“I want to write a movie review,” I say.
My editor smiles. “Okay,” he says. “What movie?”
Now this is the hard part.
The thing is, I’m obsessed with Troll 2. I’ve watched the available clips of it on Hulu and YouTube so many times, I’ve lost count. I own the full film on iTunes. I have a Troll 2 t-shirt. And I absolutely need to write about it. Here’s the problem
“It’s kind of old…” I say, flinching. My editor raises his eyebrow. “But wait,” I say. “Listen. It’s the best movie ever made.” I quickly explain that it’s the shittiest piece of garbage filmmaking ever, and that makes it brilliant. My editor and fellow A&E writers look at me dubiously.“Um, okay,” My editor says. “Let’s put that down as a ‘maybe’.”
“Seriously though,” I say, pulling up a video on YouTube. “Just watch this.”
Once he stopped laughing, my editor gave me a “yes.”
So what is Troll 2’s deal? It is a 1990 horror film, it is not a sequel and it is not about trolls. It’s actually about goblins.
The film was named Troll 2 to attract a greater viewing audience, as the completely unrelated movie Troll had been well received. Troll 2 was written by an Italian couple who did not speak fluent English, and acted out by unknowns. The actors, including a dentist and a man on a day trip away from an insane asylum, were forced to read the script word-for-word, regardless of the blatant errors in its language. What resulted was one of the most unintentionally hilarious films of all time.
The plot revolves around the Waits family doing a house swap, who arrive in the town of Nilbog (spell it backwards…) only to discover that the residents are all goblins that try to feed them magic food, which will turn them into vegetables and make them edible. This is because the goblins are vegetarians. There’s a sort of witchy goblin queen, and the ghost of the Waits childrens’ “Grandpa Seth” pops up to help out the family’s young son, Joshua, to protect his family from the goblins, doing such things as urinating on cursed food.
In one scene, the goblin Queen, named “Creedence Leonore Gielgud” (seriously), seduces an unsuspecting tourist with a stick of corn on the cob. I’m going to give away the ending here. If you actually want to watch this movie for the plot I suggest you immediately drop out of college, drive to the nearest film school and learn about priorities. That being said, the goblins are ultimately destroyed by a combination of a bologna sandwich and a “Stonehenge Magic Stone,” which promised to defeat the goblins if the Waits family should “touch it and concentrate.”
The film, which currently has the only 0 percent rating on RottenTomatoes, has gathered quite the cult following. Across the nation, Troll 2 is being played at midnight shows, gracing the t-shirts of college students and being cosplayed at conventions. There’s even a documentary, titled Best Worst Movie, which examines the film’s appeal and features many of its stars. Interestingly, the documentary holds one of the highest ratings on the tomatometer.
For those of you brave enough to venture into Nilbog, Troll 2 is available on iTunes and Amazon for an astonishing bargain of $10.