A Year of Garbage Movies #26: “Troll 2” (1990)
This one’s a bit intimidating, because it was “The Room” and “Birdemic” over a decade before either of those appeared.
It’s hard to capture in words just how strange of an experience this is. Unfortunately, no other medium really does it justice either. Like “The Room”, this film has been the subject of at least one piece of media examining its production. In 2009, the kid from “Trolls 2”, now grown up, created a documentary called “Best Worst Movie” that follows up with some of the actors as well as the director and probes into how exactly this film turned out the way it did. Most of the actors treat it as good fun (I don’t think any of them were actually professional actors even then), while the director took everything super seriously and still feels as though he was wronged.
To those of you who have seen or read “The Disaster Artist”, the director’s attitude may sound a little familiar. As I recall, the creator of “Birdemic” was also accused of being a thin-skinned weirdo when it came to criticism. On the one hand, I imagine it’s a nightmare to have to work for someone like that, especially as an aspiring actor of crew member who likely hasn’t had much exposure to the industry outside of that. On the other, maybe that’s a necessary ingredient to creating a movie so transcendentally awful and absurd that it becomes a classic of a different sort, the kind of movie that gets midnight screenings with audience interaction and a subculture of its own.
I’d honestly recommend just watching this movie to really get the full flavor of how crazy it really is, but here’s some highlights.
- A kid gets a bedtime story from the ghost of his dead grandfather. His mother comes in and berates him for both talking to her dead father (she explains in the most verbose way possible that as his grandfather, that maker her the deceased’s daughter) and for believing in goblins. Moments later, she walks downstairs to sit with her husband, then completely out of nowhere asks with a stricken expression “Who are the goblins?”. The scene ends.
- There’s a subplot where the daughter’s boyfriend tries to follow her family on a trip. Her dad hates him because he’s always hanging out with his friends. He proceeds to bring his friends literally everywhere, including to the daughter’s bedroom, in an RV on the family vacation, etc… When he leaves, said friends literally have no idea what to do. There’s even an argument where she complains about her bringing his friends with him to bed, bemoaning that she hates group sex and also calling him a homosexual.
- A woman seduces a man by dancing with a corn-cob.
- “They’re eating her. Then they’re gonna eat me. Oh my gooooooooooooooooooooooooood”
- No one notices that the town they’re going to “Nilbog”, is Goblin spelled backwards until roughly the half-way point in the movie
- A kid keeps his family from eating vegetables by pissing all over the kitchen table
- A bologna sandwich saves the day
- “My family comes from Stonehenge”, which is sort of like saying your family comes from the Lincoln Memorial
- “Drink your broth”. “But she just did and now she’s melting” “Don’t seat it, just drink your broth” “K”.
- BONUS ROUND: One of the characters was literally a patient at a mental institution who was out on leave that day, had smoked a bunch of grass, then wandered on-set and was cast and had all of his scenes shot. Guess which one?
Pros:
- This is why I do this. Unfortunately, most terrible movies don’t capture this kind of wonderful absurdity that you want to share with everyone you meet; they’re just bad and serve to fast-forward you a couple hours closer to death without enriching your life in any way. But every once in awhile a gem like this pops up and it’s all worthwhile.
Cons:
- You might be led to believe that the original “Trolls” is the same kind of bizarro-world film as this, but that’s really just another indication of how strange this movie is. There are no trolls in Trolls 2. This is not a sequel to Trolls, which was made by Empire Pictures (sort of a predecessor to Full Moon Entertainment) in 1986. That movie was low-budget and meant for direct to video distribution, but it’s more like “Head of the Family” or other films of that nature where an honest effort was made to create exactly the caliber of movie people renting from the discount aisle expected. I don’t recall exactly how they convinced them to distribute this as a sequel, but it has literally nothing to do with the first in any way.
