The 'Best Worst Movie' Part II: The 'Troll 2' review

              The box art lies!

I was a hunter last night. Hunting down a film online that I was hoping would be one of the absolute worst films I had ever had the good fortune to view in my long, tragic history of seeking out and sitting through crap movies. There was no way I was hitting the streets to purchase a DVD copy of Troll 2 - my DVD collection has spilled out of its holding cabinets and has started to take over the upstairs guest room. Plus there's a fresh new crop of Blu-Rays ready and waiting for their turn at the shelves.

No, this viewing would have to be online. As fate would have it some gentle soul (codename: rat739821) transfered the entire Troll 2 movie to Youtube in 10 minute incriminates. And the transfer is pretty gawdamn solid if I must say so - It ain't 1080p, but it ain't a briny sea of grain and mud either. The picture's pretty clear for a Youtube viewing - check it out here if you need to.

Now that this preamble's finally had its day in court let's get on with the business of reviewing what some folks are referring to as the "Best Worst Movie" ever made... Troll 2.

Troll 2/1990 - Directed by: Claudio Fragasso under the pseudonym Drake Floyd

Starring: George Hardy, Michael Stephenson, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Deborah Reed

The Plot- The true beauty of a bad movie plot is to try and force three or four ideas too many into an already overburdened movie. Troll 2 is no different. The Waits family, (Father, Son, Holy Ghost Grandfather.... Oh and add a tight little Mother/Daughter combo) decide that the best vacation they could ever have is in a Podunk town called Nilbog. Their fortress of fiesta? Another family's farm house. They'll be house swapping on this excursion into American Gothic. And gothic it is... What's waiting for them in the town of Nilbog? (which is "Goblin" spelled backward in case your Rainman genes weren't firing this morning) Ancient rituals, nasty witches, and trolls, trolls, trolls... Oh, and a never ending cycle of pre-prepared meals.

The Good- This is where things get a bit sticky. I didn't want anything in this movie to be good. But in bad movie mathematics "bad" equals out to "good". It's the kind of analytical perplexity that would turn Bizarro's brain into cranial origami. There was a ton to praise in this film - all bad though. Which is what we'll be discussing here.

Troll 2 should probably be held up as the very best achievement in stiff, stick-to-these-lines-they-gave-us-no-matter-what-they-may-say acting that the entertainment machine has ever produced till now. The casting directors didn't track down actors, understudies, bit players, or even background extras. They tracked and bagged literates. If you could read - at any level - you could be in this movie. Sure most of the time this means the lines will spill out like chunks of crumbled ham. But they do spill out - and the show goes on as they say. (for an example of this kind of stick-to-the-script acting please check out this clip here)

There is pretty much no way to get through this review of Troll 2 without discussing, or at least attempting to diagnose what kind of movie they were trying to make here. I've never seen the original Troll film so I'm a bit late to the party today - but I'm betting that there was one or two "Trolls" in the original film. Troll 2 has deranged oakies, (the town Sheriff's name is Gene Freak for Christ's sake..) a crazed Druid witch, a magic grandfather, horny teenage boys, (this group gave the film a nice warm blanket of much-needed homoeroticism) a child actor that you wouldn't mind seeing nailed to the bottom of a row boat and then sunk into the cold, salty depths of the Bering Sea- and it has ten or twelve little "Goblins". Not Trolls(!) - they're called Goblins.

I doubt it makes any difference because they're never in the movie anyway. Most of the time they're in "human form". Which is a good thing because the budgetary requirements they met for these little fellas when they're in "Goblin form"  hovered somewhere South of government assistance. We're talking model paint and rubber masks here. Maybe some recycled Jawa costumes for flair. But that's the extent of the uncanny Troll invasion. The invasion does indeed take place in Troll 2 - but it is an invasion of meals. Meals upon meals - and all covered in green frosting...

To explain: The basic premise of this film is that a town full of Goblins, who are lead by an evil witch, (whose rise to power was driven by the awesome mystical force of the "Stonehenge Magic Stone" - an ancient gateway into unlimited wickedness and arcane rites...) who must feed her Goblin minions to keep them minion-ing. But these guys don't - or won't - eat meat of any manifestation. Too much cholesterol and injected toxins in meat for those of the Troll-ish persuasion. They'll work for food as long as the food is vegetarian in nature. And screw all those crops growing all around the honey-colored hills of Nilbog - these guys prefer people turned into plants as a food source. And how do you get a human being to turn into plant matter? Feed him green sh*t.

Extend upon him meal after meal of food the average human prefers, (cake, corn, salad, meatloaf, milk, pancakes) all covered in nasty looking green sh*t. Once the human dines on the green sh*t he'll immediately start his painful transformation into edible flora and fauna. So what Troll 2 basically boils down to is scenario after scenario of the citizens of Nilbog doing anything and everything to get their human targets to eat something. It's a potluck picture. What these evil beings didn't count on - nay, could never even see coming - was the fact that the Waits family had a secret weapon hidden underneath their cloak of commonness: a magical dead grandfather.

I've lived a decent and somewhat fulfilling life. I've had trials. I've had minor successes. I've never had a magical dead grandfather though. And after seeing what a Magical "G" can bring to the hustle and bustle of ordinary existence - I feel a bit cheated by god. You have no idea what a magical dead grandfather can do till you see him in a savage exchange of of sorcery and food. He can warn you of impending doom hidden inside the warm folds and succulent recesses of a meal freely given. He can fight the forces of evil with lightning drawn down from heaven itself. And he possesses in his "knapsack of magic" a weapon so devastating to the Goblin legionnaires that to speak of it here would be bad form toward the deceased it lay waste to. (it's a double-thick baloney sandwich) The magical dead grandfather vein of this film is the vein that escalates Troll 2 from a small bad movie brush fire into a roaring apocalypse of stupidity.

My favorite moment in this movie? This one here: (looped to add effect by the daring technical wizards of Youtube - but I hated this little kid so much it was invigorating to see that during this shot his little head was getting shook about maybe just a little bit beyond past the borders of safe shaking..)

The Bad- I could see where watching and re-watching this film could maybe give you more to poke fun at. Troll 2 might just be a cinematic gold mine for most cult movie enthusiasts. There's almost too much material to pull jokes from. The film - like its denizens - seems to want to deliver a smorgasbord of unintentionally funny moments salted with the stiffest acting and forced dialog legally allowed to constitute definable film. But unless I'm in a group of inebriated mutants and wise-crack artists I don't know when and if I have the sand to sit through this entire movie again... It's pretty bad.

The Ugly- It's all ugly baby. That's the beauty of it.

The Verdict- Troll 2 is nothing to mess around with. Like wet dynamite, oiija boards, or tropical fire ants it's a threat to your health and mental stability. The jury's still out as to if this is indeed the worst movie ever made - Plan 9 from Outer Space is still a powerful competitor in the seedy underworld of poop-on-celluloid. The true test of this film is the one I couldn't perform last night when I broke my Troll 2 cherry sober and alone. View the film with an audience of drunken thugs. That test lies somewhere in a murky, beer-hazed, undetermined temporal point as of this date... 

Be sure to be here tomorrow for Best Worst Movie Part III: The Top 10 Best Worst Movies of All Time!