HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*

In my latest viewing of this prime cut of delicious pulp meat, I noticed that at the end of the credits, the filmmakers pay homage to four directors. All were veterans of the Golden Age of Serials, and all four worked on one of the three FLASH GORDON serials. 

In the last interview of FROGTOWN's late co-director Donald G. Jackson, he mentions his affection for serials generally and the character of Flash Gordon as one of the many "superheroes" he likes. The director doesn't mention the credit-sequence, so it could just as easily have been the contrivance of his co-writer Randall Frakes. Jackson does mention that Frakes tended to inject much more sexuality into his scripts than did Jackson, and so it may be that the homage was code for FROGTOWN's continuity with both the lusty tone of the early Alex Raymond comic strip and at least the first of the Gordon serials.

I don't think many SF apoca-flicks are as obsessively focused on sex as FROGTOWN. Even MAD MAX FURY ROAD, which also uses the same trope of trying to re-populate the decimated world with a coterie of fertile women, is positively abstemious by comparison. In fact, I prefer the way Jackson and Frakes represent their hero Sam Hell (Roddy Piper) as a raffish, self-interested "thief and scavenger" who just happens to have the devil's charm with respect to seducing women AND a high sperm count. So the remnants of the American government (never seen) empower Medtech, a unit of all-female military physicians, to bring Sam together with as many fertile ladies as possible.

However, the apocalypse spawned a race of bipedal, intelligent frog-people, who inhabit the titular Frogtown. The froggies' leader Commander Toty (strangely, not "toady") has taken a group of fertile women prisoner. One might think Medtech would not risk their sperm-bearing prisoner by making him join a mission to liberate the breeding stock, but one would be wrong. Further, they also place Sam's gonads in peril by outfitting him with a shock-codpiece to ensure his obedience to the unit-commander, Lieutenant Spangle (Sandahl Bergman).

Of course the entire rescue-mission farrago is designed to force a tough hero and a tough heroine into constant propinquity. Every time Sam gets out of line, Spangle plays the ultimate "punishing female" by zapping his balls-- though, not paradoxically, she wants them for her own use, even though implicitly she's not able to breed like the women she's rescuing. The trip to Frogtown is so rife with tongue-in-cheek foreplay between the two that it's as much fun as the main adventure.

Since Frogtown is male-dominated, Spangle is obliged to reverse her "domme" status and to become the subservient property of her "owner" Sam. This plan goes south when Commander Toty takes Spangle prisoner for some interspecies intercourse and consigns Sam to a torture chamber. Sam, even after escaping the torturer, also has to deal with a female froggie who's warm for his manly form. Sam rescues Spangle-- who, in fairness, does her share of ass-kicking-- and in due time the fertile girls are saved as well. There are some minor plots with a traitor-human selling arms to the batrachian "Indians" and Sam meeting an old friend, a prospector named Looney Tunes (western actor Rory Calhoun), but they're adeptly handled, never slowing down the main plot, which is the romance of alpha-dogs Sam and Spangle. 

FROGTOWN provides both Piper and Bergman with their best acting-roles, in large part because it gives them so much opportunity for comedy. Bergman even gets to show up a little of her terpsichorean talents as Toty makes Spangle execute the "Dance of the Three Snakes." Even the crappiness of the costumes for the mutant frog-people-- not believable in any way-- contribute to the humor. I suppose fans of Piper's wrestling-career might be disappointed that he mostly fights with guns in FROGTOWN, but that lack didn't bother me. I've seen the movie's two sequels and found them utterly forgettable, which is a testimony to the strength of the Jackson-Frakes script.