TOAD WARRIOR (1996) *

You’ve got to hand it to Donald G. Jackson.  He doesn’t always make good movies, but he can sure come up with great titles.  Toad Warrior is one of the funniest titles I’ve heard in a long time.  Too bad it’s nothing more than a crappy, low-budget shot-on-video sequel to his magnum opus, Hell Comes to Frogtown.  Even with its crappy cinematography and shoestring budget, it still manages to be marginally more entertaining than the dreadful Frogtown 2.

The guy they got to play the hero (who I guess is supposed to be the brother of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s character in the original) is a joke.  He’s no Piper, I know that.  If you thought Robert Z’Dar was bad in Frogtown 2, just wait till you see this dude.  

The plot has a samurai named Hell fighting mutant frog men in the desert.  Apparently, the evil O’Malley (Joe Estevez) wants to turn what humans who are left in the wasteland into frogs.  Or something.  It completely falls apart by the end, so it’s hard to tell. 

Overall, Toad Warrior isn’t quite as bad as Jackson’s Roller Gator, it’s but still pretty crummy.  The action isn’t the worst I’ve seen.  It’s just the shitty shot-on-video look doesn’t do it any favors.  The frog man masks are well done, although the cheap samurai and Ninja costumes are pathetic.  The sets are incredibly slapped-together too.  When we see Estevez sitting on a throne it’s painfully obvious it’s just a chair with a black blanket thrown over it.

There’s one character named “Humphrey Bullfrog”, which is kind of funny I suppose.  He’s a frog man who dresses like a ‘40s detective.  Too bad his voice is so modulated it’s hard to understand what he says.  

The cast is about as amateurish as the rest of the production.  Estevez kind of embarrasses himself while barking orders and cracking shitty jokes on his throne.  At least porn star Jill Kelly’s cleavage helps to make her scenes bearable.  Too bad she’s not in it a whole lot.  

Plan 9 from Outer Space’s Conrad Brooks also turns up.  It’s kind of cool because he’s playing the same character from Roller Gator.  Even Baby Gator shows up for a brief cameo, which sort of makes this a half-assed interconnected Jacksonverse.  Say what you will about Toad Warrior, but Donald G. Jackson was doing the whole Cinematic Universe thing long before Marvel.

Toad Warrior is only 79 minutes long, but don’t let that fool you:  It’s a long movie.  There was a moment I thought everything was wrapping up, only to hit the DISPLAY button on my DVD player and discover I had 35 minutes left to go.  The last act is especially dire (the scene where Hell gives the same speech three times to three different women is particularly gratuitous).  The complete non-ending concludes with the old “To Be Continued…” ploy which further frustrates the situation and is downright infuriating.  

The surf music soundtrack isn’t bad though.