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.
No comments:
Post a Comment