REVIEW - Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)

Hell Comes to Frogtown

USA - 1988

Directed by - Donald G. Jackson & R.J. Kizer

Starring - Roddy Piper, Sandahl Bergman, Cec Verrell, William Smith

Color / 86 Min / Rated R for violence, nudity, and mild profanity

After the bomb drops, Sam Hell (Roddy Piper) is one of the few fertile men left on Earth. Captured and drafted into the ranks of the provisional government's Amazonian military, Sam is to be used as breeding stock with a group of fertile women. The only snag is, the women have been captured by bandit-like mutants living out in a 'mutant reservation' referred to as Frogtown due to the unfortunate mutations suffered by some in the radioactive aftermath. Along with warrior-nurse Spangle (Sandahl Bergman) and gunner Centinella (Cec Verrell), Sam must venture out into the California desert wasteland and rescue the captured women from the mutant frogs. The future of the human race is at stake!

Okay, this all sounds monumentally stupid, but as a cult movie fan, this very silly premise alone is enough to get my heart racing with excitement. I remember watching bits and pieces of this film on cable when I was a youngster. I want to say it was the Last Call on Joe Bob's show the night Roddy Piper co-hosted, but my memory is fuzzy. Regardless, it was replayed on networks like TNT enough times that I'm pretty sure I saw the entire film over the years, just not all at once or in any kind of sensible sequential order (and this makes even less sense when you consider I watched some of the craptacular sequels this movie spawned like Toad Warrior in one sitting). Generally speaking, I had somewhat favorable memories of Hell Comes to Frogtown, so I was keen to sit myself down and watch the whole thing once and for all.

Care for a Bud-weis-er?

Annnd... it kinda sucked. Actually, it didn't 'kinda' suck. It did suck. Period. I think I liked it better in my head as the out of sequence Tarantino movie that never happened.

I know Hell Comes to Frogtown has its share of fans, so hear me out before you start chucking incendiary grenades my way. First of all, I love late 70's to late 80's post-apocalyptic fun and games. I'm the guy who thinks 2019: After the Fall of New York is a bonafide CLASSIC. I'm not Roger Ebert reviewing a Friday the 13th movie here, okay? Second, just glancing at the featured players in the cast, this movie should be totally rad because of them. Roddy Piper is a major fan favorite of B-movie fans, and arguably the best wrestler turned actor of them all (although Rocky is the only other serious contender to this title), Sandahl Bergman is one of those smolderingly hot exotic beauties from the 80's that we never seem to get in the movies anymore, and Cec Verrell is likeable simply because she's so elusive in her work (how she failed to become a bigger star is beyond me). The cast also boasts B-legend William Smith - Carrot in The Ultimate Warrior, the outlaw in Boss Nigger, Ah-nold's dad in Conan the Barbarian, the bad guy in that one episode of The Rockford Files, the fucking Marlboro Man! Yeah, this movie should have been aces.

So what exactly are my grievances with Hell Comes to Frogtown? One of my biggest gripes with this film are its woeful pacing problems. I have a hunch this might be a side effect of having two directors controlling the ebb and flow of the film, which seldom works to a favorable end product. There are some incredibly dull stretches of movie where nothing much seems to happen at all, and when some action finally bothers to show up, it comes across as stilted and uncertain, not exactly the blockbuster scene you were waiting on. A scene where Roddy Piper is armed with two shotguns should not be dull for a second. The film is also angling for a bit of comedy, and indeed the viewer is made to hold their breath in anticipation for a clever punchline at certain points, but it just doesn't happen. The script isn't witty enough and our two leads (Piper and Bergman) don't have enough on-screen chemistry to pull off any serious chuckles. Oh look, the big, bad frog-man has three dicks. Clever.

Let me show you a *real* legscissors hold, Mr. Piper.

As for those frogmen, well, the makeup jobs on some of the mutated characters are actually quite good, especially for a film with a limited budget. I can't understand why all of the froggy characters weren't done this way. Instead, the major frog characters are guys in poorly done frog masks and prosthetics. The live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie looks like a million bucks in comparison to how shitty these frogs look (and sound - the syncing of the actor's voices with the mouth movements is pretty poor). I'm also slightly confused as to whether or not the residents of Frogtown are people who have mutated into frogs or if they're frogs that mutated into intelligent bipeds? Or both?! Perhaps that explains the two types of frog-people. It's never made explicitly clear to us though, and my inquiring mind wants to know, dammit.

Speaking of questioning the plot, I realize it's often a futile effort when you're dealing with a B-movie, and even if you do find some kind of resolution it's often a Pyrrhic victory (Yay for you! You figured out the deep intricacies of Surf Nazis Must Die! Now *you* must die.), but I do have to wonder just what the hell is going on in this movie. So you've got yourselves one of the last fertile men on the planet, do you A.) wrap him up in cotton wool and keep him well out of harm's way, or B.) send him into hostile territory where brigand frog people await with guns, knives, explosives, and chainsaws? Of course, you don't have much of a movie if your main character is safe and snug in a bunker somewhere, but I wonder if a simple revision to the script couldn't have made Hell Comes to Frogtown just a smidgen more sensible? Turning Sam Hell into the protector character ala Clive Owen's character in Children of Men could have worked, although you'd have to omit the lame gags involving Sam's explosive chastity belt (one of the evil frogs even points out the braindead logic of wiring your one fertile man to blow if he tries to escape the military's clutches).

Hurry up, dammit. Cherry 2000 needs these rocks for the same shot later today.

Finally, I'm flat out disappointed in Roddy Piper's character here. We're told he's a war hero, a real tough guy, a man to steer clear of, and yet the script constantly has him acting like a total spaz. I have trouble buying Sam Hell as a bad ass when he's getting knocked out in one punch, flailing around like an epileptic freak because his belt is shocking his gonads, or whining about not wanting mean Mr. Frog Guy to chop him up when he inevitably gets captured (No witty one-liners? No 'go fuck yourself' speech to the adversary? You're really gonna beg for your life? O-kay...). This character is about a million miles away from the don't give a shit swagger of Nada in They Live. I'm not saying Piper doesn't have the charisma to pull off the lovable loser type role, but I'm just miffed we're promised one thing and shown another. Oh, and by the way, movie - having Sam show any sort of trepidation at the prospect of being the only male breeding stock around is just lame. At the heart of Hell Comes to Frogtown is a juvenile male fantasy of a dude getting to bareback his own harem repeatedly until they all get pregnant without any sort of responsibility to the children (and when they've had a kid and recovered - more fucking!). If you're going that direction, at least play on the goddamn fantasy instead of trying to hide it. You're not going to be mistaken for anything but a sexist swine regardless (Hey look! The only fertile women left on the planet are hot bitches! Imagine that!). May as well go whole hog and have some fun with it instead of having your main character bemoan his fate.

Still, I managed to find at least a couple of positives to take away from this film. Though he's short of screen time, William Smith is pretty awesome as the crooked Captain Devlin, the man who is out to get our protagonist because he knocked up Devlin's daughter (with Devlin mistakenly believing that Sam raped her). And the elusive beauty Cec Verrell is brilliant as the strong, silent type who chomps cigarillos while mowing down frogs with a turret gun. I will also state for the record that the next time I play a tabletop game of Dungeons & Dragons or Gamma World and roll up a female character, I'm totally naming her Centinella. What a great name. If I didn't know any better, I'd say screenwriters Jackson and Frakes pulled the name from their own fantasy role-playing group.

Love is always in the air when frog strippers meet carny prospectors.

Yeah. I'm talking about naming a fucking D&D character as a positive for Hell Comes to Frogtown. Clearly it didn't do much for me. Recommended to approach with caution if you've never seen it before.

1.5 / 5