Max Hell Frog Warrior

• Also known as Toad Warrior
• Written, Produced, and Directed by Donald G. Jackson and Scott Shaw
• 1996 or October 1, 2002. Not sure

Max Hell is on the trail of the serum which was unleashed to turn all of humanity into Toads.  Lotsa humans here for that to be the case.

While Return to Frogtown was no Oscar-winning effort it was certainly head and shoulders above Max Hell Frog Warrior. The budget is nonexistent, and the acting is more or less the same. If your biggest star is Martin Sheen’s brother you might be in some serious trouble. Joe Estevez is not even entertainingly bad.

Roddy Piper does not come back nor does Robert Z’Dar. This time Scott Shaw (who?) takes over as Max Hell in what is supposed to be a martial arts action film that comes off as an early YouTube fan film effort of such things. It likely has something to do with the Zen filmmaking style pioneered by Scott Shaw and Donald G. Jackson which tossed out pesky things like scripts.

I would like to tell you exactly what’s going on, but Max Hell Frog Warrior is hard to follow. It’s not just that it’s very illogical (which it is) but it’s just slow and has so many random things occurring in its very short run time. It’s not trying to pack the film with story. It just doesn’t know what to do. It has no logic to follow for consistent storytelling.

I guess this is related to Hell Comes to Frogtown or even Return to Frogtown but the themes of female control of society as well as the presence of the Texas Rocket Rangers are MIA from this. But we still got Frogs!

The frog make up here is the worst of the series. At least the first two had some movement in a few of the featured frogs but these don’t even look like they do much of anything when we see them. These are very static and it sounds like they did not even use ADR to redo the lines.

The first two could edge into guilty pleasure but you will only feel bad for the people involved when watching this. Maybe Jackson and Shaw convinced enough people that they could make something watchable on a micro budget. Maybe Jackson and Shaw got some new VHS cassettes and decided to give it a shot. Maybe it was drugs. I don’t know.

Random cuts and moving back-and-forth from one set of characters to another destroy any flow that is established is immediately broken by having to go to somebody/somewhere else. I would like to discuss the ending, but this was so terrible and I felt like I was wasting my time that I had to stop before the close. I found myself quickly losing interest. Minor things distracted me and I forgot this was even on because there is nothing engaging about it.

Max Hell Frog Warrior is the very definition of something that is completely unwatchable. I’ve heard it has a Cult following but I can’t imagine by who. The reason I watched this is because I’m a completist. That and I was looking to finish out a film series for my Friday posts. Is that the same thing? I knew what I was going to get was going to be rough, but I didn’t know it was going to be rougher than using the bathroom after eating far too many hot wings with extra hot buffalo sauce while suffering from diarrhea.

Don’t dedicate any time to Max Hell Frog Warrior. The first two can be watchable but this is a complete festering turd. It’s just bad.