The Loveland Frogman was first sighted by a traveling salesman driving along an unnamed road late at night in 1955. 15 years later, Loveland police officer Ray Shockey was driving on Riverside Drive near the Totes boot factory and the Little Miami River when an unidentified animal scurried across the road — like some kind of monkey — in front of him. Two weeks after this sighting, another Loveland police officer, Mark Matthews, reported seeing an unidentified animal crouched along the road in the same vicinity. Matthews hunted down and shot the animal, recovered the body and put it in his trunk to show Officer Shockey. It turned out to be a large tailless iguana, which isn’t reported often.

What is true is that the town of Loveland, Ohio has adopted the Loveland Frogman as their mascot and even has a town festival.

In Frogman, the debut film of director and co-writer (with John Karsko) Anthony Cousins, a young man named Dallas (Nathan Tymoshuk) somehow captures a photo of the frogman on a family vacation. He then spends the rest of his life trying to prove that his photo is real.

He brings his friend Scotty (Benny Barrett) and Amy (Chelsey Grant) with him to Loveland as he becomes increasingly tunnel visioned into this quest. They go into town and The Legend of Boggy Creek-style meet the locals and hear stories about the frogman. Each of the three leads are great in their roles, believable and more than cannon fodder as in so many found footage movies.

What takes it beyond the basic of found footage is how audacious it gets, as there’s an entire Lovecraftian end of the world cult — a frogman sex cult! — out in the woods praising its name. It makes the whole movie pay off and the end even has some emotion.

I usually dislike found footage films, but wow — Frogman is good.

Frogman was part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.