Review: Troll 2 (1990)

All together now—“Oh my gaaaaaaaaaaaaa--”

Sometimes resisting a classic or acclaimed motion picture doesn’t always lead to the reaction you’re supposed to have. Sometimes you just left scratching your head at why people enjoyed something, or how it could’ve received the accolades it did. Some people still debate if we should really still enjoy One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s next fifty years on, or Gone With the Wind, or what have you. 

There’s no such problems here! Oh, you see, this isn’t that kind of classic—Troll 2 is a legendary title in the eternal community of schlock-seekers, and chances are you might’ve seen clips of some ‘iconic’ lines taken out of context, like the exclamation above. But sometimes you have to wonder if it really deserves the ‘best worst movie ever made’, as ever more demented titles get pulled out from the misty recesses of either VHS bins or obsessives on the internet. I’m happy to say—oh, it’s even better when it’s all in context!

Troll 2 is an Italian ‘horror’ feature, so you know it’s going to be entertaining by default. Director Claudio Fragasso, under pseudonym, was tasked with making this film that became labeled as a sequel to an otherwise entirely unrelated film (the original Troll is mostly noted for its protagonist being named Harry Potter, serendipitously). He and his crew filmed mostly in Utah, yanking their cast from locals, and utilized the most delicate filming approach of ‘eh, we’ll just wing it’. You see, creating a classic bad movie by accident is a most delicate thing—every aspect needs to be sincere, yet delivered as if by a drunk person wearing underwear on his head so badly wanting to impress everyone.

Our story concerns a family who decide to relocate to the podunk town of Nilbog (which, as we end up getting reminded more than once, is—shockingly—Goblin spelt backwards! Just to also remind us what the original title of the film actually was! Well, we couldn’t have a town called Llort, now could we?). The father wants to enjoy a farming life, even though we don’t see any fields for him, and he expects to get a harvest in thirty days somehow. But before all that, we get our tone set with our lead kid character played by Michael Stephenson, whose grandpa is telling him a story scored by the cheesiest kind of eighties rock, showing off the most laughable kind of paper-mace goblin masks, where a man gets enthralled by a false maiden covered in the fakest of acne. 

Oh and then it turns out his grandpa is a dead ghost with very undefined and broad psychic powers. Yeah. We’re already off to a great start. 

It's only a fly, dude, stop overreacting. 

We’re of course accompanied by some obnoxious teenage boys to become goblin fodder, one of whom delivers the classic line everyone remembers (while a fly sits on his forehead, just as eager to enjoy everything). The best part is when they encounter Deborah Reed playing a witch who’s apparently queen of the goblins, and it feels like they yanked this Goth lady out of a drama school to utterly savor her thirty seconds of fame. I am not exaggerating when she pushes things to eleven with every syllable, every expression, every frame she consumes like she’s Jim Carrey doing mime. And then when you put her against all the literal amateurs off the street, that’s when you get a recipe for the best kind of hilarity. It’s like:

“Hel-lo. I am act-ing in a mo-vie.”

“YeeeSSSssss, and WOULDN’T you enJOY my EVIL CUPCAKES maaaaaaade from the MISTS of StoneHENge?!! Aahhahahahha!!”

There is no other actress, ever, that has better sold presenting a Saint Patrick's cake that's gone wrong. 

This is stuff you just can’t get from those deliberately bad movies like the fifteen Sharknado films people watched for some reason (they should’ve gone for true kino like this!). Beyond that, it’s hard to talk about this film without just describing individual scenes, because as it goes along everything just tries to one-up the one before for sheer lunacy. You’ll laugh as Reed pulls a chainsaw out of nowhere to punish someone she’s turning into a true (it doesn’t make sense in context either), nor the evil cultish militarism vegetarians it turns out our goblins are! There’s a random dance scene with our teenage girl apparently just making up moves on the spot, because eighties! And it’s the best kind of dialogue mistranslated by our crazed Italian crew, where people casually talk about how getting hit in the groin turns you gay somehow! 

"Fear us, for---stop laughing! My five year old brother worked very hard on this mask!"

Oh, and there’s a sex scene involving popcorn coming out of nowhere. It may have been played for jokes, maybe not, it’s impossible to tell in this kind of movie, and that’s the sheer joy of it. 

Troll 2 is a complete mess in every single aspect, but every single aspect also comes together in perfect balance and escalation that makes it impossible for you to turn your head away. I haven’t even talked about the rocket money on TV or ghost grandpa turning real somehow while looking like Orson Welles (and you know, if Welles was alive by then he certainly would’ve taken this movie on!). This is not a balance you can duplicate deliberately, nor easily, but here, it was done, establishing a legacy of deranged crappiness that lead to reunions, documentaries, and more. It’s almost like the Room of movies that are about trolls who are actually goblins. 

And if this can bring joy to people, then the message is that you should never be afraid to pursue your own creative lunacy, as long as it’s sincere, or if it’s about evil vegetable matter!