Monday, February 24, 2014

Hell Comes to Frogtown


Released in 1988 Directed by Donald G. Jackson, R.J. Kizer
Starring Julius LeFlore, William Smith, Roddy Piper.

Possibly my favorite PA flick is the ridiculous and shamelessly cheesy Hell Comes To Frogtown. It's got everything I love. A dirty, late 80's drive-in vibe, the Kurt Russel-esque anti hero, low budget gunfights with bad guys who can't aim for shit, samurai swords because 'Fuck, why not?', sex scenes with a punchline, and giant mutated frogmen with chainsaws. There's even character development. Holy nukes.



After the third world war lays waste to everything, of the survivors, 60% of the male population succumbs to radiation poisoning, and most of the rest (men and women) are mutated to the point of being so undesirable they're all quarantined into run down factory cities, or what's left of them. One of these is called, rightly enough, Frogtown. What's been rebuilt of the government is run by women. Obviously, when all the still human men are reduced to radioactive eunuchs, women inevitably take the alpha role. It's not an uncommon concept in PA movies, perhaps because the idea of a world run by women was enough to scare the shit out of any Wonder Bread loving American male in the 1980s.

Sam Hell is the main man. In fact, Sam Hell is none other than super-bad-guy Roddy Piper from the WWF, the same one who went to the mat with Hulk Hogan in Wrestlemania I, smashed Superfly over the head with a handy coconut, and "beat and shaved the late Adrian Adonis" during Wrestlemania III. Not that I would know anything about wrestling. He's a fun guy to watch, even if he seems a bit dry and restrained during this movie compared to the wild man of 80s man-dancing.


As Sam Hell, it turns out he's bad enough to be arrested by the women-force in charge of seemingly everything, and for what he's arrested doesn't matter. What matters is, Sam Hell has got the strongest active sperm count in the country. He's not only immune to the radioactive fallout, he's got the biggest balls of them all. His balls are bursting, his balls are full, and well, it's enough to be offered a full pardon if he'll do one small service to the nation: Rescue the beautiful innocent women who somehow ended up in Frogtown from the nasty lizard men, and fill them up with beautiful babies. "We're gonna get them out and your gonna get them pregnant". It's like A Boy and His Dog but without the creepy underground Christians. The only catch, he's got to wear a friggin electronic garter belt that shocks his prize jewels anytime he gets too far away from his sexy, er, 'probation ladies'. And they are sexy. If you don't think this movie sounds funny yet, I'm sorry to hear about your balls. You obviously don't have any.


So off he goes on a great adventure to serve his country as only a great bell-swinger like him can. From here it's frog-men playing electric guitars, frog-women on stripper poles, and some old guy that Hell remembers from way-back-when who shows up at just the right time.


I don't want to say too much more, because I promised no spoilers and I feel like long reviews give away too much. See the movie, buy the movie, turn it on at parties when you need to embarrass a stuffy host, show it to your friends when your bong is full, and welcome to the club. As far as post-apocalypse movies go, you're frog deep in the thick of it now, baby.







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