There is an expression that is used to explain the large followings of certain cult films: "It's so bad, it's good." Troll 2 is so astoundingly horrible, it's great. Troll was a cheesy horror movie from a few years earlier about this troll that possesses a little girl and so on. Troll 2 has nothing to do with that movie. There aren't even any trolls in it. It is about goblins who look like midgets wearing burlap sacks and cheap Halloween costumes, because that's exactly what they are.
In the movie, a family of four go on vacation to the little town of Nilbog (Hint: it's goblin spelled backwards.) where the pesky vegetarian goblins who reside there repeatedly attempt to turn the newcomers into plants by forcing them to eat moldy food or drink bad milk. Then they eat them. Thanks to the help of the Magic Stone, goblins can also turn themselves into anything they want, so throughout the movie they appear as crazy humans. The only way they can be defeated is apparently with a double-decker bologna sandwich. I don't know why.
If the above paragraph made sense to you, you should be applauded. In all seriousness, Troll 2 is so bad it transcends the word "bad." I mean, what would we usually describe as a bad movie? Crappy dialogue, terrible acting, or a general misunderstanding of the simple logic of film-making, perhaps. Troll 2 has all three, but I don't think any of the crew had any idea that they were making what would later become known as one of the worst movies of all time. In the wonderful documentary Best Worst Movie, a fan describes it as being like a movie that aliens made after watching human movies for a few years. It can't even be described as a movie. It is a confusing, ridiculous, and somehow beautiful object at which you can't help but marvel.
The biggest production barrier was that the director, Claudio Fragasso, was Italian and spoke very little English. He and his wife wrote the screenplay based on what they believed Americans talked like and insisted that the lines be read exactly as written. This produced some of the most hilariously absurd moments in film history. The most famous being the scene in which one of the young male stars, after watching a girl get turned into green goo, states in a monotone voice, "They're eating her.....and then they're going to eat me. Oh my Gooooooooooooooo...." It trails forever in the most undramatic, least scary, most uncomfortable way possible. The video clip of this scene received over two million views on YouTube and sparked countless imitations and parodies.
There are too many other similarly horrible scenes to mention, including the numerous scenes featuring Michael Stephenson (the young boy in the family)'s dead grandfather showing up and saying heroic things before disappearing again for no reason. Equally hilarious is the seduction scene that involves corn-on-the-cob ("All we have to do is heat it up.") and the awkward conversation between a young couple with unintentional gay implications.
The star of the film, George Hardy, is a dentist who appears in the aforementioned documentary along with the rest of the cast and it is nice to see him recognize how truly terrible his ninety minutes of fame really were. Some of the other cast members took it a little too hard; the girl who played the daughter refuses to include it on her resume and will not appear at fan conventions, and the woman who played the mother became a recluse. There is one part of Best Worst Movie, when director Fragasso is jokingly asked by a fan why it is called Troll 2 if there aren't any trolls in it. He angrily responds, "You understand nothing!"
He seems so earnest in his belief that Troll 2 isn't bad that it almost makes you wish something was just lost in translation and that it isn't complete crap. Though he is obviously frustrated that the film gained popularity because of mockery, he does say at one point that it's just as much an honor to have made the worst movie of all time as the best. In the same way, it is vitally important that there be a worst movie of all time and other terrible movies. How else could we appreciate the good?
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