Cane Toads: An Unnatural History

Toads gone wild!

It’s the 1930s and sugar is booming, particularly in North Queensland, Australia. But the farmers there have a problem: grubs are eating their crops.

The Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations, desperate to get the farmers off their backs, attend the World Conference of Sugar Technologists in Puerto Rico and get the brilliant idea to import toads to Australia to eat the grubs and save the crops.

The toads, rudely handled and unfed during their two-week journey, arrive in Queensland hungry, horny, and with a newfound resentment for Australia.

We’ll learn why this all goes wrong, but not before we witness a scientist banging two toads together like Barbie and Ken dolls, are treated to an homage to Psycho and Night of the Living Dead, and sing some hymns while the toads screw.

Thirteen years before he made The Natural History of the Chicken, documentary filmmaker Mark Lewis will use the cane toad as an excuse to create a movie that is one part ecological disaster, one part gross out horror comedy, one part toad porn set to an 80s Cinemax movie soundtrack, and one part subtle suggestion that an amphibian Necronomicon is responsible for the failure of the marriage between Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

We’re suffering through and reporting back on Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, available to stream on YouTube.

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Theme music: "Mexicana Massacre" by Tomb Dragomir off his Instrumental Psycho Synth Album