Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)

Hell Comes to Frogtown special makeup effects were designed by Steve Wang, who was asked to work on the film by Frogtown's director Donald G. Jackson as he was a friend of his; Wang agreed despite the low budget. Working alongside Wang in the 'Creature Effects Unit' were Matt Rose, Ed Yang, Grant Arndt, Steve Patino, Johnnie Saiko and Makio Kida, with Dave Kindlon credited as 'creature animatronics'.

Wang's love for Japanese 'tokusatsu' productions actually did play a role in his work for Frogtown, as when approaching how to realize the mutant frog people on a low budget, he remembered an episode of Spectreman that involved frog people. To get around the budget constraints, only one fully animatronic frog head would be made, for the tyrannical Toty. The Toty head's animatronics allowed the eyes, lips and ears to twitch about.

Steve Wang with the Toty animatronic head behind him.

One detail that was cut was that Toty would have four arms, which meant a rudimentary bodysuit was made, with only the hands having prosthetic skin on it; in the final film Toty always just uses two hands.

The low budget meant that it wasn't enough to have the other frog heads be full animatronics; thus for the other frogs of 'Leroy' and 'Bull', more simple puppet heads were created, which could have the mouth move from the actor's own mouth movements via a simple cable mechanism, and air bladders were fitted in order to simulate the ears and throat bulding. There wasn't enough money to come up with how to make the eyes move, so they got around it in the easiest way possible; they had the eyes covered with eyepatches and goggles!

Steve Wang with one of the non-animatronic frog masks.

The film's budget was not high enough for all the frogs to be realized as puppet heads; and so instead prosthetic makeups were designed, these frogs looking more humanoid than Bull or Leroy. These makeups were worn by the various extras playing Frogtown's guards, and thanks to them wearing hooded garments, meant the seams would be easily hidden.

However, a different prosthetic would be made for Kristi Somers to wear as the frog prostitute Arabella; her prosthetics would be slightly more human-like and feminine, especially with large, protruding lips. Again, like the various guards, the costume would do the work of hiding the prosthetics' limitations.

In the 'Creature Feature Creator' behind the scenes documentary included in Hell Comes to Frogtown's bluray release, Wang said as much that he was mostly glad with the reviews praising the special effects, regardless of whether they liked the final film or not. Donald G. Jackson would make a good few sequels, but given his films tended to be genuinely zero-budget affairs, I'm not sure if these even had any special effects put into them; Steve Wang certainly didn't return to the series!

Sources:

- Creature Feature Creator: Steve Wang Reveals the Secrets Behind Hell Comes to Frogtown's Mutant Manifestations (2014)