Return to Frogtown (1993)

Many wrestlers have gone from the ring to the big screen to try to become movie stars.  Hulk Hogan did it in the 80s and 90s.  Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista did it more recently.  They spend their time sparring against other big, burly men and branch out into a new avenue.  They find a new audience that might not have watched them between the WCW, WWF, WWE, or TNA ropes.  Few of the actors to come out of the wrestling world have found as much cult film popularity as Roddy Piper.

1988 was an especially big year for Roddy Piper.  He took on the lead role in John Carpenter’s They Live, a movie where people were being taken over by aliens and a pair of sunglasses could reveal who was still human.  The movie wasn’t a huge success when it came out but went on to become a favourite of people into 1980s genre films.  The other movie Roddy Piper starred in that year was even more bizarre.  Hell Comes to Frogtown was about a post-apocalyptic world where most humans could no longer conceive children, and other people had been mutated into frog people.  Sam Hell was a man who was frequently impregnating woman, and his seed was needed by the women of the world.

That second movie wasn’t the biggest hit.  It did do something that They Live couldn’t, though.  Hell Comes to Frogtown spawned two sequels: Return to Frogtown and Toad Warrior.  Toad Warrior was considered more of a spin-off than a sequel.  It was considered much more of a standalone film than an actual sequel.  Return to Frogtown, however, was a direct sequel to Hell Comes to Frogtown.  It followed the same characters as they ventured into Frogtown once again to save someone who was being held captive.

Return to Frogtown was released in 1993.  Sam Hell (Robert Z’Dar) was now a Texas Rocket Ranger.  He was tasked with going to Frogtown to find Ranger John Jones (Lou Ferrigno), who had gone missing in the area some time before.  Sam Hell took his trusty sidekick, Dr. Spangle (Denice Duff), with him.  He had every intention of leaving her behind, but she tagged along.  They went to Frogtown, got involved with the frog people of the town, and fought their way back out.

As you could probably tell from that description, Roddy Piper was nowhere to be seen.  He wasn’t the only actor from Hell Comes to Frogtown who didn’t come back for Return to Frogtown.  No characters who made it to the sequel were played by the same person.  None of the cast had returned.  Roddy Piper was replaced with Robert Z’Dar.  Sandahl Bergman was replaced with Denice Duff.  The cast was completely different, even though the characters were the same.

The other noticeable difference was in the storyline.  The procreation storyline of Hell Comes to Frogtown was completely dropped for the sequel.  It was no longer about women wanting to use Sam Hell to try and repopulate Earth.  Sam Hell still managed to have sex, or get close to it, with a frog woman.  But the intention wasn’t to use him for sex so that babies could be made.  It was more just because Sam and the frog woman found each other attractive.  They wanted to have sex for the fun of it, not for the job of conception.

There was one thing that stayed the same in the sequel.  That was the basic storyline of Sam Hell and Dr. Spangle travelling into Frogtown to save someone.  Yet, there were still some major deviations in that storyline.  Hell Comes to Frogtown saw a group of female scientists sending him to save a group of fertile women for procreation purposes.  He was under the watch of Dr. Spangle, with an explosive codpiece that would detonate if he tried to escape Spangle’s watchful eye.  Return to Frogtown made his trek nobler.  He wasn’t being forced to go to Frogtown.  It was his mission from the Texas Rocket Rangers, but he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart.  He wanted to save his friend.  Rocket Ranger Jones had been captured, and Sam wanted to make sure he got out of there safe.  Though the two movies shared a behind enemy lines sort of storyline about going into Frogtown to save someone, the intentions were different.

As for the things that Return to Frogtown managed to do apart from its predecessor, it had some fun sequences.  When Dr. Spangle was captured, she was tied to the front of a car and driven around the wasteland near Frogtown.  It was an entertaining little action piece, watching someone struggle on the hood of a car as it sped through the dusty streets of the wild west looking Frogtown.  Oh yeah, Frogtown was designed like an old west town in Return to Frogtown.  It was a fun setting to place some shootouts in.  Post-apocalypses that end up like the wild west are usually enjoyable.

The weirdest part of Return to Frogtown was Professor Tanzer, played by Brion James.  The character was outlandish, even for a movie featuring people that had been mutated into frogs.  The way he spoke, his mannerisms, and his look all felt like they were ripped from something that was more farcical than the movie ended up being.  The twist near the end of the film didn’t help matters at all.  It was the most nonsensical element.  The character didn’t bring the film down at all.  He just stood out as something that never sat quite right.

The final thing that needs to be mentioned is the music.  There was an extended driving sequence as Sam Hell and Dr. Spangle headed to Frogtown that featured what sounded like an original song.  I could be wrong about that, though.  It was some sort of “kicking the frog” type of thing.  Those may not have been the actual lyrics, but that’s what it sounded like.  Then there was the concert scene.  Frogtown had its own bar band sort of setup where a band of frog people would perform.  That one had lyrics like “meaner and greener.”  The two songs set up the two sides of the conflict in Return to Frogtown.  The first one set up the heroes while the second one laid the foundations for the frog people.  It was a solid way to set the sides for the conflict.

Return to Frogtown wasn’t the greatest sequel to ever be made.  Hell, it might not have been the best sequel that Hell Comes to Frogtown could have gotten.  The cast was changed and the story lost a big chunk of its oomph when it focused solely on the rescue mission, dropping the repopulation subplot.  There could have been more to the story.  It wasn’t there, though, and we got what we got.

Wrestlers made a move onto the silver screen, beginning in the 1980s.  Roddy Piper came out with Hell Comes to Frogtown, just like Dwayne Johnson, Dave Bautista, and John Cena would come out with movies in later decades.  He didn’t find the same level of stardom as any of them, but he did kickstart a franchise that spanned three movies.  And that got us here.

Now for some notes to finish off this post:

• Here’s the post for Hell Comes to Frogtown (week 206).
• Charles Napier joined the three-timer’s club with Return to Frogtown.  He was in Steel (week 127) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (week 224).
• Another three-timer is Lou Ferrigno, who showed up in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190) and Sinbad of the Seven Seas (week 235).
• Robert Z’Dar starred in Return to Frogtown.  He was also in Samurai Cop (week 66).
• Another returning actor was Brion James, who had made an appearance in Cabin Boy (week 173).
• Return to Frogtown saw the second appearance of Douglas Dunning, after Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (week 208).
• Finally, Mike Nyman was in Road to Revenge (week 313), and now he is in Return to Frogtown.
• Have you seen Return to Frogtown?  Have you seen Hell Comes to Frogtown?  What did you think about them?  Let me know about them or this post in the comments or on Twitter.
• Both of those places are good spots to let me know what movies I should be checking out for future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Hit me up.  Let me know.
• There’s now an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m whipping things up on it right now, so check it out.
• Let’s talk about next week.  Lou Ferrigno is going to be coming back quickly as I watch a movie related to a big release on Friday.  The Incredible Hulk Returns was a television movie from the late 1980s that saw The Incredible Hulk meet up with Thor.  That’s what I’ll be watching.  I’ll see you next week with my thoughts.