Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)

I suppose it’s either serendipity, ineluctability, or simply a writer’s laziness that I choose to touch on Frog Baseball for this week’s introduction.  For those who don’t know, the premise is simple.  You get a frog and a baseball bat or a stick of some kind.  Then you basically play baseball with the animal for the ball.  It’s an unconscionably cruel act, even if you’re not a fan of amphibians.  I have been present when it was played, way back when, although I honestly don’t recall whether or not I participated (I’d like to think I didn’t, because even back then, I felt it was senseless and mean).  Where the idea for this came from, I have no idea, but I do know that it gained some popularity in the Nineties with Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead (not that I believe that Judge was condoning it at all) in the way that easily influenced people do dumb things they see in movies and on television.  I find it thought-provoking that psychologists point to animal cruelty as an early sign of sociopathy and serial killer development, things like pulling the wings off insects or vivisecting the neighborhood dogs and cats.  And yet, Frog Baseball is never brought up, to my knowledge.  Possibly this is because it requires more than one person (I suppose you could play it by yourself, and that would likely count as aberrant behavior), so, like anything a mob of people gets up to, it’s generally frowned upon but not necessarily viewed as deviant in terms of what it says about the psychological makeup of people who do it (often misguided, sure, but not deviant).  In other words, it’s not seen as a warning sign (though it probably should be).  I have to wonder if the frogmen in Donald G Jackson and R J Kizer’s Hell Comes to Frogtown have ever thought about playing Human Baseball.  More likely than not, they have, though, let’s be honest, it’s not too easy to toss a human into the air and smack them with a bat (no matter how much they deserve it).

Ten years on from full-blown nuclear war, the human population is in decline.  Fertile men are valued for their virility and not much else.  Enter Sam Hell (Roddy Piper), an ex-soldier and legendary sperm donor.  Sam is pressed into service for Med-Tech, the provisional government’s procreation unit, and he is sent on a mission to rescue and impregnate a coterie of young, fertile women from the harem of Frogtown’s Commander Toty (read: Toadie, played by Brian Frank).

I’m kind of surprised it took me so long to get around to watching Hell Comes to Frogtown, because, on its surface, this film has everything a young me (and even an old me) would love.  It’s set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  It has plentiful creature makeup effects courtesy of the great Steve Wang.  It has beautiful women in it, including Sandahl Bergman and Cec Verrell (and I never thought I would review two films featuring Verrell in less than a year, incidentally).  It has Rowdy Roddy Piper, one of my favorite wrestlers from back in the day.  Nevertheless, I passed on it for a long time, possibly because the title just sounded silly (this from a guy who loves silly things).  

But the film is deceptive in that it’s not a wall-to-wall Science Fiction/Action romp.  Yes, it has those elements, but at the end of the day, it’s actually about sex, and more than that, it’s about love and sex.  The world of the movie is one in which sex is functional, not something for enjoyment and certainly not something done with a person one cares about.  Spangle (Bergman) is all about the mission.  Her job is to get Sam to do his contractual duty, as it were.  She has been trained in the art of seduction, but this is in service to her job.  Stripping down and caressing her body is a means to an end, a functionality of her role in this people-centric arms race.  Hence, her movements are awkward, self-conscious.  It’s not until later that she comes into her own and discovers a little thing called passion.  Verrell’s Centinella is a soldier through and through.  She neither needs nor wants help from a man.  However, she is curious about the fabled Sam Hell, and gives in to this curiosity, if only briefly (and much to the viewer’s delight).  

Likewise, Piper is decidedly un-Piper-ian.  Sure, he eventually gets to throw down with a couple of beefy bad guys, including a somewhat underserved William Smith, but overall, he plays it light.  Sam wants nothing to do with Med-Tech’s plans.  In fact, as the film opens, he’s being beaten up for sexual assault (this odd bit of business is never confirmed entirely by anyone as far as Sam’s intent goes, so our initial impression is that he is, quite possibly, a humongous scumbag), and this will be mirrored later in a morally ambiguous scene when the group comes upon a frantic woman fleeing from her Frogtown captors.  From the men I know, the opportunity to have sex with as many women as you want, guilt- and consequence-free, would be a dream job.  The most perplexing thing in the film is that Sam has no desire for this.  He would rather flee than get his smooth on.  At first blush, this flies in the face of everything anyone knows about the male animal, but as the film develops, it becomes clear that Sam is a man who is deeper than he appears.  He has sincere feelings for his friends and loved ones, and part of why he has gone cold in the libido department is due to what he lost in the war.  He remains true to himself, and the relationship he develops with his guardians strengthens them all in this regard.

Hell Comes to Frogtown is a movie that defies its generic expectations (in fact, I would argue it is least interesting when it plays to those expectations, although even when it does, it does so slyly).  It looks great on a tiny budget, with Jackson and Kizer providing a lot of thoughtful compositions.  The script, while sometimes a trifle too on-the-nose, is also astoundingly funny in spots, and the characters are compelling.  The action is well-orchestrated, though nothing to really write home about.  And how many movies are there where you can watch Roddy Piper with nothing covering his sweaty torso aside from a short jean jacket and sporting an honest-to-God loincloth (I swear, I thought he was trying out for The Lost Boys)?  That’s what I thought.

MVT:  Piper provides the heart and the vast majority of the laughs, and he even underplays a lot of it, proving the man was more than a one-trick pony.

Make or Break:  The sequence with the chainsaw.  It’s simultaneously hilarious and tense.

Score:  8/10        

Neon City (1991)

Man, you never hear anyone talk about the depletion of the Ozone Layer anymore, do you?  Back in the late Seventies through the mid-Eighties, all you heard about was how humans were accelerating its destruction through our love of chlorofluorocarbons (I remember fast food joints like McDonald’s being particularly lambasted for their use of Styrofoam containers for their delicious burgers; And why have they not brought back the McDLT?  That’s right, because it was useless).  Everyone was petrified that the holes in the Ozone Layer were going to kill us all like the Eye of God opening wide to annihilate us and our evil ways.  But these days, almost no one ever brings it up.  Maybe this is because the erosion has slowed because we changed our ecological policies (though someone please tell me how mandating that all lightbulbs be replaced with ones that contain mercury gas was a good idea [yes, I know that some of them don’t have it, but how many people do you know who actually read the packaging before buying them?]).  Maybe it’s because we’re all caught up with Global Warming as the eco-disaster du jour, and the Ozone Layer just gets swept into this bin.  Or maybe it’s because Monte Markham’s Neon City has already shown us what the Ozone’s obliteration would actually be like, and we’re mostly okay with that.

Harry Stark (Michael Ironside) is an ex-Ranger-turned-bounty-hunter who scours the Outlands picking up and picking off perps.  Capturing super-wanted criminal Reno (Vanity), Stark is forced to escort her up North to the titular metropolis aboard Bulk’s (Lyle Alzado) camper-turned-transport.  Alongside a microcosm of characters, Stark weathers the travails of the post-apocalyptic world, but what’s waiting for them in Neon City may not be what they expected (but it mostly is).

As the film opens, it feels like a typical post-apocalyptic movie.  The land is barren.  Everyone dresses like a Tusken Raider auditioning for Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake” video.  People have been reduced to their basest needs for survival.  Once Stark and Reno get to Jericho Station, however, Neon City becomes a remake of John Ford’s Stagecoach.  This is no real surprise.  Stagecoach has been remade and stolen from a nigh-infinite amount of times.  I know that Neon City is compared to the Mad Max films, but that’s a tenuous connection in my mind and the default comparison for post-apocalyptic movies.  No, this is Stagecoach.  Granted, the characters don’t fit one-to-one between the two films, but they’re certainly similar enough.  So, Stark and Reno, together, are the Ringo Kid character.  Stark is the antihero, and Reno is the outlaw being taken to face justice in Lordsburg.  Further, Stark has a grudge he needs to settle once he reaches his destination.  Sandy (Valerie Wildman) is the hooker with the heart of gold a la Dallas, though she isn’t ostracized.  She also has a past with Stark that illuminates how she got where she is.  Twink (Juliet Landau) is the Lucy character, and if anyone is treated rather coolly in the group it is her, due to her moneyed status (she has a book [by Agatha Christie], a rarity in this world).  Bulk is, naturally, Buck, and Alzado plays it with almost enough charm to at least get his feet inside of Andy Devine’s shoes.  The other three characters, Dickie (Richard Sanders), Dr. Tom (Nick Klar), and Wing (Sonny Trinidad) have aspects of the remaining Stagecoach characters in them.  Markham gives them all some distinction and adds in original touches of back story and motivation, though they don’t feel nearly as solid as in Ford’s film.  Instead, they feel like characters.  Oddly, it’s enough for this film.

One could ask the question, “why neon?”  Cinema depicting the future is rife with the stuff, because it looks futuristic (never mind that neon signs were basically invented circa 1917).  More than this, however, is that it is bright, colorful.  In the context of this film, it is upbeat.  It symbolizes hope, and hope is something which the vast majority of post-apocalyptic films embrace.  After all, the worst has already supposedly happened, so the struggle for survival against the brutality of this new world has to lead to some kind of positive.  Even when the protagonists of such films can’t (or won’t) partake in this hope (Snake Plissken in Escape from New York or Max in the Mad Max films [who, more often than not, plays the role of Moses, leading a persecuted people to safety but is not allowed to enter the Promised Land himself]), even when they act aloof and self-serving, they will always do the right thing and protect others.  Stark does his damnedest to be disassociated, but the script keeps giving him feelings.  While he takes charge, he trusts in Reno enough to uncuff her.  His past with Sandy is an open wound about which he doesn’t mind playing passive-aggressive.  He strikes up a romantic relationship culminating in a gentle love scene.  The problem is that, for this kind of film and this kind of character, it works better for them not to say anything.  Ironside can certainly act well enough that he shouldn’t need to do and say the things he does, but the filmmakers either didn’t trust in their talent or their audience enough to take that risk.  

This goes across the board for the film.  It wants to give depth to its characters, but it wants to do it in nothing but broad, melodramatic strokes.  It wants to give us action, but it doesn’t know how to block, shoot, and edit it in a dynamic, organic fashion (this, more than anything else, really lets its budget show through).  Its pacing is uneven, with dramatic sequences stretching on far too long and action sequences stacked one on top of another, so they bleed into each other and feel contrived and forced.  It wants to show us that this world is fucked, but it wants to give its heroes a smiley ending.  I think that Neon City is better than its reputation would lead you to believe (assuming it has much of a reputation outside of IMDb user reviews), but I also think that its flaws keep it from being a diamond in the rough.  More like a seed in the fertilizer.

MVT:  The cast is solid, and they do what they can with the material.

Make or Break:  The scene where the transport passes through a Bright (see the movie, if you want to get the reference).  It is one of the few well-balanced beats in the whole movie and proof of what this could have been.

Score:  6/10        

Mutant Chronicles (2008)

Directed by: Simon Hunter
Run Time: 111 minutes

Here is a quick background dump on Mutant Chronicles. The Mutant Chronicles is a table top role playing game set in the sort of far future. Governments have been replaced with four multinational mega corporations that strip mined the Earth of anything and anyone of value. As soon as the Earth was made a polluted husk the corporations took off for the inside of Mercury, terraformed Venus and Mars, and the astroid belt outside of Mars. Things for the corporations were going great until the tenth planet was found. Or home to horrible things and the death of every computer in existence.  Which leads to humanity fighting it's self and horde of demonic mutant things for survival.

The movie opens with a world history lesson about how in the distant past a meteorite crashed on Earth and released a hoard of undead mutant things. A group of knights drove the undead mutant things back to the creator they crawled out of, sealed it, an the promptly forgot about the whole incident. Centuries pass, nations give way to corporations, and four mega corporations struggle for control of Earth. Capitol corporation controls North and South America, Bauhaus controls Europe and half of Russia, Imperial controls the UK, Australia and most of Africa, and Mishima that controls Asia and the rest of Russia.

These corporate nations fight each other for everything from resources to which version of football is best. One such fight is taking place right near the creator where humanity sealed a bunch of murderous mutants. The Capitol army had built a defensive trench against the Bauhaus army and are waiting to see who points out the flaws of trench warfare first. This is where we meet Major 'Mitch' Hunter (Thomas Jane), a career solider who sees his job as chance to "fuck things up". He will be the character that the movie uses as it's point of view for the most part.

After a brief tour of how much life in the trenches sucks the Bauhaus army arrives to prove that life can always get worse. During the fighting, an artillery round opens the tomb holding the undead mutant things. Who in turn destroy the two fighting armies and end the corporation's war against each other. The movie then cuts to the other side of the world were the a religious order is listening to radio traffic and learns that the undead mutants are back. Because nothing says guardians of humanity like remote mountain monastery and a ham radio setup. This also the home of Brother Samuel (Ron Pearlman), the keeper of the scrapbook about undead mutants.

With the undead mutants free to kill all of humanity again, it's up to Brother Samuel to recruit eight other people to wield the only weapon that hurt the mutants. Swords. Because swords are the only weapon that can inflict enough damage to kill undead mutants. So Brother Samuel pays a visit to the Capitol CEO (John Malkovich) in the hopes of finding eight suckers are willing to undertake a suicide mission. The CEO produces some get off of Earth tickets as a way to entice some volunteers to help Brother Samuel's quest.

Leaving the CEO to be killed by the undead mutants, Brother Samuel manages to recruit Major Hunter and seven other soldiers who have not been developed as characters for the suicide quest. Together this group of soldiers slog their way through the third act and towards a hidden entrance into the undead mutant factory.

Now this might be surprising but this movie is weird and is not sure who it's audience is. To a general movie going audience the movie does a poor job providing bridging material to help the audience suspend their disbelief. Like explaining the World War One look of the film, reasons to like cardboard character cutouts, or how the world got so screwed up between the dark ages to the twenty fifth century. Fans of Mutant Chronicles and War Zone (the miniatures game based on the Mutant Chronicles game) are equally left in the dark by this film. It ignores the fantastic elements of the source material due to budget and takes artistic license as a reason to tell a well worn war story. The end result is a odd film, set in strange place, and telling a familiar story with weird props. If it's a solid rental/streaming movie if you want something strange.

MVP: Seeing John Malkoich preform his cameo while acting like he is coming off a week long Valium bender.

Make or Break: A lot of the run time I found myself yelling at the TV, "Hi, could you talk to the audience instead of being grim and dark while staring your own navel!"

Score: 4.9 out of 10

Omega Doom (1996)

Revenge of the Nerds, it’s stunning to imagine, is a divisive film.  Primarily, its critics tend to call up the film’s questionable sexual politics as the reason why it’s so awful (and, yes, they are problematic).  I’m sure that, when it was released back in 1984, there were still plenty of people who detested this aspect of the movie.  It’s just that the internet wasn’t around for everyone and anyone to vent their spleen and instigate a hip, mob mentality that usually comes and goes so fast, the people complaining rarely even remember what it was they were decrying, having moved on to the next outrage du jour.  Having now vented my own spleen, no, I have never particularly cared for the crass, assaultive way that women are treated in the film, but it also never stopped me from mildly liking the film for what it is: a crass, assaultive sex comedy.  It was never meant to be anything else, the same as gore films are filled with gore.  To expect otherwise is missing the point (or maybe it’s just me).  Call me crazy, but I always preferred the second film, Nerds in Paradise more, and either way, I don’t hold these films up as favorites by any stretch.  So why in Green Hell am I talking about Revenge of the Nerds in my introduction to Albert Pyun’s Omega Doom?  Because every time I think of the title and the titular character (as essayed by Rutger Hauer), I can’t help but think of the big song number from Jeff Kanew’s magnum opus, just changing the lyrics to amuse my juvenile self.  “We’re Lambda Lambda Lambda and…Omega Doom…”  Don’t try and tell me you didn’t start singing along to that.

During the big human/robot war, robo-soldier Omega Doom (cue music) is shot in the back of the head, wiping away his memories and prime directives (which we can only assume were counter to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, anyway).  Doom wanders the wasteland doing stuff, while the various remaining robot factions feud over a legendary arsenal (which they call treasure) that will give them the ability to defeat not only their automaton enemies but also the humans who have been crawling back to prominence.

It amazes me how many times Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Yojimbo have been remade, retooled, re-envisioned, etcetera (I get the why of it; they’re outstanding films outstandingly crafted, and imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that), and Omega Doom (cue music) is yet another stab at the latter of the two.  Doom comes to town, befriends the local put-upon robot who literally always loses his head (named The Head, played by Norbert Weisser), does good for the local put-upon female robotic saloon owner (named The Bartender, played by Anna Katarina), and kind of sort of pits the local robot gangs (The Roms and The Droids) against each other, though really, he just picks them off.  The difference is that, instead of Ronin or gunslingers, these are robots in a post-nuke, post-human/robot-war world, get it?!  Sure, Doom tries to talk the other robots to death before throwing down with them, but eventually that’s what it all ends up being.  I can understand Pyun’s desire to put his spin on Kurosawa’s classic (and Pyun has surely made some classic Action films [Cyborg, Nemesis, Dollman to name but three] in his own right), but I cannot for the life of me fathom how he managed to make this one so confusing and dull. 

The robots all act like humans whenever it’s convenient.  For example, why the hell do robots need to or want to drink water?  Why would a robot open a saloon to serve same?  Why would a robot derive any sort of pleasure from kicking around a disembodied robot head (or derive any sort of pleasure from anything at all)?  Why would robots express feelings like regret or hope?  At least with Omega Doom (cue music) it’s semi-logical.  He was changed by the shot to his melon.  It would make more sense and work better dramatically to have Doom be the only one with emotions, needs, wants and to have him bring these things to the other robots, to change them through their interactions.  The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that Pyun wanted to show that robots are as bad as people.  And again, I have to ask why?  It doesn’t play with the setup of the narrative, and it’s needless window dressing that robs the film of any resonance it could have had (although I suppose it’s gangbusters as an “elevator pitch”).

Omega Doom (cue music) has a purpose, and it’s this that he ostensibly bestows to his android brethren.  He’s there to save them in messianic fashion (the ones he doesn’t destroy).  What’s interesting about this is that his purpose came about due to damage caused by a human.  If anything, his peaceful goals are a defect (or, I suppose, free will, but that’s not nearly as intriguing to me).  One of the first robots he talks to and befriends is The Head, the part of Doom that was impaired.  This is the direction that Pyun should have taken the film, that Omega Doom (cue music) is a brain damaged robot with a messiah complex.  Instead, The Head recalls that he was a teacher (along with providing tons of painfully unfunny comic relief), The Bartender recalls that she serves water (as well as the lyrics to Joy to the World [the Handel version, not the Three Dog Night one]), and Zinc (Jill Pierce) decides to join the good bots for no real reason.

I really don’t enjoy beating up on this film, because it did have a lot of potential, and that’s the reason I’m doing it, though not for too much longer.  The robot gangs just stand around talking to each other or to Doom.  Then they talk some more.  Then there’s a showdown.  Then there are less robots in the gangs.  All this dialogue wouldn’t feel so useless if any of it went anywhere or if it wasn’t all simply wasting runtime until the fights.  And let’s talk about the fights.  There are some bright spots in their execution, but otherwise they are jumbled, scattershot messes.  I can see why Pyun chose to edit them together as he did (whip-fast cuts between awkward closeups and long shots of combatants in silhouette), Hauer not being the most leggiadrous of onscreen fighters (or certainly not by this point in his career).  The director had to find a way to cut to the stunt people as economically as possible.  I can only assume he didn’t cover his leads well enough to allow for longer, clarified shots in these scenarios, or maybe he mistakenly thought this approach would amp up the excitement.  It’s a shame, because I really wanted to like this movie, but neither the story nor the action live up to the title Omega Doom (cue music).

MVT:  Some of the shots in the film look okay.  Unfortunately, they also look so similar as to become nigh-indistinguishable.

Make or Break:  The first scene featuring The Head.  You may feel like you got kicked in yours.

Score:  3/10