LYNN BORDEN INTERVIEW: 'FROGS' & EXPLOITATION CINEMA

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A lovely and talented actress has left us, and her name was Lynn Borden… Known by some as the suburban wife from the last season of HAZEL, cult cinema fans remember her as Jenny Crockett, the beautifully bitter wife of Adam Roarke’s mischievous Clint in the eco-horror FROGS, which, made in 1972, is actually pretty great...

Lynn Borden... and a Frog

Taking place at a rural mansion within the murky swamps, Ray Milland stars as a greedy capitalist who isn’t very environmentally conscious...

And so, long story short, a magazine photographer, played by Sam Elliott, winds up amongst the bickering clan, experiencing their eccentric behavior as a horde of reptiles slowly move in.

So here's a transcribed interview from a Cult Film Freak/Skull Island Surfer archive with actress Lynn Borden, who also shares about appearing with the late cult actor Adam Roarke in two other motion pictures, THIS IS A HIJACK and DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY...

Previous Oscar Winning Ray Milland

What was it like working with Ray Milland in FROGS?

It was great… I’ll tell you a little story… We were all sitting doing a scene outside and we were all scared to do the wrong thing in front of him… And it was windy and he had a toupee… He was wearing a toupee, and it flew off… It flew across the grass and he just got up, went over, picked it up off the grass, put it on his head, and that was the end of it…

Then we all relaxed… So it was funny and it was so good – we worked very well together, that whole cast and crew…

Stalked Ingenue

And our producer in that… He had all those frogs… They imported some of them from South America… All over the world these things came from and they were... some of them were pretty wicked looking… And he would scare all of us and say: "This is the way you’re gonna die." He wouldn’t tell us anything, he’d say, "You’re gonna die with bats."

And I'd go, "What?" And he had us all really going, and we’d all be scared – we didn’t know exactly how we were going to die… We knew we were going to somehow, but he would scare us… And then, you know, I got it with the frog…

Or was it the giant turtle?

Yeah... I’m sorry…

Trying to Escape

You were calling out to your "husband" Adam Roarke, and your leg got stuck…

And it did get stuck, too… There's Missouri marshes in those waters, so you would step in there and sort of sink… And the turtle was right there, and they had a line on him… You know, a little cord on him… And they would let him go a little further towards me, and then they would pull him back… And I was looking at him, and he had... He was smacking away with that, you know… Those chompers he had…

And I looked at those guys, and I said, "You guys don’t you let go of that…" You know that little thing they had on him, but it was scary… That part was scary.

DVD Chapter Menu

Do you remember any other reptiles?

Oh yeah, they had everything… It was like I just said, we didn’t know how Norman was gonna squeeze those animals in there… But yeah, we had a lot of things… And we had a lot of good people.

Sam Elliott is one of the main characters…

Sam was great… I really like Sam… He’s always been a genuine, really good guy and he’s got that great voice that he’s always working on… To get that wonderful voice… Which you know, he’s now doing… I can recognize from miles away… The RAM commercial.

Lynn with Sam Elliott

FROGS was early in his career…

Yeah, and he’d be practicing that voice… And it was just getting better and better… And he was just a nice guy.

Tell me about THIS IS A HIJACK, one of three films you did with Adam Roarke...

It’s about a hijack of a plane… Which we do… Or they do… Adam does with some other people…

And when we were doing this movie we had to go on PR rounds and things like this, to different cities, and they would say whatever you do, we had to…

Autographed Rare VHS by Lynn

We carried the film with us… But we couldn’t say THIS IS A HIJACK… That’s the name of the movie but it was right in the midst of hijacking… So we had to cover it up… We used to put on… They put HI… Spelled H-I… And then they spelled JACK… J-A-C-K… As the name of the movie... That if anybody saw it and we were warned by everybody… "Do not say the name of this." In the plane, in the airport, ever… That’s it… You don’t murmur this name at all… And it would have been very serious… And we said, Okay, and we all agreed.

Our duo in DIRTY LARRY CRAZY LARRY

So you and Adam are on the plane… You’re not one of the hijackers, obviously…

No, he is… He’s one of them… And it’s an interesting film, and… I mean it was to me because the part was a good part for me… I liked doing the part… He’s my love interest.

And there’s DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY… This is a car chase movie with Peter Fonda, Susan George and Adam Roarke… And you’re in the beginning, getting kidnapped… What do you remember about that?

It was a shower scene… And they almost… They kind of did it a little like PSYCHO… Where it opens… I’m taking a shower, and the shower door opens and he grabs me and all that and yes, that’s another film I’d done with Adam… And we were starting… We were going to be doing another film together, and that didn’t pan out… But we did three of them together.

Adam and Lynn

You guys had real good chemistry… In FROGS I  liked the chemistry because he’s sort of a has-been former football high school player… And the story really focuses on you guys having mundane family problems, and there are more than just reptiles killing people… 

Right… And when we first met, we both looked at each other and he said, "Oh boy, I’m gonna have to work, aren’t I?" And I said, "Yeah, you are." So we got along right after that… Just perfectly…

So we both, you know, we liked working with each other… And it’s fun because, I tell you… FROGS… I got more out of FROGS… People… I can’t tell you how many fan letters I get… And a lot of them are about FROGS… And we do autograph shows… That’s, I think, the number one pictures they want to get… And I thought, Woah, that’s really great… When we were doing it, I had no idea that it was going to be this little cult film.

Lynn Borden 3/24/1937 to 3/3/2015

That’s interesting, because cult films are only cult films twenty years later… They’re not a cult film when you’re making them… But was it successful at first?

Yeah… Yeah it was… And it’s still playing…

Well those cult movies never go away… If they made FROGS or LIZARDS or REPTILES, or whatever, they’d be computerized now… When you watch this movie, you see these actual creatures and it’s really cool... And I have to mention, Lynn, this one particular scene I really like you in: when you first enter, and Sam Elliott is soaking wet from Adam knocking him over on the boat, and you look at Sam and say, Where's Clint? Referring to Adam Roarke’s character… It’s just funny because you instantly know your no-good husband is behind all this, and yet, you had no idea what happened… And it’s a great moment, very real.

Well good… I have to watch the picture again and look for that moment!