Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)

There are some crazy movies out there that seem like they weren’t fully thought out.  These movies are wacky, but not necessarily in a fun, entertaining way.  You’re left staring at the screen and wondering why that movie ever existed.  What made people think that it was a good idea?  Why did they put those ideas together and think that it would be captivating?  This is one of those movies.

Hell Comes to Frogtown is one of those late 80s movies that starred a wrestler.  It was before WWE was big on making movies.  There was no 12 Rounds franchise.  The Marine wasn’t even a consideration.  The closest thing to WWE (who were WWF at the time) movies were a string of lackluster Hulk Hogan starring movies.  The rest were just movies that featured wrestlers.  Hell Comes to Frogtown wasn’t produced by the wrestling company.  It simply starred one of their featured wrestlers.

The 1988 movie followed Sam Hell (Roddy Piper), a scavenger who was arrested for scavenging.  The government discovered that he was able to impregnate women like nobody else, and they made him a deal.  He would go to Frogtown, save some captive women, and fill them with his man seed.  The whole time, he was being watched by Spangle (Sandahl Bergman), a scientist and soldier.  She would make sure he stayed safe and that they got the women out of danger.  She was in charge of the mission.

Basically, the whole movie was about Sam Hell getting some action while being involved in action.  There were fights and deaths and someone being impaled with a sword, but in the end, it all came down to Sam Hell getting people pregnant.  That is a strange thing for a movie to be about.  It wasn’t about the consequences of the pregnancies.  Most movies that deal with pregnancy are dealing with the woman being pregnant, or what happens after the birth.  This movie was about the sex.  It was about impregnation.  It was about Roddy Piper’s character knocking women up.  No more, no less.  Well, maybe a bit more with the action story.  But in terms of the pregnancy, that’s the only thing that mattered.

That wasn’t the only strange thing about Hell Comes to Frogtown.  Look at the name.  Do you see where he’s going?  Sam Hell goes to Frogtown.  The town was named Frogtown, though it was more of an industrial plant.  Town is only half of the name.  The other half is frog.  That half was particularly relevant to what happened.  You see, everyone who lived in Frogtown was a human/frog hybrid.  They were bipedal frog-looking people.  It was a result of the world they lived in.  It was a world destroyed through a nuclear war (the movie was made during the Cold War), and the war caused mutations.  For some reason, the mutation of Frogtown was frog people.

Outside of the residents of Frogtown looking like frogs, there wasn’t much that differentiated them from people.  They were the seedy underground of a post-apocalyptic landscape.  There were the mob bosses of the town.  There were strippers.  Most of all, the frog people had sexual appetites that didn’t stop at other frog people.  One of the frog people was working with the good guys as a mole inside Frogtown.  She was sexually attracted to Sam Hell and tried to make moves on him multiple times.  Sam Hell was rightfully against the beastiality that she suggested.  Though, is it truly beastiality?  The frog people were simply mutations of the human race.  They were human underneath their amphibian skin.

It comes to stand that Hell Comes to Frogtown is one of the craziest concepts of a movie that I’ve watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  It isn’t the craziest movie, but on a pure conceptual level, it is near the top of crazy.  Who would write a movie about a man who is needed for procreation, try to sell it with Roddy Piper, and then add in frog people?  Okay, when I lay it out like that, it sounds so crazy that it could work.  Only it doesn’t.  Unlike the other big Roddy Piper movie, They Live, there wasn’t a supporting cast to hold Hell Comes to Frogtown together, and there wasn’t a solid director who could make the story have sense.  We ended up with a mixture of fun bits and terrible everything else.  The funstuff wasn’t even that much of the movie.  Most of the jokes fell flat and most of the action was okay.  There’s something special to Hell Comes to Frogtown, but it may take a rewatch to figure it out.

This week’s post was shorter than usual.  It has been the busiest week of school so far, and as such, I’ve had minimal time to throw this together.  It turned out pretty well.  It’s quick and to the point.  It gets everything across.  The writing isn’t atrocious.  Hopefully I get more time to focus on next week’s post.

Anyway, here are some notes:

• Hell Comes to Frogtown was suggested by @turbeetle, who has also suggested Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend and A Sound of Thunder.
• William Smith made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Hell Comes to Frogtown.  He was previously in Terror in Beverly Hills.
• Have you seen Hell Comes to Frogtown?  What did you think about it?  Are there any other movies with similar storylines?  Use the comments below to discuss the movie or any things related to this post.
• Twitter and the comments section are good places to suggest movies for me to watch in future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m always looking for bad movies I don’t know.
• Sometimes when I watch bad movies, I share clips on snapchat.  Follow me.  jurassicgriffin
• Next week’s movie is going to be Son of the Mask.  I saw it once before back around the time it came out.  I hated it, like most people did.  Now I return and see why I hated it.  I’ll share my rewatch thoughts with you next week.