THE LEGEND OF THE LOVELAND FROGMEN – Premiere Info
Posted by: Monster Island News on May 20th, 2010
Written By: Ken Hulsey
Source: RB / Loveland Magazine
Some small independent films never get the kind of grand premieres that big-budget Hollywood films do. Instead of star-studded events at the Pantages, Cinerama Dome, Egyptian or Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, these smaller films normally get their first viewing at a local movie house or drive-in.
When you are a high school film maker then, sometimes, your school auditorium will have to do.
No there won’t be any stretch limos, or A-list celebrities at the premiere of Gretchen Kessler’s, “The Legend of the Loveland Frogmen”, but if the young film maker continues on this path, they may be showing up for one or more of her films screenings in the future.
Kessler chose a very popular local legend for her first film and even got her family involved in the production.
The young film maker notes, “Almost everyone in Loveland has heard of the alleged “frogman” that likes to terrorize the local police force late at night, but now my dad and I have made a movie about it.”
You can always count on good old dad to help out his little angel.
Here is the plot for “The Legend of the Loveland Frogmen”:
A group of high schoolers are paddling down the Little Miami River. It is getting late, and they realize they are not going to be able to make it to the takeout. They see a bonfire on the shore and go to see who is there. There are strange shapes around the fire ring, and one girl thinks she sees a creature that looks half-human and half-frog!
The creatures, whatever they are, flee, and the teens are confronted by a disgruntled old man, who tells them to get off his property. They realize they have arrived at the Loveland Castle.
The kids go home and do some research, finding out about the Loveland Frogman. Convinced this is what they saw, they return to the Castle to snoop around and see if they can find any traces of Frogmen. They take a tour, and slip away to the dungeons to look around. They hear strange noises, but just as they are nearing the source, the tour guide discovers them and kicks them out.
They wander down to the fire ring, and as they are looking around, one of the girls slips and falls in the river. “Something” in the river pushes her back onto the bank. She sputters this to her friends, which convinces them the Frogmen are real.
They return once more, that night. They want to see the Frogmen for real, since they seem to come out at night. Down at the fire ring, they see the old man again. They ask him about the Frogmen, but for each account they have of Frogmen encounters, he has a counter-argument. He finally convinces them there is no Frogman, and they leave. The last shot is of the old man, with a fly buzzing around his head. Suddenly his tongue flies out and he catches the fly and eats it!!
Is Gretchen Kessler the next Sam Raimi or Wes Craven? Well that is to be seen, but the plot for her little 30-minute film sounds pretty darn good, so……………you never know.
Here is the info on the “The Legend of the Loveland Frogmen” premiere:
The Legend of the Loveland Frogmen
May 24th at 7PM
Loveland High School auditorium
Loveland, Ohio
1 Tiger Trail
Loveland, OH 45140-1976
(513) 683-1920 Phone
Info on Loveland Frogmen from The Cryptid Zoo:
One of America’s most bizarre urban legends is that of the Loveland frogs, or frogmen as they are sometimes called. The first sighting was of strange creatures seen under a bridge, and the witness sounded as if he could not decide whether he had seen fairy-tale trolls, reptoids or things that were half human, half frog.
Later sightings were less confused, but still contained inconsistencies. Witnesses claimed that what they had seen was certainly frog-like, but they disagreed on the details. Some reported human-sized frogmen, some reported tiny frog-sized frogmen, and some reported just plain giant frogs with no noticeable human features.
This may sound like a really stupid legend, but there was enough evidence, including tracks, that both the police and the FBI investigated (probably with the theory that it was pranksters in costumes). Of course, cryptozoologists and all sorts of paranormal investigators became interested too.
The Loveland frogs continue to be sighted at irregular intervals along the Ohio River and the Little Miami River. They got their moniker from the town of Loveland, Ohio, near most of the sightings. Today cryptozoologists have little interest in these creatures. After all, they sound absurd, just like most humanoids that are not some kind of Bigfoot or a closely related hairy humanoid.
Update: Avery Guerra just dug up the trailer for the film on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORQ5PWNVVLQ
Founder of the popular monster and sci-fi blogs Monster Island News and Godzilla 3D News and Information.
Ken Hulsey began his writing career in 2000 when he founded kensforce.com a popular site with fans of Japanese sci fi/monster movies (Godzilla, Gamera and the like) and other B movies.
In 2008, he closed down his original site and created the blog "Monster Island News" a showcase for classic horror/monster films and independent/alternative cinema.
Interesting. If it ever comes out on DVD I’ll definitely give it a watch!
THe frogmen is definitely one of those odd crypto/fortean things that has intrigued me over the years. It’s just really strange and I’ve never been able to get my head around it. Like you said, up there somewhere, humanoids just don’t fit unless it’s BF related…there just isn’t any fossil record of bipedal anything other than dinosaurs and primates…well birds, but let’s not open that can of worms:)
Well, now, I don’t know about the frogmen, but it’s good to see some kids making a movie about them. I hope they eventually post it somewhere for all to see.
Found an interview with one of the filmmakers at http://davidgmiller.typepad.com/lovelandmagazine/entertainment/index.html – go down toward bottom of the page. He states that they will post it on YouTube after it runs on local access.
I have posted this to other crypto websites as well but seeing how this is in the news again —
As a writer and a resident of Loveland, I am well acquainted with the story. So I did some digging. And by digging, I mean I interviewed the two police officers involved in the sightings, interviewed people to whom the officers reported, dug through the local newspaper morgue, talked to zoologists at the Cincinnati Zoo and University of Cincinnati who were familiar with the “case” and the illustration and finally spoke with someone who knew quite a bit about the “frog.”
For purposes of protecting identities, I will respect the interviewees wishes for not identifying them by name. Anyone could track them down from the descriptions, with very little work. One of the officers quit, moved to the police department of a different city, still in the area. He is reticent, if not actively hostile, to the idea of speaking about the event. He was mercilessly teased at the time, and still remains the object of occasional ridicule.
The other officer was given to incidents of flaring temper before the sightings and afterwards was fired because of an altercation at a bar where he had not appreciated gibes about the frog.
Some brief history beyond the sightings is necessary. Loveland was and is a small city. North of Cincinnati, it was mostly rural at the time, but has been turned into a yuppie nightmare since. Being a small city, where everyone knew everyone else, there existed a different kind of politics, not the impersonal DC infighting where one does not have to worry about insulting a neighbor. All to say we had a mayor with an ornery streak and a sense of humor. He worked, with my father, for the Cincinnati Milacron, in the division that worked on plastic extrusion machines.
The mayor, and the police officers did not get along. The mayor owned land next to the Little Miami river, with a road that ran between the river and the land: the location of the sightings. The mayor had access to plastic sheets, pulleys, lines, etc. It was a dark and rainy night, so to speak. Driving down a dark road, seeing a shape one’s not expecting to see, one thing led to another.
Compounding the proliferation of the story were John Keel–a UFO “specialist”–and the immediate perpetuating of it by the guilty party to further humiliate those he did not like. The story became so popular there was a frog float in a local parade. And it would have dropped there, no one believed it. But Keel wouldn’t let it go. He convinced one officer his sighting was tied to an earlier UFO sighting, at another point along the river where aliens supposedly hid under a bridge, he published the very bad illustration in a book, it proliferated and now the story lives on the Web.
A bad joke. Verified by the perpetrator. Who has no reason to lie about this. And whom still has the plastic sheeting, or did, when I interviewed him 10 years ago. The Loveland Frog. Explained.
I have two explanations for the frogman.
1. It is the missing link between humans and amphibians.
2. They are aliens that came to Earth, similar to reptilians.Then again there is always the possibility it is just a hoax though I doubt it.