Donald G. Jackson sure made a lot of post-apocalyptic films. Roller Blade, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force, The Rollerblade Seven, The Legend of the Rollerblade Seven, Return of the Rollerblade Seven and three different movies in the Helltown series. He also made I Like To Hurt People, a movie all about pro wrestling. These things would all come together to create this film, where “Rowdy” Roddy Piper plays Sam Hell, the last fertile man on Earth.
In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of this film, atomic fallout has led to men and women being unable to breed. The government seeks out those that can make children and uses them to keep the human race alive. Meanwhile, frogs have become able to walk and talk like humans, all while falling for human women.
Sam Hell (Piper) has been located by the government as they followed the trail of pregnant women left in his wake. They wanted to use him to breed their collection of fertile women, but it turns out that the frogs took all of them. So now, he must use his fighting skills to break into Frogtown and rescue the women, then knock every single one of them up.
The team behind this operation — Spangle (Sandahl Bergman, who was also in the near-perfect post-apoc film She) and Centinella (Cec Verrell, Hollywood Vice Squad) — outfits Hell with a codpiece that will cause his junk to explode if he tries to run off.
Of course, hijinks ensue. A Frog lady named Arabella (Kristi Somers, Savage Streets, Girls Just Want to Have Fun) falls for Hell. Spangle is drugged and ensures the Dance of the Three Snakes for the Frog leader Commander Toty. And Nicholas Worth — serial killer and necophilliac Kirk Smith from Don’t Answer the Phone — shows up as a Frog who tortures Hell.
This film is worlds better than I ever imagined that it could be. The part of Sam Hell was written with Tim Thomerson in mind, but New World wanted Daniel Stern. The final two actors considered for the role came down to Piper and Ed Marinaro. I think they made the right choice.
You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome, who have a features packed blu ray they’ve just released that I’ve gotta get.
There’s a tribute week of films starring wrestlers . . . I can feel it. Now that I dug bit, wow. There’s a lot of wrestling films and films that starred wrestlers, beyond the El Santo movies I remember from UHF-TV and the later ones with WWF/WWE guys.
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Maybe we can get Paul Andolina on board, as he has an entire site devoted to this:
https://wrestlingwithfilm.wordpress.com
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I loved seeing this movie late night back when I was a kid. I think it used to come up on USA’s up all night or some random movie program thing like that. It was cheesy greatness. I could watch it, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and Once Bitten over and over again back then…and sadly I probably did.
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Yes. Rhonda Sheer! And Commander USA!
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