Review for Hell Comes to Frogtown (Dual Disk)

Sam Hell is one of the few fertile men in the world following nuclear war. He is captured and forced to accompany Spangle and Cendrilla to rescue some of the few fertile women who have been captured by the mutants who live in Frogtown. Sam doesn't want to oblige and so they strap a device to his gonads which at the press of a button causes him agonising pain to him and can even explode.

The three travel through a Mad Max-style wasteland until they discover Frog Town run by the evil Commander Toty. Here they must fight for their lives and their 'nads to rescue the women and also make sure Sam comes home with his pecker in one piece.

Hell Comes To Frogtown is a classic sci-fi action film that you shouldn't take seriously. If you do, you will hate the film and everything about it. If you take it as the B-Movie almost spoof of Planet of the Apes that it appears to be, then you will be in for a hugely entertaining ride.

After reading the plot you can't help but think that this is a film made at the wrong time. If it had been made now with all the ridiculous Sharknado and Syfy original films, this would have been a runaway success, but for some reason in 1987 this wasn't the case (Although it did make almost double its budget back). Reading some of those older reviews it makes me feel that those people thought they were going to get another epic Mad Max or Planet of the Apes. And though it is not exactly a spoof of these films, the only way you can view it is as a comedy. View it any other way and it comes across as painful and amateurish.

Roddy Piper as Sam Hell doesn't put on the performance that he did later
in John Carpenter's They Live and even he admits this. However, it is competent and at times looks like he just walked off from doing a WWE promo to do a scene on this film. His interaction and little quips are not exactly hilarious, but they fit the role and Piper does what he can with them. Sandahl Bergman as Spangle is your typical sexy scientist who once she takes her glasses off moves up ten spots in the sex appeal. The rest of the humans do their best, though most of them just have to stand around and look sexy.

The 'Frogs' are a mixture of good, great and WHAT? This is one of those typical films that works really hard on the main characters such as Toty whose lips at least matched up with the movements and then you have the character of Bull screaming SHUT YOUR HOLE which doesn't even pretend to come out of the mouth. The rest of the background Frogs look ok, but you can tell they probably spent most of their budget on Toty's costume and also on trying to make Kristi Somers look sexy as the Frog-Female Arabella. Granted they failed, but at least they tried to make it look like it was real.

On the whole, the effects are not that bad throughout the film. The sets and environments look great and you could imagine this kind of thing happening. Maybe not the mutant frogs, but certainly the other implications and the devastation shown.

However, as I say, this film is immensely ridiculous from every point of you in terms of its plot. Even the simple fact that they send one of the few fertile males into a situation where they could die makes you wonder what the writers were thinking. That being said, the film is a whole lot of a fun and though it will never win any Oscars and certainly won't be on any Top Ten lists, it is certainly a film that you can switch off your brain and enjoy.

What is surprising is the amount of extras on this set. This is pretty stacked and for fans of the film it will make buying it even more of a must.

Three interviews are included with Roddy Piper, Brian Frank who played Toty and Creature Effects Creator Steve Wang talking about their experiences on the film. They are all pretty candid about the film and Wang is very clear about the production problems and clears up why there are multiple Directors/Editors and so on. If you are wrestling fan or a fan of Roddy Piper in general, this is pretty good interview where he discusses not just this film, but his whole film career.

I think what is fascinating when you watch this or look deeper is just how many people involved went on to bigger and better things. Wang worked on films like Predator, Underworld and Gremlins 2 and when you look at the second Director RJ Kizer's biography he went on to work on many Oscar-winning/nominated films such as Inception, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Book Thief. (Though only in the Sound Department... Not surprisingly after this he only one other film the amazingly bad Death Ring.)

An Extended Scene seems to dwell on the whole 'rape' aspect of Sam using his 'fame' about how fertile he is to seduce women. I can understand why they cut the scene, but I have to admit this is one aspect of the film that is a little uncomfortable and I'm glad they decided to cut it. Also included is a Trailer which is your typical 80s fare that showed all the good bits and tried to at least make it seem better than it was.

Hell Comes to Frogtown is a great mix of action, comedy and sexy babes. If you go into this expecting a well thought out film on what the future could be like... then you're probably watching the wrong film. Instead watch the film for the goofball mess that it is and I'm sure you will have a blast!