The Curator of Schlock #101 by Jeff Shuster

Hell Comes to Frogtown

(Frog People Got No Reason to Live)

One would think that after one hundred blogs that your humble curator would be an expert on all things schlock, but even I still get surprised sometimes. Case in point, Hell Comes to Frogtown, the 1988 cult hit from directors Donald G. Jackson and R. J. Kizer–wait a minute! How can you have two directors on one movie? They’re not even brothers…I think. The DVD didn’t even come with an audio commentary track.

By the way, this was a tough DVD to track down. There must of have been a rush on them with the sad passing of Roddy Piper.  He plays Sam Hell, a wandering vagabond, one of the last virile men left in the world after the nuclear apocalypse. Yeah, it seems that countries started flinging nukes at each other until everything was obliterated. I blame the Commies. It’s always the Commies!

Anyway, some post apocalyptic medical company makes him sign a membership contract so that his membership can be used impregnate the few remaining fertile women left on planet Earth. Sam Hell has an unusually high sperm count, which Sam Hell chalks up to all that fiber he ate when he was a kid. They make him wear an electronic jock strap that shocks his twig and berries should try to initiate anything with any infertile women.

If Mad Max Fury Road taught me anything, it’s how valuable fertile women are after a nuclear apocalypse.  In fact, Fury Road follows the plot of Frogtown so closely that you could almost accuse George Miller of plagiarism. Switch out the War Boys for a bunch of talking frogs and you basically have the same movie.

Yeah, there are talking frogs in this movie. They’re kept on a reservation, and I don’t want to hear any of you “frogs have rights” activists pitching a fit over the fact that I support the idea of talking frog reservations. They have the bad habit of stealing our fertile women.

The leader of the frogs is named Toady and he’s a real piece of work. He makes the captive women dance the “Dance of the Three Snakes” and you don’t want to know what that’s about. Anyway, Sam Hell infiltrates the frog reservation with Nurse Spangle (Sandahl Bergman) in disguise as a slave girl. They escape with the women, there’s a desert car chase, and Sam Hell fights the evil Toady to the death! You know, they should really put mutant frogs in the next Mad Max movie. Just make Hell Comes to Frogtown part of the Mad Max cinematic universe, George Miller!

Roddy Piper

April 17, 1954-july 31, 2015

 I hope you’re kicking ass and chewing bubblegum in the next world just as you did in this one.

_______

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.