CineNiche

Retro Flashback presents: Hell Comes To Frogtown  Welcome to Retro Flashback. Today we take a trip into a post-apocalyptic future as seen by low-budget filmmakers in the late eighties. Our study will begin with the creator of Frogtown , Donald G. Jackson, and his unique vision of filmmaking. We will also study the career of Frogtown's leading man, the late great Roddy Piper. Hell Comes To Frogtown may not be a particularly good film, but does it still warrant a place in your genre education? Lets dive into the ballad of Commander Toty. In the beginning... Donald G. Jackson was born in Mississippi but grew up in Michigan. He worked at an automotive factory where he met his friend and future co-director Jerry Younkins. The two of them had a plan to make a feature film but could not put together any funds. Fate then stepped in. Jerry got into an accident at work that left him without a few fingers. The insurance check came through and they were in business. With Jerry...

After the anger receded from the horrible viewing of He Knows You're Alone, we had to go back to an overlooked classic: The Burning .  It did the trick.  Again this is another slasher from the mold of Halloween, but this one definitely has more of a Friday The 13th feeling - it's another summer camp slasher film.  Released in 1981 along with: Bloody Birthday ,  Don't Go In The Woods ,  Evil Dead ,  Friday The 13th 2 ,  Funhouse ,  Halloween 2 ,  Happy Birthday To Me ,  Hell Night ,  House By The Cemetary ,  My Bloody Valentine The Prowler  It's easy to see why this wasn't the blockbuster success it may have been.  There are a lot of hidden gems here, we get a script by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, Jason Alexander's first role, a young gangly Fisher Stevens ( Hackers and Super Mario Brothers ), a brief Holly Hunter, music by Rick Wakeman of Yes, and t...

Or He Knows You're Copying.  Normally this would be unfair, because all of the slasher films of the eighties copied from the formula laid out very plainly by John Carpenter's Halloween .  Even Halloween was an homage to Italian Giallo films by Mario Bava and Dario Argento, but he took those somewhat complex plotlines and cut them down to the bare essentials.  Ironically enough, the slasher films that followed the wake of Halloween couldn't simplify enough and became more complex in trying to render a killer. Lets put some slashers in order here, we'll start off at Halloween and work our way to He Knows You're Alone released in September of 1980.. 1978 Toolbox Murders (released the same year as Halloween) 1979 Alien (yes, it's a slasher film in space) 1979 When A Stranger Calls 1980 Don't Answer The Phone (February) 1980 Friday The 13th (May) 1980 Prom Night (July) 1980 Dressed To Kill (July) Each of these films copied the prototype but d...