Return to Frogtown

• Also known as Frogtown II
• Written and Directed by Donald G. Jackson
• August 1, 1993 (US)

The Mutant-Frog leader of Frogtown kidnaps a professor and forces him to make a serum that will turn everyone into Frogs.

Despite certain concepts and a returning character (though not the actor), Return to Frogtown is about as connected to Hell Comes to Frogtown as an Ator movie is connected to any of those movies. It takes the basics of the previously established world and runs it in its own direction. If you go into viewing this film with that in mind, you’ll probably be a lot better off than expecting a direct sequel.

Sam Hell returns as a character but Roddy Piper, reportedly too busy with wrestling at the time, does not return as the character. Robert Z’Dar takes over that part with whatever crimes Hell was guilty of apparently forgotten and him having been serving for quite some time in the Texas Rocket Rangers. Also gone is the clearly female dominated world of the first movie with the women being largely token individuals such as scientist Dr. Spangle (Denice Duff) and the computer intelligence F.U.Z.Z.Y. (Rhonda Shear) who really serve to keep Return to Frogtown from being a complete sausagefest. They do little for the story. This is very much a guy centered movie.

Return to Frogtown is filled with B-Movie star power with one or two that may get slightly better than that on occasion. Aside from the recognizable Z’Dar there is Lou Ferrigno as Ranger John Jones, Don Stroud as Brandy Stone, Brion James as Professor Tanzer, and Charles Napier as Captain Delano. Notable talent that turns what should have been really bad into something better than it deserved.

It’s clear they were at the minimum hoping to cash in on the popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. They even throw shade at it in the trailer with similar feeling instances in the movie like somebody involved in this film’s production had an unjustified axe to grind against it.

In tone this tries to straddle a weird adult vibe and along with a family friendly vibe. I’m not sure if it was aimed at children or adults or adults that act like children. There are adult moments and stuff that felt written by a child in elementary school. I don’t know if this is going for parody or social commentary. It certainly could have been either.

Brion James was a prolific character actor whom I remember from so many things. He often played villains and generally was very good at it. As Professor Tanzer he played the part like he was performing in a Power Rangers episode. The reveal of Tanzer’s twin being the Evil Star Frogmeister was just dropped in. This is not an artful film so they were not going for complexity but there’s no hint beforehand though him not being an actual Frog was obvious from the start.

There are no deep messages or complex themes or strong character development. This was designed to suck up time on late night cable or get you to willingly plunk down whatever the VHS rental fee was. But they did as good of a job as they could despite this feeling like it was something else until they tried to shoehorn it into the Frogtown world. Not that it was ever a major property but at least it had some name recognition.

Being that the story involves a group referred to as the Texas Rocket Rangers flight sequences of some type are pretty much a given. The effects used are as basic as those from the Commando Cody serials. Pretty sure we just see a dummy zipping in a string. The closeup shots while inflight are some wafting smoke while the actor has outstretched arms wearing a jacket where the tassels dangle. They couldn’t afford a fan to imply flight?

When it comes to the mutants we get some frog heads with only one or two actually having any being capable of movement. Largely it is green makeup of the most basic kind on extras. The majority of mutants are covered entirely in clothing with barely their faces visible. It might have helped to use the working heads more with different clothing.

Return to Frogtown is a bad movie that will only appeal to people that like bad movies done as well as can be done. It’s certainly nothing great but I would certainly view this again. Near as I can tell, it’s only available on YouTube in various questionable postings.