pumpktoberfest #27 - the pursuit of hoppiness.

film: frogs
beer: hoppin' frog frog's hollow double pumpkin ale

please note: due to thorny life circumstances that came my way this week, over the past few days i haven't been in a frame of mind that'd make me pay much attention to this here blog. sorry bout that. the good news? today, on the final day of the pumpktoberfest season, we've got a monumental THREE PAIRINGS OF HORROR FILMS & PUMPKIN BEERS lined up for you. can you feel the pumpktoberfest excitement coursing through your veins? i sure as hell feel it in mine...at least i hope that's what it is. i'd hate to discover i had a tapeworm or something.

to start, we're going to be looking at an entry from the eco-horror (aka when animals attack) genre, the so-bad-it's-so-good 1972 horror film, frogs. based on the title of the film, you'd think it would be a film about killer frogs, but, after watching it, i can tell you that you'd be sorely mistaken. it's directed by george mccowan, a canadian dude who directed a bunch of tv episodes (most notably for charlie's angels) but only a few other movies. the film stars ray milland (best known for his role as an alcoholic in the lost weekend), sam elliott (who i know as the cowboyesque narrator of the big lebowski) & joan van ark (valene ewing from dallas & its spinoff, knot's landing).

elliott plays pickett smith, a nature photographer who, when the movie opens, is taking pics near the island estate of a wealthy family named the crocketts. after an excruciatingly long opening credit sequence showing him floating along in a canoe photographing flora, fauna, trash & the like, a speed boat driven by clint crockett & karen crockett (van dyk) totally tips his canoe over. they feel bad, so they bring him back to the estate, where the family is gathered for july 4th & the birthday of family patriarch jason crockett (milland). when they arrive, we learn that pickett's shooting a pollution layout for an ecology magazine & that the area around the estate is crawling with frogs. luckily, jason's sent somebody out to take care of them by spreading poison around. this guy ends up being the first body pickett finds on the grounds. he's covered in snake bites.

pickett shares this info with jason, who decides to ignore it for the moment because he doesn't want to ruin his celebration. from here, family members start wandering off only to do something stupid & end up getting "killed" by some animal on the island. one guy accidentally shoots himself in the leg & just lays there while spiders cover him with moss & webs. another dude dies when he's in the greenhouse & lizards knock a bunch of jars of poison off the shelf, breaking them on the ground & asphyxiating him as he makes ZERO attempt to head for the door.

stuff like this keeps happening, but jason's determined to have his lil party nonetheless. the mother trips & falls a bunch in the forest whilst searching for butterfiles & gets bitten by a rattlesnake. another woman is killed by a snapping turtle after getting stuck in the mud. basically, the animals swoop in & take advantage of the people's stupidity. throughout, while we get a ton of menacing shots of frogs, they're more supervisors than active participants in the killings. that is, until the end of the film, when one character meets an equally ridiculous fate at the hands of the frogs. the moral of the story: if you mess with mother nature, she'll get the frogs to get the other animals to participate in your death.

with frogs a-hoppin' through my mind, i chose to drown my boredom with a bottle of hoppin' frog frog's hollow double pumpkin ale that i picked up last week at the bowery whole foods beer room. it's the first time i've been there & as much as i want to hate on whole foods, the beer room is pretty damn amazing. i mean, they had a whole display of the frog's hollow double pumpkin ale. that's worth something right there. it's a seasonal beer brewed by akron, ohio's hoppin' frog brewery, a small brewery that makes almost twenty different flavorful beers, including the "B.O.R.I.S. the crusher oatmeal-imperial stout," which took home the 2008 gold medal at the great american beer festival. all their beers come in 22 oz bottles & feature that smilin', hoppin' frog on the front. i assume that he's quite the character, like a less-annoying relative of the geico gecko.

it's one of the better pumpkin beers i've tried & i'd even go as far as to put it in the same class as my favorite pumpkin beer, the southern tier pumking. it's a clear orange ale that gave off a nice spiced scent when i poured it into a glass. while i'm not sure it's worthy of the "double pumpkin" moniker, each sip did provide a well-balanced mixture of the spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice & clove), pumpkin & hops. it's a tasty beer that goes down rather smoothly despite the fact that it's 8.4% ABV. since the pumpktoberfest season's coming to a close soon, i'd definitely suggest, um..."hoppin' to it" & getting yourself a bottle or two of the hoppin frog pumpkin ale. just don't get so drunk off it that you fall over & get eaten by a komodo dragon.