Hell Comes to Frogtown

• Directed by Donald G. Jackson and R. J. Kizer
• January 1988

After a worldwide nuclear war where most of the male population was wiped out a scavenger is assigned to help rescue a group of fertile women kidnapped by humanoid frogs.

I had heard about Hell Comes to Frogtown decades ago. What has always been obvious is that it is one of those low budget very niche items that nobody other than a very select few cares about to the point physical media looks difficult to find. Thankfully we have streaming which makes so much that you would not even think about available to all.

Calling it a weird film might be an understatement. Hell Comes to Frogtown is a post apocalyptic science-fiction comedy starring Rowdy Roddy Piper as Sam Hell who is a fertile male in a world without many fertile men. Hell gets roped into a mission to save a group of fertile women being trucked in for him to impregnate. It’s really bad comedy, but also just really strange. It is perhaps the most uniquely humorous vision of a post-apocalyptic future I have ever seen.

Being a fertile man has its privileges. Or should, but Sam Hell in an inversion of things is treated like property while the women are clearly in charge here. With an exploding chastity belt containing an electronic lock, during the mission he is under the thumb of Dr. Spangle (Sandahl Bergman) and Corporal Centinella (Cec Verrell). Sam is a cocky jerk, but his cockiness does not go unchallenged though Spangle reluctantly finds it charming.

This does a much better job of visually expressing the post-apocalyptic world in a Mad Max way than other low budget films do despite containing anthropomorphic frogs. Much like in Mad Max here bits and pieces of real-world items are used as clothing and armor and so forth. You can even spot a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament being worn as a medallion.

It is obvious Piper knew exactly how stupid this idea was and he played with it. He was there having a good time doing something silly. Bergman comes off as maybe disinterested. I can’t think of too much with her in it, but she was better in Conan the Barbarian than here. As the eventual love interest she tries for awkward comedy but is just awkward.

There is a subplot in here about Sam and a border patrol agent whose daughter he slept with and got pregnant. It ties into a plot by a guy to build the only nuclear weapon on the planet and seize power. That felt like a bit of an ad on to give them a more action-packed conclusion than it did as something that connected to the main story. The people making this felt more of a bang was needed.

The costume for the main frog villain-Frogtown chief Commander Toty (Brian Frank)-is quite good but he’s on the screen least of all the frog characters. The others are far less sophisticated than Toty. The torture scene/moments between Sam and Bull (Nicholas Worth) are as long if not long than Toty’s time and Bull is less dynamic.

I’m left with a question implied by some dialogue: were there other mutant animals? Sounds like it might be when they reference a place called Eagletown. Silly idea but with modern effects this could look like a Hanna-Barbara cartoon. This is a parody of the post-apocalyptic genre. And a rather effective one. It mixes in the hero with emotional baggage crossing a wasteland and pokes fun at it.

Hell Comes to Frogtown is not a bad movie. I just can’t see it appealing to a broader audience which probably explains why there is only one place you can find it streaming. Currently available on Tubi when I watched.