off by saying that Crawford is quite bad here. Most of the time she's on screen, she almost looks like she is going to explode in a fit of hilarious anger, even when she has a pleasant expression on her face. One can just tell from looking at her on the screen that as an actress, she's washed up at this point. Even though she would make another appearance as a TV actress later, this was her last movie. What a depressing way to go out. Michael Gough also costars as a vague businessman who hates Trog for no other reason than he thinks that his presence would interfere with his business dealings, whatever they are. To set off the film's final rampage, he angers Trog and sets him free, stupidly not expecting Trog to go after him once he's set free. Gough is just half-hearted here, struggling especially to make his disgusted speech towards Trog believable.Aside from the hilariously bad performances, the film is really boring. Most of it is devoted to Crawford playing with Trog like a pet and treating him like a kid with disabilities, which is sort of what she compares him to. The film wants me to care about all of this, but I don't, mainly because her plans should have already been rendered moot with the fact that he has killed four people by the time he ends up in her lab. Does she not care about human life, despite her position? The Trog costume is so poor, that only actor Joe Cornelius's eyes allow for any kind of expression from the creature. This is especially unacceptable considering that John Chambers' Academy Award-winning make up for Planet of the Apes (1968) allowed more expression from the actors and were quite revolutionary.There are even little inaccuracies related to science and religion. When Brockton defends not killing Trog, she refers to what she thinks is the Second Amendment, "Thou shalt not kill." First off, it's a Commandment, and second, it's the sixth one. Also, when she talks about her profession, she lists gorillas and apes as related to humans. Doctor, gorillas are apes too. There is a big operation that involves putting a control grid inside of Trog's chest that will allow him to talk for some reason. It's not explained how. Part of the experiment also leads to Trog remembering dinosaur fights, which is actually footage from Irwin Allen's The Animal World (1956), and with the fights done via stop-motion by Ray Harryhausen. Sadly, it's one of his weaker efforts. After the experiment, Trog talks. I don't get it. It's incredibly obvious that the science was outdated even when the film was released. Trog is supposed to be a "missing link" according to Dr. Brockton, but Australopithecines had already been discovered at this point, and they are considered more of a missing link. Also, a troglodyte is defined as nothing more than a person living in a cave. It does not refer to a half-ape, half-human creature.Trog is probably the worst low grade monster movie from the 1970s that I've seen. Yes, even worse than Night of the Lepus, Frogs, The Swarm, or Dracula A.D. 1972. It's an embarrassing film that should never have been made, and, given how the Hollywood atmosphere was changing, can't even qualify as 70s entertainment.

And make no mistake, Joan's last feature is pretty bad, a horror cheapie that tried to pass itself off as sci-fi. But scattered about the random violence and hilariously wicked villains and Joan's stoicism are some actual issues. She plays an anthropologist who, with the help of some unappetizing young Brit scientists, discovers a troglodyte who evidently was cryogenically frozen and melted back to life millennia later. (Giggle-inducing goof: A line of dialogue theorizes Trog is several thousand years old, then, in an under-the-influence-of- sodium-pentathol scene, he "remembers" a series of Claymation dinosaur battles, which would have to have happened at least 60 million years ago.) The script's ludicrous, the direction by Hammer vet Freddie Francis undistinguished, the acting confined mostly to snarls and screams. But there is, buried somewhere within, a viable conflict: Should this gift from the past be allowed to live, or his existence too risky? The body count does pile pretty high, and valid arguments are made on both sides. But then the movie just ends, seemingly in mid-scene, with Joan trudging off into oblivion. You'd think the cameraman just ran out of film.

***SPOILERS*** The grad-Z movie "Trog" got far more coverage and attention then it deserved just by film legend Crawford staring in it. In fact it was to be Mrs. Crawford's last movie appearance. In it Joan plays British anthropologist Dr. Brockton who takes a shine to this unearthed, from a local cave, half man half ape Trogodyte whom she christened or named "Trog" played by Joe Cornelius. With Trog getting all the attention by the scientific community one of the town elders Sam Murdock, Michael Gough, tries to frame the ape-man in a staged break-out of Dr, Brockton laboratory that resulted in a number of killings in town that unwittingly included Sam Murdock himself. The monkey man got loose due to Murdock and ended up killing the very man who made that possible! A case of poetic justice if there ever was one.With what seem like the rehabilitated , by Dr. Brockton, monkey man "Trog" on on a killing spree it's up to Dr. Brockton to talk him, in monkey talk, into giving himself up before he's gunned down by the police and units of the British Army. With his fate sealed in not bothering to give himself up voluntarily and on top of everything else kidnapping a little girl, Chole Franks, out of a local school playground Trog has no where to go but into the cold and slimy caves where he first came from.****SPOILERS*** And it's there where he'll meet his end with an icicle ending up rammed through his heart, much like a stake in the case of a vampire, and a barrage of bullets courtesy of the British military. You have to say that Joan Crawford gave one of her best performance acting wise as the kindly and feeling British anthropologist Dr. Brockton who found a way into Trog's heart when no one else could. Her feelings for the ape-man seems as genuine and convincing acting wise as her Academy Award performance towards her spoiled rotten daughter in the 1945 classic "Mildered Pierce". Still "Trog" turned out to be the low point in Mrs. Crawford's film career which couldn't go any lower in that she never made another film that could have eclipsed it in the final seven years of her life after the film "Trog" was released.