Thursday, January 4, 2018

#MR Hell Comes to Frogtown

I haven’t done any review in over a year. But I always enjoyed reviewing a cheesy B-Movie for the new year (specially Reb Brown films..). So allow me to try jumping back into reviews with a review of a movie unlike any other...
Title: Hell Comes to Frogtown
Directed by: Donald G. Jackson & R. J. Kizer
From: 1988
Genre: Post-apocalypse Roddy Piper in a Mad Max/Escape from../Battletoads B-movie mashup.

Hell Comes to Frogtown is a pretty wild movie. Everything about it sounds it might result in a pretty bad, bland or generic B-movie, riffing off more popular and better post-apocalpytic movies from that time. But somehow the stars perfectly aligned because it’s actually pretty fun and enjoyable. And the movie seems to be self-aware enough about its bad premise and all the dialogues are pretty funny, thanks mostly to a great decent performance by Roddy Piper who is always quite enjoyable and charming.
After a pretty vague war destroyed most of the world, mankind is now left a shell of its former glory. The wastelands are pretty harsh and some actual mutant frog-people are living off reserves, real oasis in the middle of this new world. (Are they mutant frogs turned humans or mutant humans turned half-frog? No idea..) Oh, and since the world is basically radioactive now, the non-mutant people are slowly dying off. Birthrate is an ultimate low while only a handful of men and women are even still fertile...
And that’s were our main character comes in. Is name? SAM HELL. Sam Hell has left a trail of pregnancies wherever he’s gone through. What remains of the human government forces him to free and then impregnate some captured fertile women from the mutant frogfolk back in frogtown. Hence the title of the movie.
It sounds pretty misogynistic. Yet it treat men, and our main character Sam Hell like basic cattle. So the film actually doesn’t care about both sides. Like Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China, Sam Hell ends up doing very little aside from throwing a knife right into the chest of one of the main villains, basically a side character or comical relief for the most part. The women do all the job. There’s a few softcore-ysh scenes, as expected from these types of low budget B-movies, but it’s mostly comical at the end of the day.
The movie is a lot better than it has any rights to be. Roddy Piper as a lot of great dialogues and funny scenes. The other characters all get their time to shine and even be funny. The frogpeople take their sweet time appearing on film, but once our heroes arrive in Frogtown, the film gets froggy! YES, pun intended.
There’s a lot of nonsensical scenes. The film has one too many climaxes at the end (They defeat the main villain.. but there was another one behind it all! They get out of Frogtown.. but get chased! A villain from earlier reveals himself only to be killed off immediately... no, he’s back for one last round! Sam Hell gets back to the others only to face another surprise villain for the real ending..!) And it all ends with a little stupid joke in case you forgot the very silly premise (he has to make women pregnant.. remember that??)
Overall, it’s a really fun stupid movie. Very enjoyable. Great sense of humor and action-packed. With a Roddy Piper at the top of his game (did this film kill his movie career? Probably tho...) Highly Recommended!!
For info, this film received an unrelated direct-to-video sequel, Return to Frogtown, and an even less related spinoff “improvised film” Toad Warrior Max Hell/Frog Warrior.

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