Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Troll 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Nilbog on Yar-ulb!

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater October 14, 2010

Anyone who thinks Troll 2 is the worst movie in cinema history clearly hasn’t sat through nigh-unwatchable turds like Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Beast of Yucca Flats, or, I’ll say it, Avatar. (Calm down, just kidding on that last one.) It is, however, definitely in the running for the dubious distinction of Best Worst Movie, which also happens to be the title of a 2009 documentary about Troll 2 —made by Michael Stephenson, the child “star” of the 1990 horror disaster—which explores the film’s newfound cult status. Why best worst? Simply put, watching Troll 2 is an experience like no other. “So bad it’s good” doesn’t even come close to describing the guileless ineptitude— the stilted line readings, utter absurdity, and complete disregard for narrative logic—that makes Troll 2 so unendingly and unintentionally hilarious. This is a movie best enjoyed—and oh it can be enjoyed—with likeminded friends and a healthy supply of alcohol.

"Let me give you some advice you dwarves: Get out of here or you're going to be in a lot of trouble."

You know you’re off to a bad start when a film called Troll 2 has nothing to do with the first Troll movie— Citizen Kane compared to this dreck—and also lacks the presence of a single troll. Instead, the film is about an ancient pack of oogedy boogedy vegetarian goblins. Yes, vegetarian. Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense when you see it. (On second thought, no it won’t.) We start with a shocker: Grandpa Waits, played by Robert Ornsby—the cheapest Orson Welles look-alike money could buy, apparently—is telling a gruesome bedtime story to young Joshua (Michael Stephenson), a story about goblins who make humans eat poisonous green custard that turns them into meat/plant hybrids. Or something. Only, when Joshua’s harried mom, Diane (Margo Prey), enters the room, Grandpa suddenly disappears! It turns out the tenor-voiced codger has been dead for six months! Thinking Joshua is manifesting gramps as an imaginary friend, mom says—with a completely straight face—“You must banish him from your mind.” Because, you know, moms talk like that. (We’ll get to the film’s awkward script in a bit.)

From here, the Waits family sets off on a vacation to the quaint, backasswards town of Nilbog—“It’s GOBLIN backwards!” Joshua later warns to no avail—where they plan to house-swap with a local clan and spend a month “as peasants and farmers, just like people were a century ago.” That’s dad talking. Played by George Hardy, who now makes his living as a dentist in Alabama, he's got the lubricated drawl of Al Gore crossed with a closeted Southern televangelist. And like all movie dads, he’s pumped about this vacation. Little does he know that the townsfolk are actually goblins, and that the delicious spread of food left on the dining room table—“That’s hospitality,” he says—is actually the same stuff as the poison pudding in ghost-Grandpa’s story. Naturellement, gramps shows up and freezes time for 30 seconds, giving Joshua a chance to ruin dinner and save his family from a grisly death that involves sweating chlorophyll and turning into a tree. So, what does little Joshie do? He stands on a chair, unzips his fly, and—thankfully the cameras cuts away before we see it—pisses all over the food. Dad is effeminately enraged. “YOU CAN’T PISS ON HOSPITALITY,” he yells, “I won’t allow it!” For the briefest of moments, he looks like a truly fabulous Henry Rollins.

And this is only the beginning of the ridiculousness. Each new scene brings another ante-upping absurdity. We have pouty teen daughter Holly (Connie McFarland) and her dippy boyfriend Elliot (Jason Wright), who shows up in an RV along with his three best buds, early ‘90s dweebs who—no matter how much they talk about hooking up with the local single ladies—seem to share a vaguely homoerotic bond. Then there’s Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed, wildly overacting), a troll in female human guise who dresses like a goth Ms. Havisham, rambles on about a “Stonehenge Magic Stone,” and seduces one of Elliot’s friends…with a corncob. (The heat of their passion produces, in what might be the film’s most deliriously WTF moment, an RV filled with popcorn.) And let’s not forget the troll minister, who delivers a juicy sermon about the horrors of meats: “The humans nourish themselves with these, violating their own bodies, infecting themselves, creating incurable ailments. Smelly bladders! Nests of infection! Clusters of hemorrhoids! Vicious, stinky excrement!” Mind you, none of this is supposed to be funny.

Or—who knows?—maybe it was, to some extent, but it’s much funnier than was ever intended because of the sheer awfulness of the dialogue and the wooden, teleprompter-esque performances of Troll 2’s “actors.” The film was written and directed by an Italian, Claudio Fragasso—going under the alias “Drake Floyd”—and the fact that English wasn’t his first language goes a long way in explaining why the script labors under diction that’s alternately stunted and overly ornate. And reportedly, he made the actors speak the dialogue exactly as written, which results in some of the most cringingly LOL-worthy line readings ever. (The most well known—“They’re…eating her. And then, they’re…going…to…eat…me. OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAAAWD!”—is a YouTube sensation with over 2 million views.) What makes Troll 2 stand out amongst the “so bad it’s good” crowd, though, is that it’s so consistently outrageous. There really isn’t a dull moment here. Fragasso’s bungling of nearly every aspect of filmmaking creates a kind of comedic snowball effect—the laughs get bigger and bigger as the plot grows increasingly incoherent. Did I mention that Joshua saves the day with a double-decker bologna sandwich?

Troll 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Well, color me chlorophyll green and call me Creedence Leonor Gielgud—Troll 2 and Blu-ray actually make fine bedfellows. MGM has given this piece of "vicious, stinky excrement"—to borrow a quote—a satisfying 1080p/AVC-encoded, 1.85:1-framed transfer. Granted, you won't exactly be wowed by the high definition image on display, but Troll 2 looks far better than you'd ever think possible. Compared to the murky, smeary DVD release —which is charming in its own craptastic way—the Blu-ray presents a terrific leap in clarity. It's rarely sharp sharp, but then again, this is Troll 2, not freaking Avatar, and the level of detail we get here is more than enough. (With an image this clear, the cheapo papier-mâché goblin masks look more laughably ridiculous than ever.) Skintones err on the ruddy side, but otherwise, color is great as well, with an obvious prevalence of gross-out greens. Blacks, especially during the nighttime scenes, are more of a soupy gray than anything, but contrast is stable and the picture has a surprising amount of pop at times. Furthermore, the grain structure looks natural and besides some light noise, there are no real compression-related problems. So, it's apparently not true what they say—you can polish a turd.

Troll 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's with nearly the same amount of surprised satisfaction that I approach the film's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which certainly ain't no sonic smorgasbord, but manages to sound better than it has any right being. MGM has taken the movie's original mono soundtrack and mildly expanded it into a multi-channel presentation. I only caught one or two distinct cross-channel movements throughout—the most notable being the family minivan zipping through the rears—but surround speakers occasionally broadcast ambience, like buzzing insects, tweeting birds, and the gurgle of cauldrons in Creedence Gielgud's cheesy lair. The most indelible, awesomely awful aspect of the track, though, is the completely helter-skelter score, which lurches from fist-pumping butt-rock with face-melting guitar solos, to wonky synthesizer tunes and plucky banjos. None of this is what you might call dynamically rich, but there aren't any crackles, hisses, or dropouts, so that's something. A few snatches of dialogue get lost in the shuffle, but most of the time you'll have no trouble hearing the actors, with all the passion of cardboard cutouts, spouting their increasingly stupid lines.

Troll 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

How brain-meltingly awesome would it have been if MGM had somehow obtained the rights to Mike T. Nelson's "RiffTrax" for Troll 2? Or, better yet, had incorporated Best Worst Movie in this release? Alas, the sole supplement here is a high definition theatrical trailer (2:19).

Troll 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Troll 2 is not so much a film as it is an experience. Few movies are so unremittingly—and naively—awful as to go beyond "so bad it's good" and create a whole new level of unintentional hilariousness. This one very well could be the Best Worst Movie, and it certainly deserves its cult following. There's simply nothing like it. Bravo to MGM for seeing that the film has a dedicated fan base and putting out a Blu-ray release that—minus a lack of substantial bonus features—deserves a place on the shelf of every compulsive collector of cinematic oddities. Bizarrely recommended!