Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)
When I hear a title like this, that’s it, I’m done.
So, let’s start… I will try to tell you a few things from the movie’s history that I managed to get. The movie was named after a graffiti that the writer/director saw while filming Roller Blade – a movie about deadly nuns with magic knives on roller blades, who worship a glowing smiley face. But, the magic nuns aside, there was a whole story about that graffiti. Now, what’s the story… Well, a very imaginative one.
At some point a nuclear war happened and the Earth was, of course, destroyed. Now, 10 years later, the opposite sides are again regrouping and arming themselves. More than 60% of male population has been killed in the war, and most of the surviving men are infertile. Fertile men are highly esteemed because they are used for reproduction (forming of a new army, that is). One of the fertile men is a veteran and current outlaw Sam Hell who gets captured by the state institution for reproduction. As the plot goes on, we find out that the radiation caused mutations, frog-people were born and so we get to understand the meaning of the title. Although, it’s still not clear to me how all that happened in 10 years, but if I were looking for something realistic, I wouldn’t watch a movie that contains the word „frogtown“ in its title.
Frogmen are separated from humans in their city/reservation, and their leader Frogman has abducted fertile female super-models so they would satisfy his three snakes (an obvious metaphor for obvious things). Sam Hell, our hero, after being captured by the state, is sent to Frogtown with a female soldier and a female doctor, to save the super-models so he could fertilize them later. It’s crucial to mention that all this time he has an explosive mounted to his groin in case he would try to escape. And, yes, just like in any typical exploiting movie, the soldier and the doctor have to keep him horny… so this movie also isn’t short with boobies… I don’t quite understand why the state sent such a valuable man and two women to save other girls, when he will impregnate them later anyway, when they get back to the safe zone… they should have kept him in a nice place while others were making sacrifices… but then again, in a movie like this that is the smallest logical discrepancy.
The leading role is played by the wrestler Roddy Piper, a great actor if you ask me, especially after Carpenter’s They Live, where he plays a bum who kills aliens with a shotgun and eyeglasses (more about that in a other post). Roddy is a great guy, perfect for roles of a dumb macho man with a lot of courage and heart… and of course he is smug, something like Bruce Campbell from Army Of Darkness.
The film is of a B production, although the crew from Terminator worked on it. Unbelievably silly but at the same time enormously entertaining. Yes, it’s a B production, but it’s not trash. Intro credits, shots, vehicles, everything is on a high level and that isn’t a surprise since it was the first high budget movie of Donald G. Jackson who did everything to make a good film and push his vision. He was so pushy that he has even made head producers throw him out from the set. At the end he was forced to sneak into the studio, so he could somehow influence the making of the movie. When someone mentions an SF film of a B production, I always think of Roger Corman’s work. I think this movie is on a higher level, which also isn’t a surprise since 10 times more money was spent on it than on any Corman’s movie from that time.