Bullet Points: Hell Comes to Frogtown
Continuing our Wrestlemania Week here at Bulletproof Action with the cult-classic film starring none other than WWE Hall of Famer “Rowdy” Roddy Piper! He’s a legend in the ring and a damn fine action star, if you please. His body of work has a few gems and a lot of turds but the man never lacks charm or charisma on screen. Hell Comes to Frogtown has become the classic that it is because it is so unconventional. Read the column below and you see what I mean. But being unconventional is one of the strengths of this film and if you give it a chance, I almost guarantee that you’ll have fun.
The Gist: It’s 10 years after a nuclear war has devastated the planet. The population is lowering as fertile men and women are hard to find. Enter Sam Hell. The Med Tec group rescues him from imprisonment and plan to use him to impregnate as many fertile women as possible. Unfortunately for them, their most recent find of fertile ladies has been kidnapped and taken to Frogtown, where they’re being held by the mutant Frog people. Now Sam and his new female companions have to rescue them.
The Cast: WWE Hall of Famer Roddy Piper stars in this cult classic that kept me strangely entertained throughout. This is one of those movies that people always claim is “so bad it’s good” but I didn’t think this movie was all that bad. Sure the acting isn’t great. The story doesn’t make much sense. The characters aren’t really fleshed out at all. I guess other than those things I kind of enjoyed it. I dig Piper as Sam Hell and I was saddened when no one said “what in the Sam Hill”, only to be corrected with the line “It’s pronounced Hell!” Piper is surrounded by a bunch of sexy ladies, the most notable being Sandahl Bergman. You may remember her as the female companion of Arnold in Conan the Barbarian. She spends most of this movie in skimpy clothing dancing around seductively or wearing massive rimmed glasses.
Piper has learned to take a “nut shot” with the best of them.
The Villain: Veteran actor William Smith plays Captain Devlin, who caught Hell getting’ Fresh with his daughter and now wants to kill him. It’s only with the interference of Med Tec that Hell is saved and Devlin disappears until the end of the film. The Frog people play antagonist to Hell and his lady friends for the rest of the movie. Apparently capturing and ransoming the fertile women back to the humans is big business. I expected the look of the Frogmen to be worse than it was but I wasn’t too upset with the makeup. You could tell that more time was spent on the main guys but that’s to be expected and I won’t fault them for that.
The makeup for the Frog people really could have been a distraction but I rather enjoyed it.
The Action: There wasn’t a whole lot of action and having Roddy Piper should have meant that he was given plenty of fist fights but he really wasn’t. He got into a couple of scuffles and delivered one belly-to-belly suplex (thank you) but he didn’t apply one sleeper hold the entire movie! He did eye poke a Frog guy and if you think about it, had the Frog people watched any of Piper’s in-ring antics than they would have seen that one coming. The finale wasn’t spectacular but nothing about this movie was and for the amount spent I think it was done well.
Note the metal chastity belt Hell’s wearing. That’s what they need to give to Justin Bieber and Kanye West to prevent procreation.
Take it Home:
- Big Brother: Piper wearing a Government chastity belt…I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that in OUR future.
- Favorite quotes: “Long-winded son of a bitch.”
- Favorite quotes: Sexy soldier Cec Verrell tells some green skins, “You boys are gonna eat dirt or lead.” I love a woman with a good one-liner.
- The Rowdy One: I like to think that Piper really did sleep with all of those women but Bergman’s character is a real cocktease throughout the movie.
- Bag it up: At one point Hell thinks he’s about to bang a Frog lady so he gives her a bag to put on her head. Not the most romantic thing he could have done.
Rating: 3/5
