Review of Troll 2 (1990) by Willis H — 09 Oct 2010

Best worst movie? Where to start? It's true; no actual trolls appear in this movie. The antagonists are goblins. The title was chosen to link it to 1986's "Troll". The goblin costumes (designed by an adult actress who apparently moonlights as a costume designer/makeup artist) are just burlap bags. The goblin masks look like something from the bargain bin at the local Halloween shop. Only one of the goblin masks has a movable mouth. None of the "actors" in the movie had any appreciable acting experience. For some, like the particularly atrocious bug-eyed mom character Diana (Margo Prey) this was their first and last movie. If the delivery of the lines was awful, the actual script/dialogue is no better. Written by the Italian Claudio Fragasso (English is NOT his first language) the wording of even simple phrases sounds bizarre and forced. The actors offered to ad lib some of the lines but Fragasso refused, insisting they deliver the lines as written. The soundtrack is basically a few synthesizer notes repeated over and over again. There's more green vomit than on St. Patrick's Day, and McCormick's stock must have gone up for a few weeks from all the green food coloring that had to be purchased to make this movie. Every time lightning is supposed to strike, there's a cutaway to an animated lightning bolt sequence that looks nothing like the real thing. Few are prepared for the über-hammy performance of Deborah Reed as "Creedence Leonore Gielgud" (with an accent that's not quite French, not quite Romanian, and not quite Slavic), the ad hoc leader ("Ow-ur qu-een") of the goblins of "Nilbog" ("Goblin", spelled backwards, get it?).

The plot is pretty stupid if simple enough. There's a race of beings called goblins that likes to eat humans partially transformed into plants (makes sense so far, right?). We learn this because the protagonist Joshua's dead grandfather (Seth) tells him this. Only Josh can see his recently departed grandfather's ghost. His family thinks Josh is disturbed for seeing his grandfather's ghost everywhere, but as his mother puts it to him, his death was: "very difficult for your father, for Holly, and for me his daughter." For some reason, Joshua's parents decide to visit the town of Nilbog (presumably in Utah) for vacation. The parents (Michael and Diana Waits), Josh, and Josh's sister Holly set off for Nilbog, as does Holly's boyfriend Elliot and his three friends (Brent, Drew, and Arnold), going there on their own in an RV. On the way there, Joshua's grandfather warns him about Nilbog. Josh tries to tell his family about goblins and the danger of Nilbog, but to no avail. The Waits family arrives without incident, but Elliot and his friends in the RV are waylaid. At the house that they're staying at, the Waitses find food has been left for them. Josh's grandfather warns him to stop his family from eating it as it will transform them into half-human/half-plant creatures that serve as goblin food...so he does this by urinating on the food in front of his family, prompting the line from his father: "You can't piss on hospitality! I WON'T ALLOW IT!".

In the meantime Arnold (who had strayed from the RV) meets a terrified young woman fleeing from goblins. The goblins attack the both of them, so they run into what looks like a converted church. The interior of the church (really a home, as we find out) has weird plants, a mad scientist-type laboratory, and a giant stone trilith. They meet a bizarre-looking woman ("Creedence Leonore Gielgud" whose ancestors came "from Stonehenge") with an implacable accent. They ask her for help, and she offers them mugs of some liquid to drink. The liquid transforms them into half-human/half-plant creatures. The unnamed young woman, who had already been exposed to the goblin potions before, quickly transforms into a gooey, lichen-like mass as goblins begin filling the room...they start devouring her voraciously, cuing the next truly memorable line in the movie, when Arnold screams: "They're eating her...and then they're going to eat me...OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!".

Josh finally figures out the town's name is an anagram: "Nilbog! It's goblin spelled backwards! This is their kingdom!" Trying to get food at the local store, one of Elliot's friends has a bizarre conservation with the general store owner when he asks for meat and eggs: "Are you crazy, boy? We're vegetarians here in Nilbog. Didn't you know that? Here's some Nilbog milk. Special milk. High in vitamin content. Here, it's free." Coffee, apparently, is also "The Devil's Drink". Meanwhile, Josh spies on one of the goblin's "sermons", where the evils of humanity and meat eating are expounded upon. The goblins catch him, and try to force him to eat ice cream laced with the transformative substances. Joshua's father stops them from doing this, not really understanding yet what was going on. Back at the RV, Creedance deals with Elliot's last remaining friend, by seducing him (in an attractive form) and drowning him in popcorn. Yes, you read that correctly.

The Waitses return to the house to find the Nilbog-folk have decided to throw them a surprise party ('to make up for the misunderstanding'), complete with all sorts of food. Josh's grandfather appears again. The goblin "preacher" is by this point "on" to the grandfather's ghost, and tries to banish him to Hell with a magic incantation. But grandpa Seth is able to start the preacher on fire using magic (to make a Molotov cocktail explode). We find out how he learned this magic: "a friend of mine who went there (to Hell) taught me!"...presumably, Satan. As the goblin preachers' body burns, Josh's father runs outside and tries to put it out, only to see the burned corpse is distinctly non-human looking. He realizes his son has been telling the truth the whole time. Their cover blown, the goblins trap the family in the house. The family decides to hold a séance to bring back Josh's grandfather's ghost (who had been banished to Hell). The séance is a success. Joshua and his grandfather try to destroy "The Stonehenge magical stone... the goblins' magic power!", i.e., the stone trilith we saw earlier in Creedance's house. They do this by touching the stone and "concentrating hard". Josh is also able to distract the goblins by eating a bologna sandwich...the sight of a human eating meat so disgusts the goblins that Creedance cannot harm him.

Then there's a "twisty" ending with some additional green grossness in case you didn't get enough already.

The strangest thing about this movie may be the continual string of non-sequiturs. We see "Nilbog milk" but we never find out why it's there or what it's supposed to do (It presumably doesn't aid in the vegetable-morph process). We never learn about grandpa's powers, why he's unable to stop the family from eating bad food yet is able to hack a goblin with an axe through a mirror later and produce a Molotov cocktail to hurl at the goblin preacher.

It goes without saying this movie is "bad", like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" or "Manos: The Hands of Fate" level of bad, but it's still very entertaining and doesn't really drag on (thank goodness for small favors!). This movie is so horrible that every adult should be required by law to see it at least once. Newer DVD players are actually being coded to reject this movie upon reading it. Two stars for being entertaining. I'd rather watch this five times in a row than watch "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" ever again.