Donald G. Jackson’s post-apocalyptic cheese-fest Hell Comes to Frogtown(1987), which just hit Blu-ray thanks to Vinegar Syndrome, is something that could only be birthed in the ‘80s. The film stars a bloated Rowdy Roddy Piper, recently retired from wrestling and now acting full-time, as Sam Hell, a riff on the Mad Max nomad archetype with a bizarre twist. See, in this post-apocalyptic world, in a statement on the rancid machismo responsible for laying waste to it, most of the men have been rendered impotent as a byproduct of the nuclear fallout. With humanity on the cusp of yet another war there’s a desperate need to repopulate, and it just so happens Sam Hell is the man leaving pregnant women in his wake. This leads the all-female nurse brigade Med Tech to recruit him to not only repopulate the human race, but also rescue a group of fertile women from a town populated by “Greeners,” or mutant frog people.
Aside from the weird premise where Sam is charged with knocking up every fertile woman they come across, the film strangely succeeds thanks to the charmingly roguish Piper and the film’s solid practical effects. Of course, in the beginning we are supposed to believe Sam Hell is the stereotypical anti-hero, but we quickly find that he’s not the male chauvinist pig we thought he was as he takes a liking to his Med Tech handler played by the six-foot bombshell Sandahl Bergman. Most will probably recognize her from her work in the Conan franchise, and here she turns in a legitimately decent performance that’s sadly offset a bit by the film’s need to have her run around in as little as possible. It’s a weird mix that mostly works as the film winds up to its third act rescue, which oddly feels like it was possibly the inspiration for Mad Max: Fury Road as you have a monster truck full of frogs chasing the fertile women and Sam Hell through the wasteland.
While Hell Comes to Frogtown does have some rather feminist ideas at its core, it loses some of that clout thanks to its need for T&A. It also does the almost unthinkable by riffing on one of the most popular post-apocalyptic films, only to predict where that very franchise would go next. Vinegar Syndrome doesn’t use the previous region-locked Arrow Blu-ray master; instead, they have newly scanned & restored the film in 4k from its 35mm interpositive for this disc, and man it looks great.The new brightness and clarity really highlight some of the impressive creature work in the film that sadly doesn’t get enough praise. The presentation itself appears to have some of the extras from that Arrow Blu-ray paired with some of the extras from the Anchor Bay DVD. My favorite of the lot is Grappling with Green Gargantuans, an interview with Rowdy Roddy Piper, who is as candid and unpretentious as you’d expect when looking back on the film.
This was honestly my first viewing of Hell Comes to Frogtown after seeing the cover art countless times in my local video store back in the day. It did the unthinkable feat of not only living up to its title, but its fantastic cover art as well. Piper is as charismatic as ever and really gives the film the gravity it needs for the audience to buy into its insanity. Sandahl Bergman was also a treat here and did a great job at being the larger than life female yin to Piper’s yang, since the chemistry here between the two was something I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did. Donald G. Jackson would go on to make two sequels to Frogtown, Return to Frogtown and The Toad Warrior, both without his two leads from the original, but after digging the tone here I am hoping Vinegar might see fit to release those as well.