Troll 2

(1990) dir. Claudio Fragosso
viewed: 04/22/10

In reading about the documentary that was recently made about the film Troll 2, a documentary titled Best Worst Movie (2009), I realized that this oddity of a film was something that I needed to see.  I think that the title of documentary captures in utter concision, the reason to see it.

This is the “best bad movie” that I’ve seen in a long time.  I do spend a moderate amount of time with poor genre films, watching Uwe Boll’s movies, looking for the bad movie that makes itself great in its utter badness.  And here we go.  It’s as bad and as fun as movies like this get.

To rent it from Netflix, it comes as a b-side to the “original” Troll (1986) movie, which I started to watch when the DVD went awry.  It didn’t matter, as I’d read.  The film has nothing to do with Troll.  It was made not as a sequel, but of a film of its own merits by an Italian director and film crew in Utah.  And as notably noted, there is not a troll in the film.  Whereas the “original” featured a strange cast including Sonny Bono, Michael Moriarty, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus among others, this film features a bunch of people who would be laughed off the set of real-life Waiting For Guffman (1996) small town production.

A family takes a vacation, swapping their home with a family in Niblog (“goblin” backwards), only to find that the town is inhabited by rabidly vegetarian goblins who want to turn people into plants by feeding them green goo, and then eating them.  The family is trailed by the teenage daughter’s boyfriend and his homoerotic crew in an RV, supposedly to give some more bodies for the pyre.

The acting is hilarious, apparently a plethora of youtube memes have emanated from sound bytes.  The costuming is ludicrous.  The goblins are cheaply and poorly produced masks on the heads of little people.  Their clothing?  Burlap sacks.

There is so much ill-logic, green goo, and general inanity, it’s like a 1989 version of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).  And just a sampling of the insanity of the story-line?  The trolls are defeated partially by eating a double-decker b0logna sandwich (it annoys their vegetarian natures.)

The best worst acting is done by Deborah Reed as the leader of the human-formed trolls, her big eyes, silly make-up, and looming goofy over-acting is something to be seen indeed.  Other actors deliver hilariously bad dialogue in comical flatness, while she practically stands on tip-toe to deliver her sweet archness.  She’s straight out of a bad witch from a kids play performance at the local library.  She’s tremendously bad.  Deliciously bad.

And so is the film.  It’s deliciously bad.  And in looking for a film like that, so bad it’s fun, this film has got a lot going for it.  I look forward to seeing Best Worst Movie, which as I understand, is directed by the now adult version of the young boy, tormented by visions of his dead grandfathers’ horror stories of trolls, who is driven to urinate on the food to keep the family from eating it, and looks to be a pretty lightweight, charmer of a documentary.

But Troll 2 is a sight to see.