Those of you who have been following the voting for the 2008 Loud Idiots Movie Awards are aware that as of the writing of this post, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper is currently leading the pack for Worst Performance by a Professional Wrestler for his role as Sam Hell in 1987’s Hell Comes to Frogtown.
Now, I’ve never done drugs in my life, so the only explanation as to why this one is in my DVD collection is that I was bored late one night while buying an unwise amount of junkfood at the supermarket, and saw this “bargain” DVD near the register. This was a thoroughly terrible movie. I don’t remember much about the plot and refuse to re-watch it for purposes of a recap. Thanks to IMDB, I know remember that this movie takes place after a major war. Women now run the USA and Sam Hell (valuable for his fertility having survived the nuclear/whatever war) is at their mercy to rescue a group of fertile women, valuable for their fertility. He wants no part in this. He is forced to do their bidding, though, when they hold him hostage by strapping a fucking bomb to his junk.
I don’t remember how it ends, nor do I want to. I sat through it once, and I’ll only do so again in the interest of punishing another person.
So, one might expect this piece of cinematic diarrhea to be long gone and forgotten. Amazingly enough… not so. Apparently, in 1993, someone stood up and said, “you know, Hell Comes to Frogtown was a damn fine piece of cinema, but I think we can do better…”
And thus, the world was gifted with the afterbirth known as Frogtown II (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106970/). Never seen it, but it’s got Lou Ferrigno in a supporting role. No Roddy Piper. Sounds like even better MST3K fodder than Hell Comes to Frogtown. If the first one was a B-movie, this one had to be a C-movie.
I wish it could tell you it ended there, but in 1996, as Bill Clinton duked it out with Bob Dole, along came a movie known as Toad Warrior http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117930/ (AKA Hell Comes to Frogtown 3). I’ll bet Mel Gibson is spinning in his grave… Someone up there must like me because IMDB has an empty plot synopsis. All I can tell (from the movie poster) is that the new lead is named Max Hell.
With the dawn of the new century, one might think we were out of the dark. Hardly. I give you 2002’s straight to video (the others were released theatrically?) Max Hell Comes to Frogtown http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342750/ Once again, thankfully, no plot synopsis.
So, FOUR fucking Frogtown movies, but no Ghostbusters 3 and no Back to the Future 4? Fuck. I hate Hollywood.