So this is the movie that brings me out of my semi-retirement. Troll 2. Believe it or not, I've tried multiple times over the last year or so to get back into writing this blog. I tried with Selena. I tried with GoodFellas. The People Under the Stairs. Ax 'Em. I just couldn't get into the groove. A mixture of life-altering events combined with my annoying mental issues has made writing a hard thing for me. But I got a recent creativity boost while writing something for a friend, which reminded me that I actually CAN do this reasonably enough. And then I watched a movie that I just NEED to talk about. Troll 2.
Now, at least 60% of you probably know all about Troll 2. It's famous for being one of the best worst movies of all time. There's even a documentary made about this movie called Best Worst Movie. Before watching it for the first time, I'd seen all the memes and watched a lot of internet reviewers make fun of and comment on this movie. But honestly, if you haven't seen it, you STILL don't know what you're getting yourself into, because there's no way those videos can quite do it justice. So for the interest of the 40% that know nothing about this movie, and for my enjoyment of writing, I'm going to continue as if you the reader know nothing of the glory of Troll 2.
This is normally the part where I'd try to talk about the cast and director. It was written and directed by Claudio Fragasso with his wife Rossella Drudi helping with the story. The movie stars Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Connie McFarland, Jason Wright, and Darren Ewing, among others. Sometimes with these awful movies, you get an actor or actress who went on to bigger and greater things. Jennifer Anniston in Leprachan. Clint Eastwood in the sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm St. But no one from this went on to be a star. Some did other acting work, but no one became famous for their acting. I'm not trying to be mean, but no one in this pulls a performance that I would say is solid. Michael is the closest, as he isn't that bad for a child actor, but he also isn't great. But at least everyone is trying their best. They're failing, but there's something to be said about the effort. And again, I'm not trying to be mean. Everyone in this seems like a genuinely nice person, but even they will admit that their performances leave much to be desired.
Now, onto the story. And don't worry if you don't know what happens in the first Troll movie, because these movies have basically nothing to do with each other. There are some very loosely connected plot points, but this movie was originally called "Goblins" and the studio changed it to cash in on the "success" of the first Troll movie. So now that we have that out of the way...
The movie kicks off with a medieval peasant running through the woods, away from these little monsters. They are some of the dumbest-looking monsters I've ever seen. Just a bunch of actors with terribly painted masks and burlap sacks. A narrator explains that this young man is running away from a pack of Goblins. He trips in the woods and gets knocked out. He wakes up to see a beautiful blonde-haired girl, with the fakest freckles I've ever seen, sitting with him. He immediately falls in love with her and eats this disgusting-looking green goop that she feeds him. He eagerly laps it up and he starts sweating green slime (a recurring thing in this movie) before he turns him into green mush. The girl, it's revealed, was a goblin in disguise the whole time! And now that he's this green mush, the goblins eat him. See, they're actually vegetarian goblins, but they only feed on people who have been turned into plants, not actual plants.
This whole opening is just a bedtime story, being read to a young boy named Joshua Waits (Michael Stephenson) by his Grandpa Seth (Robert Ormsby). And here I gotta take a quick moment to point out that the set designers had no idea what they were doing. The kid has sports team pendants, from multiple teams, from different parts of the country. Detroit Pistons, Oakland A's, Cincinnati Reds. What the hell. Obviously from someone who thought "Oh, kids like SPORT so we will put up SPORT STUFF." Sorry, those kinds of things really distract me and take me out. Not that being taken out of this movie is hard. Anyway! We are treated to this brilliant, non-confusing line of dialogue. Grandpa Seth: "These evil creatures can transform themselves into flesh-and-blood people whenever and however they want." Joshua: "You're making a mistake Grandpa. You said they can? You should have said they could or what kind of fairy tale is it?" Grandpa Seth: "They can! They CAN! Goblins still exist! Your Grandpa Seth is telling you!" It makes sense when you read it, but trust me, when you HEAR it, it makes you go "Wait, what did he just say?" At this moment, Joshua's mom, Diana (Margo Prey) walks in, asking him why he's still awake. Joshua tells her that he was listening to a bedtime story. Mom reminds Joshua that Grandpa Seth has been dead for six months! So it was all in Joshua's head! She goes downstairs to sit with her husband, Michael (George Hardy) who is super excited. See the next day, they are taking a month-long, house exchange vacation to the cozy little town of Nilbog, population 26 people!
We then come to one of my favorite parts of the movie. The family's daughter, Holly (Connie McFarland) is working out, pumping weights in her room, listening to some high-intensity 80s music. She doesn't notice when a boy climbs through her window, up a ladder, and sneaks up on her while she's lifting a dumbbell on a weight bench. Now, anyone with some basic understanding of working out should know it's a bad idea to spook someone lifting weights like that. But he does it anyway, and she's okay, so whatever. Turns out this is her boyfriend Elliott (Jason Wright) and she elbows him in the crotch. His response is "Owww! Are you trying to turn me homo?" Bah, what? How does that...? She then lectures him on how her Dad will be pissed if he finds him here (understandable) saying "he'd cut off your little nuts and eat them" and that he doesn't like him because he has friends (what?). "What's wrong with having friends?" he asks. A reasonable question. "Nothing, if you want to stay a virgin" is her response. I don't even understand what's going on here. And then it all makes sense. His three friends all climb the ladder and stick their heads in the window, checking up because they got "bored of waiting for him to come back down." Like three minutes pass, and they're already intruding on his business. "Oh," I tell myself. "THOSE kinds of friends." I've had those before. Now it all makes sense. Holly tells Elliott that they're leaving on vacation in the morning, he cuts a deal that he can come along if he leaves his friends behind.
Jumpcut to the next morning, Holly is crying in the van, because they couldn't wait another 15 minutes for Elliott to show up. Even though they waited an hour and a half for him already. She's crying, Dad is yelling, and Mom's response is to drown it all out. She asks Joshua to "sing that song she likes." He doesn't want to, but she insists, so Joshua starts singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" and the Mom jumps in, excited in that way that you do when you're on Zanex. This family has YEARS of therapy ahead of them already, and we haven't even gotten to the killings yet. It's then revealed that Elliott is going to Nilbog anyway, in an RV, with his three friends. He told them that Nilbog was "full of hot chicks" to get them to come along. Joshua has a goblin-fueled nightmare, wakes up, and thinks he sees his Grandpa on the side of the road. He makes the family stop, runs up to him, and Grandpa tells Joshua that they have to leave! Nilbog is the Kingdom of the Goblins! The illusion is then broken and we see some poor homeless guy standing there. Elliott and his crew are parked someone off the road, next to the woods, having somehow gotten ahead of the Waits family. They're about 200-feet from the road, and down in a ditch, but someone Holly sees them and flips them off as the family van passes by. And somehow Elliott sees it from that distance. And then the family pulls into the peaceful town of Nilbog. And I just want to point out that the movie is only about 15 minutes done at this point. I'm not going to do a shot-by-shot for the whole movie like this, but this opening is important because it sets the tone for the whole movie.
So the family gets to the house they're supposed to live in, and I gotta point out that the locations they picked for filming are actually really beautiful. Morgan, Porterville, and Heber City, Utah, for most of the exterior locations. The house the Waits family is residing in is this beautiful property with a huge pond and it looks awesome. One of the praises I will level at this movie is whoever did the location scouting, good job dude. So back to the movie, they pull up and do the key exchange with the family who lives there, The Pleasents. They are very stoic and annoyed that the Waits family is late. They get in their truck and leave, barely uttering a word. Their little boy tosses a ball at Joshua that has "Eat before we eat you" written on it. Friendly. So they go in the house and the dining room has a full spread of food and drink, it looks all green and sliming, none of it looks actually good, to be honest. Grandpa Seth appears to Joshua in the window, tells him that he can't let his family eat the food, because it will turn them into goblin food! So he freezes time and gives Joshua just five minutes to get his family away from the food. Instead of, oh I don't know... throwing the food away or flipping the table... Joshua decides instead to piss all over the food instead. Yeah, you read that right. You see him unzipping his jeans and it cuts to the family throwing all the food away. Now. Some of them had the food in their hands, next to their mouth, while time was frozen. Did Joshua piss on his family too? We don't know. But Dad carries Joshua up to his room and throw him on the bed. "You can't piss on hospitality! I WON'T ALLOW IT!" he screams at Joshua. He then starts to adjust his belt. Uh oh. "What are you going to do to me, Daddy?" Joshua asks, terrified. "Tightening my belt one loop so that I don't feel hunger pains," is what he responds with. He then grounds Joshua and tells him that "he can outlast him" in starvation or some nonsense.
Next is my other favorite part of the movie, which then leads into its most famous scene. Back in the RV, Elliott and his dumb friends are watching a movie on TV. The movie they're watching has a gorilla, grabbing an egg, turning into a rocket, and then blasting off. I want you to read that sentence again. This is a completely accurate assessment of this clip. It's live-action and from another movie, which I'll discuss later. It's just such a confusing and confounding thing to include in Troll 2, much like most of what's in this movie.
The friends are laughing at the movie, except for one. A kid with glasses named Arnold (Darren Ewing). Arnold decides to go take a walk and try to find some of the "hot chicks" he was promised. He finds a girl in the woods, sweating some green slime. She says that she ate some food and is being chased by some goblins. We then see a group of goblins come out of the woods. Arnold decides to play hero and instead of running decides to WALK OVER TO THEM TO TALK TO THEM. "Let me give you some helpful advice, you... dwarves. Get out of here... or you will be in a lot of trouble." he delivers flatly and then winks at the girl. Next thing you know, Arnold gets his shoulder impaled by a spear thrown from the goblins. Like what did you f'n think was going to happen, idiot. I can't wait to see him die. He and the girl run through the woods and find his creepy church. Thinking it's a "house" they go inside, only to meet an old druid witch (Deborah Reed). Instead of running, which would be the sensible thing, they drink some "healing" broth from the witch, which starts turning the girl into the vegetable goo. It freezes Arnold on the spot and he watches as goblins show up to eat the girl. This is when he utters the movie's most famous line of dialogue.
"They're eating her! And then they're going to eat me!"
"Oh my GAAAWWWD!"
Priceless.
Image by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios via Pop Culture Historian
Back with the Waits family, we get a confusing scene where Holly is doing some weird dance in front of the mirror when, suddenly, Grandpa Seth shows up in the mirror, asking for Joshua. So now we know that Joshua isn't crazy. Then the next morning, the family decides they should go into town and get some food since there is none except for some warm, chunky Nilbog Milk. Delicious. At the same time, one of the other friends, Drew (Jason Steadman) decides to take a jog into town to get them some food as well. Because they came up in an RV and didn't pack food because they're idiots. So he jogs through the woods and onto the road, where the friendly local Sherrif (Gary Carlston), whose name is Gene Freak, shows up and offers to give him a ride. The Sherrif gives Drew a slimy green sandwich, which he devours, and rides in the police car (with obvious Nilbog Police stickers on the side) to the general store. Drew asks the Sherrif where all the girls are, which causes him to laugh out loud and pull away. A bunch of townsfolk creepily stand outside and stare at Drew as he walks into the store. Inside, the owner comes out of the back. He is the CREEPIEST thing in the whole movie, staring at Drew with murderous intent (this wasn't acting, but more on that later). Drew asks for coffee, which makes the owner gag and says "that's the devil's drink." He then asks for bacon and eggs, which makes the owner spit. He tells him that everyone in Nilbog is vegetarian, and gives him a free bottle of Nilbog Milk. Drew leaves and heads back to the RV. We get a quick scene with Drew in the witch's house, where he is turning into a tree, still holding his mug of goblin broth. Shortly, Joshua and Dad arrive in town. The general store is closed with a "back after the sermon" sign. So they decide to wait. Joshua looks in the rearview mirror of the van. He sees the town sign and has a revelation. "Nilbog... It's goblin spelt backwards! This is their kingdom!" Yes, Grandpa Seth's ghost already told you that.
Joshua tries to wake his dad, but he's passed out. So he decides to take his skateboard and look around town. Joshua stakes through the "abandoned" town (it's supposed to be deserted, but you can see cars driving in the background). He comes across what looks like a derelict building and notices a sermon is going on inside. A preacher (Mike Hamill) is leading the townsfolk in a sermon about the evils of meat, and how it leads to high cholesterol and disease. Only with a vegetarian diet can you be pure. Joshua is spying on them but gets caught when he accidentally drops his skateboard into their room. They capture Joshua and try to feed him some gross-looking ice cream. He sees them for the goblins they really are and refuses to eat any. At this point, Dad shows up, sees Joshua being held and screaming then exclaims "What are you doing to my son?" They let him go and the preacher says "We were just trying to give him some ice cream." Dad sees the family they did the house swap with and questions why they are still in Nilbog. "We had car trouble" they stoically answer. The dad takes his explanation but also seems creeped out. Maybe he's beginning to think something is weird. Or maybe it's bad acting. I can't tell.
Back in the woods, Drew is sweating green sweat, He drinks some of the milk, and spits it out because yeah... it's warm and chunky. He stumbles upon the witch's church/house and goes inside. The witch has gone away to take some food to the Waits family. He finds Arnold, still alive, in a pot, turning into a tree. Drew pulls some bark off Arnold's face, causing Arnold to very calmly ask Drew to rescue him. He tries to drag the pot outside, but it's too heavy, and he is turning into a plant himself, so he collapses. The witch comes back, takes a chainsaw to Arnold as punishment, and then turns him into a blended gross green drink for Drew to drink. And that's the last we see of either of them. Next, we find Holly showing up at Elliot's RV and pounds on the door. Elliott comes out, buttoning up his shirt, stammering and nervous. Did she... did she interrupt him and his other friend having sex? We saw them sleeping together earlier, shirtless. These are all visual cues to imply they did the deed. But whatever. Holly is pissed that Elliott came up here with his friends. At which point, Joshua and Dad show up and tell Holly to get in the van. Dad really lets Elliott have it and tells him he can decide between having friends or having Holly. So Elliott decides to leave his buddy, Brent (David McConnell), and go with the Waits family. I know that his friends are terrible friends, but all the dialogue about them sounds like "Elliott, you can't have friends and date a girl" like he can't have friends in general. Which is so hilarious.
Elliott's actor (Jason Wright) is now a New York Times Bestselling Author. No, seriously.
Image by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios via Personality Database
The Waits, and Elliott ("He's family now" Holly tells Mom), get back to the house they're borrowing and find a party is going on. The whole town has shown up! They felt bad about the ice cream incident with Joshua, so they all came with a potluck and everyone is singing and dancing. Joshua is beside himself and Grandpa Seth shows up again to tell him that only Joshua can stop them. Joshua goes outside and Grandpa hands him a god damn MOLOTOV COCKTAIL. He tells him to light it and throw it at the goblins, however, he is stopped by the preacher who steals the cocktail. He then does some magic on Grandpa, sending him, and I quote, "back to hell." Back to hell? Poor old Grandpa Seth was in hell this whole time?! What the hell did he do to get sent to hell? Grandpa starts to fade, tells Joshua that he has to do it himself, but then shoots the cocktail with lightning, which causes the preacher to catch fire. He falls to the ground screaming, which causes Dad to rush out, grab a fire extinguisher that Grandpa Seth had left, and puts the preacher out. But it's too late. All the town folks gather around and as the smoke clears, we see the dead body of a goblin. For the first time, the Dad sees one and knows that Joshua wasn't lying. The Sherrif comes up and tells him. "He was one of us! And YOU killed him! Now we're gonna kill you!" Dad slowly backs up, his whole family coming to his side, and the disguised goblins part and allow the humans to slowly retreat into the house. Why did they let them go? Why not surround them and attack them? Because every character in this movie is stupid.
While this is going on, the witch is in her church/house and praying to the "Lord of the magic rock of Stonehenge!" because she has a rock from Stonehenge in her church/house. Sure, why not. Its magic turns her into a younger, prettier version of herself. We cut to the RV where Brent is watching TV. The image cuts out and we see the witch, in the woods, dancing. We see this on TV while Brent is watching. She starts talking to him, through the TV, and tells him to go outside where she is waiting for him. He doesn't think anything of it or that anything is weird, and he goes outside to meet her. That would freak me the hell out. But I'm not a dork. The witch has a raw ear of corn with her and asks Brent to invite her inside. She starts to seduce him and asks him if he's hungry, while she rubs the ear of corn seductively. He tells her "I like popcorn" and she leans in and they both start eating the ear of corn. Suddenly, popcorn starts popping all around them. Bags and bags worth. Not from the ear of corn, mind you, but from behind the couch they're sitting on and the ceiling and at this point, I have no idea what I'm watching anymore.
But we aren't done yet. Back at the house, it's nighttime and the goblins have not attacked. They are standing outside and the Sherrif shoots a shotgun into the air. He throws a bag of food on the doorstep and tells the Waits to eat it because it will make things easier for them. Inside, they have no idea what to do. So they decide to hold a seance to contact Grandpa Seth. Somehow, despite it being the dumbest looking seance ever, it works. And Grandpa Seth teleports Joshua away and replaces him with a goblin. Geeze, thanks Grandpa. No wonder he's in hell. The goblins attack the Waits now and, instead of being in human form and using the guns that they have, they decide to revert to goblin form and use spears. Okay, whatever. Meanwhile, Joshua wakes up in the witch's church/house and Grandpa Seth's spirit is there. He tells him that they must defeat the goblins by destroying their Stonehedge rock. How do you do that? Simply by touching the rock. Fine. Oh but only someone who is pure of heart can do it. So that disqualifies Grandpa Seth, obviously. He gives Joshua a backpack and tells him not to open it until the right moment. Then they both touch the rock and try to kill it. Grandpa Seth fades away "goodbye forever," he says. Back at the RV, we see Brent waking up and the RV is FULL OF POPCORN. "No more popcorn," he says. He has no slime and we never see him again. Does he live? The witch is outside and we get an unironically cool shot of her looking into a rearview mirror of the RV and screaming because she realizes something is wrong. Then she makes a run for it. The goblins teleport out of the Waits house, mere seconds before they kill everyone. Then they all show up at the witch's church/house. They capture Joshua and corner him and he decides this is the moment to pull out the secret weapon in the backpack. He reaches in to pull out... a double-decker bologna sandwich. He starts to eat it and it grosses out the witch and goblins. "AAAARGGHHH! Don't eat it!" the witch screams. "Think about the fat in your blood! Think about the cholesterol! Think about the toxins!" it's enough to distract them and he can move away, at which time the rest of his family shows up. I guess Grandpa Seth, before he went back to hell, showed up offscreen and told them where Joshua was. Again, what the flying heck did he do to go to hell? Anyway, the whole family touches the magic Stonehedge rock and it destroys the witch and goblins.
Jumpcut to the family returning home, leaving Nilbog far behind. They are all frazzled and showing clear signs of emotional trauma in the van. Dad decides he's going to go to the office. Elliott goes to his home and Holly joins him. This leaves Joshua and Mom to stay home. Mom eats an apple from the fridge and offers one to Joshua, who jokes that he's done with plants forever. Mom says she's going to shower and Joshua goes to his room. His skateboard that he left in the Nilbog church is in the background, but I assume that's just another continuity error. Joshua thinks he hears something and he goes to check on his mom. He goes downstairs and a baseball bounces down to him. "Yummy! Mom is so good!" is written on the ball. Joshua goes into a panic and starts screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" while running through the house. He goes into the bathroom and finds the shower is...... FULL OF GREEN SLIME! OH NO! He then runs to the kitchen to find that Mom has been TURNED TO GREEN SLIME! And some goblins are eating her! (I gotta point out that, while most of her body is melted, her breasts and nipples are fully defined). This is probably the family the Waits did the house swap with since I don't remember seeing them at the end of the movie. One of them looks at Joshua, his mouth full of green slime, and says "Do you want some, Joshua?" and then starts laughing. Fade to black. Why didn't these goblins die when the stone was destroyed? Who knows. The movie never explains. And that's the ending.
Oh boy. Where to begin. So, there are different categories of bad movies. This is not bad like The Room or Manos Hands of Fate is bad. Nor is it like Ax Em or any of the, say, Channel Awesome movies like "To Boldly Flee." Despite some errors, this was a movie that was obviously made with some people who knew how to make movies. A lot of the cinematography is good, some of the shots, in particular, are really nice. The location scouting is excellent. But the costumes are abysmal, the script horrible, and the casting atrocious. One of the people who helped write the script, Drudi, wrote the goblins to be vegetarians because a lot of her friends had become vegetarian and it pissed her off. Petty?
The movie was made on a budget of $100,000 and it shows. Though to me, that's no excuse, since Robert Rodriguez did El Mariachi on $7,000, and it's extremely watchable and enjoyable. I couldn't find any box office information on Troll 2, it looks like it had a very limited theatrical run, gaining its notoriety on HBO and home video in the 90s and the Internet in the 2000s.
I'm going to talk briefly about Best Worst Movie, since it came out in 2009, I'm not going to do a full review on it. But if you want an idea of the fan base for this movie, and see what the cast is up to, it's a good watch. It was created and directed by Michael Stephenson, who played Joshua in Troll 2. Man, he grew up to be HOTT. The main focus is on George Hardy, who runs a successful dental practice in Alabama. Most of the cast of Troll 2 is in this and everyone seems very cool and down to earth. Except for the director, acts like a complete asshole. But if you've seen Troll 2, you need to watch this, it will make so many things from the movie make sense, and is a highly entertaining watch.
Darren Ewing, who played "OH MY GOD" Arnold, seems to have taken to his status as a meme. He did one of those ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos a few years ago, standing in a pot and holding some twigs, while he got the ice water poured on him. And yes, he did scream "OH MY GAWD" when it hit him. There's also a hilarious video of him interviewing Patton Oswalt at the Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City, bringing a review of Troll 2 that Oswalt posted on his blog, and giving him a shirt. Once Oswalt realizes who's interviewing him he gets SUPER excited, steals the mic, and says "I'm way more excited to meet you than you are to meet me!" He then hits him with a barrage of Troll 2 questions, which Darren is more than happy to answer.
A sad story about the making of this movie involved Don Packard, who played the general store owner. He was actually a patient at a local mental institution, suffering from severe anxiety and depression. He got the chance to be in this movie and they shot all of his scenes in one day. If you watch the film, he looks murderously creepy. And according to him, that's just the way he was at the time. Mentally ill and smoking an enormous amount of pot before shooting. He was in the scene where the townspeople were trying to force-feed the ice cream to Joshua, and Don really wanted to shove the disgusting food into Joshua's mouth, because he hated the kid. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing or what was happening around him. He hadn't ever even seen the movie until 20 years after it was finished. On one level, he cringes when he sees it. Because it reminds him of how he was at that point in his life. He is much better today and before you get mad at Troll 2 for taking advantage of someone with a mental handicap (which it did) you should understand that while Don cringes at himself, he is happy for the attention he receives. He attended a Q&A for the movie, as an audience member, but when the other Q&A members realized he was there, they invited him onto the stage. Don came out and the audience cheered and it made this poor old guy feel good. He enjoys how much other people enjoy this movie and what he did and he credits it with him getting better today. So yes, they absolutely took advantage of him during filming, but for once, it ended up being okay in the end.
Honestly, I'm really glad he got his life pulled together. His performance was memorable.
Image by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios via IMDB
Most of the cast of the movie had no idea what was going on since only one member of the all-Italian crew could kinda speak English. The cast claims that the scripts were in broken English and made no sense. They tried to modify some of Holly's lines, which the director responded with "I know how teenage American girls talk." All of these stories are supported by every other cast member, but Fragasso has since claimed they were lying and called them "dogs." I should also point out that he was confused and angry when someone asked him "Why are there no trolls in Troll 2?" Honestly, he's the only one in Best Worst Movie that comes out looking like a complete asshole.
Sadly, most of the shooting locations are gone. TheDailyWoo did a video where he tried to track the spots down. The house with the pond? Gone. The abandoned building where the sermon was being held? Gone. The witch's church/house? Still around, but most of it has crumbled. The main street is still there, while the inside of the general store looks a little different inside, the fronts of the buildings have been mostly unchanged. The local residents seem to be proud of their local infamy, holding an event called "Nilbog Invasion" in 2007.
So once again, this movie has no connection to Troll, which came out in 1986. Nor does it have any connection to Troll 3. Either of them. That's right, there are TWO different Troll 3 movies. Both were produced by Joe D'Amato, a producer on Troll 2. The first Troll 3 is more commonly known as Quest for the Mighty Sword but is also known as Ator III: The Hobgoblin or The Hobgoblin. This means it is also the fourth Ator movie (don't ask). It recycles the horrible goblin costumes from Troll 2 but is unrelated otherwise. It's a sword and sorcery fantasy film. The other Troll 3 came out in 1993 and was also called Contamination .7 (that's right Contamination POINT 7), The Crawlers, and Creepers. It's a movie about killer plants near a nuclear power plant. No connection to anything else. Doing research for this post revealed that they did, eventually, make a sequel to Troll 2 called Under ConTroll. It came out in 2019 and has George Hardy reprise as Michael Waits. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like it has a budget.
Oh yes, and the movie within a movie. The egg and gorilla scene. It's from a 1983 Italian caveman comedy called Grunt! and it also looks terrible. Cinemassacre did a whole video on tracking this movie down and a synopsis on it, which you can see here.
Final Thoughts
I almost gave this movie one star, but it was so hilariously bad, I couldn't give it that low. It is a bad movie, make no mistake about it. But it is highly entertaining. If you hate watching AWFUL movies to laugh at them, steer clear of this. If you do enjoy those kinds of films, you've probably seen Troll 2 already, but if not, do so right away. Just remember not to talk or text while watching, it's like pissing on hospitality!
This guy was my favorite one. Look how his eye is about to pop out!
Image by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios via Mental Floss
But again, this is all just my opinion. Your may differ. Let me know if you watch it or have seen it and what your favorite parts (if any) were. You can find where Troll 2 is streaming on JustWatch. And also, you can see where Best Worst Movie is streaming here.
So yes, I'm back writing, at least for now. I had fun writing this, which is important because I wasn't having fun when I tried to get back into this blog. I know I'm not famous. No more than maybe 2-3 people care that I'm doing this. But this is important for me, I feel an outlet to express myself is necessary.
Check back in a couple of days, I'm going to take a look at the first Troll movie, Troll which came out in 1986. I *might* do both Troll 3 movies after, but the first one is for sure next. Until next time...
