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        

Calamity (1976)

I have always meant to try my hand at sculpting.  I still might.  The closest I ever came would likely have been either assembling monster models as a kid or painting tiny Dungeons and Dragons miniatures with a toothpick (a paintbrush just seemed too unwieldy for my chubby, little fingers), and, yes, I know that neither of these comes even close to the orbit of actual sculpture.  I think I would like to try doing mini-maquettes or mini-busts of different characters or maybe just full-size busts.  Stuff like the Creature from the Black Lagoon or the Hulk or something.  Stuff that’s in my wheelhouse.  None of that enigmatic modern art sculpture for me (maybe if I’m feeling lazy).  There will be growing pains, to be sure.  After all, I have zero experience sculpting anything, unless you count using Play Doh, but that was some time ago and nothing to write home about.  Time would also be a huge factor, since I don’t have enough of it to do the things I like to do now (like sleep, eat, and so forth, and you should see the hoops that have to be jumped through to get these reviews done on the regular), but I’m sure there are those who would also say that the time should be made for it (like time is a sheet cake or something).  I think I would likely stick to clay, as sculpting in mediums like stone or wood is (A) less forgiving/fixable, and (B) I would be less likely to inflict grievous bodily injury to myself with chisels, etcetera.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll sculpt the most perfect statue of General Guan Yu, like Uncle Chao (Yu-Hsin Chen) does in Hung Min Chen’s Calamity (aka Zhan Shen aka War God aka Kuan Yu Battles with the Aliens), and it will come to life and defend the Earth.  But in all likelihood, I’ll just wind up throwing out stuff I think turned out like crap.

Martians land in Hong Kong and give humanity an ultimatum: Die on your feet or live on your knees.  No human steps up, so Uncle Chao’s statue takes matters into his own hands.

Calamity is a film whose existence was ineluctable.  By that same token, that it exists at all is nothing short of miraculous.  Considering the levels of insanity to which the Japanese Tokusatsu genre climbed by this point (and, it can be argued, all of Japanese genre cinema), it was only a question of time before someone came up with this idea of giant gods battling Brobdingnagian Martians (and very well may have much earlier than this).  This is the sort of film where “space scientists” work in science fiction labs and call themselves “space scientists.”  Where Martians come in trios like the Three Stooges.  Where nothing is impossible, including Guan Yu inhabiting a wooden statue and becoming a real god, like Pinocchio (or Jet Jaguar, take your pick), because nothing in this world is improbable.  For example, Chao-Chun (Ming Lun Ku) creates a laser/heat gun that can melt steel, but no one ever thinks to use it on the aliens (or if they did, they either dismissed this idea straightaway or I just missed it).  Yes, this is a world of fantastic imagination, but it’s more like the cover version of a Tokusatsu film than one in its own right.  Is it in the realm of reason to criticize Calamity for this photocopy quality when so many of its Japanese counterparts do the exact same thing?  I would suggest yes, because those Japanese fantasy films of the Moiré Pattern Effect variety are just as bland and characterless.  What’s good for the goose…

The film also deals with science versus religion.  Uncle Chao believes with all his heart (bolstered by the imaginary, remembered voice he hears from the photo of his dead wife) that Guan Yu will possess his statue if the god deems it perfect.  Bear in mind, this is before the Martians land, so one has to wonder what Uncle Chao’s end game is prior to the invasion?  Maybe he feels that too many people have turned away from the gods, like his son Chao-Chun.  Maybe he’s just fulfilling the promise he made to his wife, and that’s all.  Either way, it’s science-minded Chao-Chun who is forced to accept a deity into his mode of thinking.  Chao-Chun even says, “There is no power of god in the world,” so you can see the lines of demarcation drawn clearly (sort of).  Likewise, the Martians belong to the realm of science or, to be more precise, science fiction.  They are technology and machinery incarnate.  They even have electronic BEM eyes that light up.  Guan Yu must teach them the lesson that gods are no laughing matter (take that how you will in this context).  

By that same token, this conflict reflects the struggle between traditionalism and modernity.  Uncle Chao carves wooden statues using nothing but his chisels, his hands, and some elbow grease (by the way, he is functionally blind with Glaucoma, making his efforts even more preternatural).  He knows that there is value in taking the time to do things by hand and do them right.  Apparently, his whole life has been a progression toward the perfection of his craft, a quasi-Nirvana.  Chao-Chun uses scientific tools, largely automated, and he even adds in the science fiction go-to of radiation (in another experiment [this one involving bees] which goes nowhere).  He laments the hard path scientists have to trod (“If everyone was like you, we’d still be primitive”), because it has to be worth it.  According to this film, however, not so much.  Guan Yu is, naturally, the most traditional of traditional symbols, and the Martians the ultimate symbol of contemporary man (even though they’re not human).  They, like Chao-Chun, have a hard time grasping how tradition can be so powerful when it’s so archaic.  And this is why they fail or are useless to the film’s narrative, such as it is.

It’s not unfair to ask how the special effects in a special effects film fare.  So, how do they fare in Calamity?  Sadly, not so well.  Aside from a handful of decent matte shots, they’re pretty threadbare across the board.  The miniatures are as simplistic and undetailed as it’s possible to be.  The Martians look bad (in an Irwin Allen television show sort of way, but cheaper), especially when compared to the rather ornate Guan Yu costume.  But these things could be forgiven if the action worked or if the story had some interesting ideas or tension or characters.  But it doesn’t.  The Guan Yu versus aliens scenes are essentially the same moves repeated ad nauseum.  Further, the human characters contribute nothing (the exception, of course, being Uncle Chao).  There is even a hellion biker girl character who has nothing to do other than ride through tunnels and dance to Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting” (I’m almost positive the song rights were procured for its use here), and that’s just wasteful.  The most calamitous thing about Calamity is that it’s entirely constructed of window dressings without the windows.  The filmmakers knew the notes but not the tune.

MVT:  the giant monster battles, though they are repetitive to the point of lethargy.  

Make or Break:  By the middle of the final battle of the giants, you’ll just want it to be over.

Score:  6/10    

Darkside Blues (1994)

Let me see if I can get this right.  The Hazuki family run a corporation called Persona Century that basically owns most of the world.  A group of resistance fighters (the Anti-Personas) struggle against them and their Enhanced Human assassins.  Mai (Kotono Mitsuishi) and Kenzo (Akio Otsuka) are a couple of mercenaries (?) who call themselves Messiah, and they are hired by a wounded revolutionary named Tatsuya to protect him.  Meanwhile, the nebulous Darkside (Akira Natsuki) comes on the scene in his intergalactic carriage, and there’s a young boy named Katari (Nozomu Sasaki) who may be more than he seems (but what does he seem to be?).

If ever a nation embraced the whole Goth thing (and embraced it early), I would suggest from an outsider’s perspective that it was the Japanese.  At least partially inspired by the punk movement, Goths love their eyeliner, puffy shirts, and late Eighteenth/early Nineteenth Century outerwear.  While, Noboyasu and Yoshimichi Furukawa’s Darkside Blues showcases at least two out of three of these things, it also combines them with the other thing the Japanese seem to love: science fiction.  Perhaps the best example of this melding of aesthetics is the Vampire Hunter D franchise, but unfortunately, we’re not discussing those.  So, for example, the Hazukis live on an asteroid that orbits the Earth.  The aforementioned Enhanced Humans are basically psychotic cyborgs.  There is a machine that turns people into gold statues.  Mai has a wrist blaster.  On the Goth side, the Hazuki manse is baroque and grotesque like Dracula’s castle is typically portrayed.  The first shot of the film is a clock with thirteen hours on it.  A gross-looking spider swings off it and drapes it in red webbing.  Darkside dresses like Baron Frankenstein (though I would contend the biggest influence on the character is likely Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, another Goth icon), and his horse-drawn carriage moves through time and space (he enters the film via a ripple in the fourth dimension, which I always thought was Time, but what do I know?) like the Silver Surfer’s surfboard or The Doctor’s TARDIS.  Like everything else in the film, however, the two artistic tastes just kind of float around in each other’s proximity.  They don’t combine with each other, they don’t really define anything in the film, and there’s so much left unsaid about almost everything having anything to do with them, it’s confusing as hell.

Add to this the fact that Darkside is also a drifter cowboy figure (he does wear boots and spurs) in the tradition of Yojimbo, High Plains Drifter, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing, et al (and please note, I’m fully aware that two of these are remakes of another of them).  He appears in a town that needs him, does something to save them (this is extremely arguable in this case), and then kind of fades away.  He stays at the local small time hotel with the “colorful” proprietor (here an old woman and her cat).  Mai naively falls in love with him, even though this love can never be requited (he’s a loner, Mai; a rebel).  What Darkside doesn’t have like a cowboy is a six-shooter.  Instead, he does this thing where he transports whomever he’s with into another dimension.  There, they can battle, relive past traumas, and so forth.  Darkside refers to what he does as “Renewal,” like he’s an amalgamation of a shrink and some New Age bullshit guru.  Instead of dueling in the streets, Darkside forces people to face the truth about themselves.  That said, he’s not above actually fighting and/or killing people in this dreamtime realm of his; it’s just not his go-to maneuver.  

Doorways play a large part in the film.  Everything from windows to mirrors to, yes, doorways are employed, and they relate to the idea of portals.  Katari carries around a small glass globe, and he uses it to open doorways to (I’m assuming here) the Fourth Dimension.  This same portal manifests in the gigantic mirror in the Hazuki compound.  It also appears in the entrance to Tamaki Hazuki’s personal torture chamber.  Darkside makes his arrival through all of these simultaneously.  The doors to the Mirage Hotel where our protagonist stays are focused on at great length, and the lobby itself is a portal to the individual rooms, which I would imagine is really convenient if you’re a lodger there (or a bellboy).  I believe all of these in some way or another involve the concept of Renewal that Darkside keeps hitting on, because they all deal, diametrically or obliquely, with time, mistakes of the past, and the opportunity to change oneself.  The darkness in which Darkside envelops his “patients” and/or enemies is Truth.  Some will be transformed by it, others will be destroyed by it.

Nonetheless, for all that I think the film is trying to do, it fails fairly miserably.  The primary reason for this is because the film is so hellbent on the bigger picture that the details which should support it are indistinct, undeveloped, and, in many cases, unresolved.  The world the movie tries to set up is hinted at just enough to give us a rough idea and nothing more.  There is no resolution to the Mai/Darkside relationship.  There is no resolution to the conflict between the revolutionaries and the Hazukis.  We never even see the patriarch of the family, and there is a sister who is shown very briefly in the beginning and then totally written off with a throwaway line.  Brother Enji Hazuki shows up but never interacts with the rest of his family.  Darkside is likely one of the most passive characters in the history of storytelling, despite the importance implied by his appearance in it.  Katari is introduced as a character who will be integral to the story.  He isn’t.  At all.  The film only settles one storyline, and even there, we’re left hanging with where this is going.  In fact, the film doesn’t really end at all.  It just stops.  Was there supposed to be a sequel?  Is there a series?  Is this based on a manga that explains any of this crap better than this film does?  If you care about the answers to any of these questions, I really can’t help you, because I found myself not giving the slightest of shits (okay, I did do some digging just for the sake of curiosity, and the manga this is based on was created by Hideyuki Kikuchi, who also created Vampire Hunter D, so there’s one mystery solved).  Darkside Blues is so sketchy it should have been animated in pencils only.

MVT:  The film has all the elements for a fun, interesting tale.

Make or Break:  If you can make it through the first five minutes of this movie, and you like what you see, you’ll be fine.  If all you’re doing by the end of that time is squinting at the screen and scratching your head, you’ll be better off tuning out.

Score: 4/10