Hell Comes to Frogtown was released in 1988 by the Roger Corman-founded New World Pictures and it stars professional wrestler ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper (They Live, Body Slam) and Sandahl Bergman (Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja).
Piper is Sam Hell, one of the few fertile men around after the world nuked itself and most people went sterile. Sandahl Bergman is the doctor who escorts him across the wasteland to save and procreate with some fertile woman being held captive in Frogtown by the evil mutant frog Commander Toty (get it?). Also along with them on the trip is the ultra-hot soldier Centinella (played by Cec Verrell), who has a butch look going for her, but she’s so hot, she overcomes that hurdle. We get to see her boobies too. =D It’s too bad Verrell hasn’t done a whole lot of other movies, she carried herself well in this film looking so sexy and confident that she should’ve gone on to bigger roles & movies.
The movie is a purposefully goofy scifi/action B-movie tale, just like Piper’s best known and loved movie They Live and it’s a true guilty pleasure. Piper is able to lift the film a bit with his charisma, but I wish they would’ve given him even more dialogue.
The frog costumes are pretty good as well, with the full-blown mutated frog people (Commander Toty, Leroy, Bull) looking the best and not cheap at all.
Though the movie is a cult classic, it almost seems forgotten, which is a shame. This is a movie that knows what it is: a silly, stupid movie featuring sex and frogs. It doesn’t try to make any statements about nukes or anything, it’s just here for us to laugh at and have fun with. I don’t think this one is EVER shown anywhere on TV, but luckily, it is on DVD so if you’re into ’80s low-budget cheese, you should track down a copy and watch it.
Believe it or not, three sequels have followed: 1993′s Return to Frogtown (aka – Frogtown II), Toad Warrior (1996) and Max Hell Frog Warrior (2002). They look extremely bad.
Return to Frogtown stars Robert Z’dar as Sam Hell (SERIOUSLY? THAT guy as a stand-in for Piper ?!), Lou Ferrigno and Charles Napier (that jerk Murdock from Rambo: First Blood Part II)
I don’t even wanna know about the other two, the video covers are pure low-budget cheese and not in a good way and they look to feature who I’m guessing is Sam’s son, Max.
Enjoy this dance scene from the original:
Tags: 1980s, 1988, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Movies, Roddy Piper, Sandahl Bergman
oh man… so bad… but so good too! there’s a recent story about Rowdy Roddy Piper talking to Darren Aronofsky about his life as a wrestler when his movie The Wrestler came out. Heartbreaking. He was on top of the world at one time and now he’s something of a broken man, with not much money left. Sad.
Yeah, it is really sad. He was at this year’s Wrestlemania and actually wrestled (briefly). It was really sad to see him so out of shape and putting on such a horrible performance.