Review #1,193: 'Troll 2' (1990)

If you are the type of sadomasochistic movie-goer who seeks out films so notoriously awful just to have a laugh or two, then chances are you are familiar with Troll 2, Claudio Fragasso's cult non-sequel classic. However, if you were to label Troll 2 as the worst movie ever made, then I would question whether or not you have actually seen it (although it was the subject of Best Worst Movie, a documentary made by the lead actor). Don't get me wrong, this is one of the most inept, poorly-constructed, and laughably performed films you could ever hope to see, but what separates it from the likes of The Beast of Yucca Flats, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Battlefield Earth is that it is enormous fun. I usually go into these types of films hoping for a few laughs but end up being subjected to 90 minutes of sheer tedium, but Troll 2 really is in a class of its own.

We open with kindly old man Seth (Robert Ormsby) reading his grandson Joshua (Michael Paul Stephenson) a fairytale involving goblins. The stunted creatures chase a man through the woods and force him to eat a green goo, which turns him into a plant. You see, goblins are vegetarians, so they can eat the man once he has completed the transformation. Goblins are everywhere, warns Grandpa Seth. The bedtime story is abruptly ended by the arrival of Joshua's mother Diana (Margo Prey), who causes Seth to suddenly vanish. The lovable old man has been dead for 6 months, but still appears to Joshua as a ghost. Fearing the boy is losing his marbles, the Waits family head off to the town of Nilbog as part of some kind of weird exchange program, which will see them tend crops and live off the land for a week while the Nilbogian family head into the big city in the opposite direction. On arrival, they are met with a feast covered in a strange weird goo similar to the one from the story. It seems Nilbog is the home of evil goblins posing as humans hoping to gobble them up at the earliest opportunity.

Before you think I've had a stroke, I can assure you that this is the plot of the movie. You will also see no mention of trolls, because there aren't any. Director Fragasso (under the pseudonym of Drake Floyd), who could speak little English, waltzed into town with a script written in Italian and seemingly cast the first people to audition who could string a sentence together. The dialogue was badly translated, nevertheless Fragasso insisted that the lines were spoken exactly as written on the page. Somewhat endearingly, the entire cast really give it their all, despite being lumbered with the lines such as "It's goblin spelled backwards!". Every single frame of Troll 2 lacks logic, and this is what makes the movie so charmingly hilarious and helps separate it from the horror lurking in the IMDb's Bottom 100 list, which may raise a smirk once or twice throughout their running time. Simply marvel at the complete disregard for common sense (Grandpa's Seth plan to escape the goblins is to Molotov cocktail the house while the whole family is still inside it) and stare open-mouthed at the moment when a young horndog is seduced by a corn-on-the-cob. There really is no way to describe Troll 2.


Directed by: Claudio Fragasso
Starring: Michael Paul Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Robert Ormsby, Connie Young
Country: Italy

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie