This Thanksgiving, Torturously Okay is thankful for all things that have the courage to be truly awful.
There is a certain level of awfulness that a film cannot achieve simply by being bad for its entire running time. Just as it is with libel laws, actual malice must be proven. The film must have evil intentions, or at the very least a reckless disregard for human decency. Badness is not achieved simply by the absence of goodness.
That’s why I knew from moment one that the widespread claims that Troll 2 is the worst movie ever made could not have any merit. How can a movie about killer trolls possibly be as insulting as I Spit On Your Grave, or as mind-deadening as Corky Romano?
The answer: it can’t. And to be honest, the worse Troll 2 got, the more I loved it. It’s in a class with Over the Top, Prince of Space, and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Here is a movie that is bad in all the conventional ways: acting, direction, writing, special effects, editing, makeup. But it’s truly great in many unconventional ways. For all the tests this movie fails, it passes this one: I left it a happier person than when I found it.
Never mind that the movie has no connection to Troll 1. It tells of a happy suburban family who takes a trip to the mysterious town of Nilbog for their vacation (get it?). Right away things don't seem right. The townspeople are sparse, and those they see are always trying to feed them odd green food. And the youngest boy, Josh (Michael Stephenson), has been receiving visits from his dead grandfather (Robert Ormsby) warning him about vicious creatures who turn people into plants and then eat them.
It's hard to express the inexplicable awesomeness of what follows. It's a given that the plot is incredibly stupid, but director "Drake Floyd" (Claudio Fragasso) attacks it gung-ho. Say what you will about Troll 2, but it is not cynical. Here is a movie with what looks to have been a very small budget and a cast of inexperienced actors, and no discernible reason for existence. But Fragasso and crew have thrown themselves in head first and made it anyway.
The acting is wretched at worst, and at best is on the level of drama club. As Joshua, Michael Stephenson ranks among the most annoying child actors of all time. As far as childish voice affectations go, nothing can match the moment where he chirps, "See??? It wasn't me this toiyme!" Still, Stephenson appears to have a sense of humor about the movie, as last year he directed Best Worst Movie, a documentary about Troll 2's recent rise in popularity.
There isn't a line uttered by Connie McFarland, as the older sister Holly, that doesn't elicit a Bad Laugh from the audience. The performance of Deborah Reed, as a nearby witch, is completely off-the-wall and zany, and just what the movie needs. And I'm sure I don't need to mention the precious "Oh my god" moment. (But here it is anyway.)
Oddly enough, the actor who fares best isn't an actor at all: George Hardy, who plays the patriarch of the family, was a dentist at the time the movie was made, and still has a practice. He's actually pretty good; he must have been cast for his fatherly appearance and demeanor, and he appears to take the role seriously and earnestly.
The special effects are, if pedestrian, completely appropriate for the movie. It just wouldn't be right if Troll 2 had state-of-the-art makeup. And to tell the truth, the effects in Troll 2 aren't that bad. I enjoyed the wonderfully sick transformation in which people turn into plants: bold green liquid chlorophyll begins to leak from their pores and branches protrude from their arms and legs, and then a gaggle of goblins appears and begins to eat their mushy insides. I live for this stuff.
The goblins themselves were obviously created on the cheap, with plastic faces that barely move, but that somehow makes them all the eerier. The heavy-synth score, no doubt inspired by Dario Argento's band Goblin (no relation), also helps to set an appropriately spooky tone.
The ending, while completely predictable, is a flat-out delight, and the closing line made me giggle in the same devilish way that Hannibal Lecter's farewell line at the end of The Silence of the Lambs did. I should also make special mention of the movie's other wonderfully nasty moment: the incredulous family is about to eat poisoned food given to them by the villagers, and Grandpa tells Josh he has 30 seconds to stop them. I won't reveal what happens, except that they do not eat the food and Josh is sent to his room.
*** out of ****
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