TROLL 2 (1990) Three stars
It’s about time we get around to discussing the “good” bad movie, because none of the movies I have reviewed before fit the bill for this niche more than TROLL 2.

It took me years to finally watch the full movie, and I watched it twice on Christmas. Two on New Year’s Day for MAD MONKEY KUNG FU, and there you go, I wrote my “How I spent my winter vacation” essay. I’ll leave out the part about the 15 games at the Holiday Classic basketball tournament.

Of course, I had seen the infamous “Oh my God!” scene numerous times and I even watched THE BEST WORST MOVIE, a documentary from several years back on the TROLL 2 phenomenon directed by its child star, Michael Stephenson, all grown up. The documentary allows you to catch up with Darren Ewing, the first-time actor who played Arnold and uttered the line that should have made AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Quotes list. I mean, for crying out loud, couldn’t they have taken away one damn quote from CASABLANCA? Not only Ewing, but we catch up with several of the guilty parties from TROLL 2 in THE BEST WORST MOVIE.

TROLL 2 is not a good movie in any traditional sense of the concept, but it’s such a glorious train wreck that I was always entertained from stem to stern, all 94 glorious minutes. LEONARD PART 6 wishes it was this bad and this good.

We have an Italian director and crew who did not speak fluent English directing and writing an English language film, a ridiculous concept based on the screenwriter’s apparent contempt for vegetarianism (similarities with LEONARD PART 6 afoot), inexperienced and just plain bad actors behind every scene, and even an incompetent title, since TROLL 2 does not bear any direct relation to the 1986 film TROLL other than a marketing attempt by a studio that had no faith in a movie titled GOBLINS. See, there’s no actual trolls in TROLL 2 and its fictional town of “Nilbog,” which is oh wow Holy Toledo “goblin” spelled backwards. Haven’t seen that device for a while. Sheer genius.

Unfortunately, despite the Italian production with director and screenwriter Claudio Fragasso (under the pseudonym Drake Floyd) and vegetarian-hating screenwriter Rossella Drudi, there’s no soundtrack by Goblin, who did the work on several Dario Argento classics.

However, there’s a Boston based folk and punk quartet called Troll 2. On their website, they have releases “Death Magnanimous,” “Inheritance,” and “Nobody Cares.” They play the “Theme from Troll 2” twice on “Death Magnanimous,” their EP released in June 2018.

Lunaris Records released the soundtrack for the film and their hype includes “Composed by Italian maestro Carlo Maria Cordio, the soundtrack offers an eclectic mix of synth, bluegrass, and guitar rock jams.” Only $14! And they even provided samples on their site.

Why, you can’t piss on hospitality!

TROLL 2 was made on an estimated $200,000 budget and I’m not exactly sure where the money went. Oh, sure, probably on the special effects.

It was released October 12, 1990, not sure if that was theatrical or just straight to video infamy. Some of the other movies released that day include THE HOT SPOT, MEMPHIS BELLE, MR. DESTINY, and WELCOME HOME, ROXY CARMICHAEL. A week later, it was NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER, and WHITE PALACE.

I am not even sure that TROLL 2 made back its budget on first release. Not sure that I can even find a non-retrospective review. This is definitely one of those cases where I’d love to go back in time and see people’s original reactions to the movie.

Finding a poster for TROLL 2, I discovered that it says “Celebrate one of the most disrespected horror films in recent history and fall in love with this genuine failure. Troll 2 is coming to EAT a theater near you” at the bottom.

Guess the movie failed instantly and then became a success because it failed on such an epic scale.

On Rotten Tomatoes, there’s one positive review of the movie and 17 negatives, although the blurb for the positive review by Kevin Carr of 7M Pictures goes like “godawfulness in the best way imaginable.” No other movie deserves such a blurb, and the positive review is not very different from the negative ones.

In a 2010 review in the Chicago Reader, J.R. Jones gave TROLL 2 one star and BEST WORST MOVIE two. He attacks the “so bad it’s good” train of thought and starts off with a bang.

“Nobody knows the troubled movies I’ve seen. In the past eight years I’ve reviewed over 2,000 releases for the Reader, and at least half of them were bad. If we assume an average running time of 90 minutes, then since 2002 I’ve spent some 1,500 hours watching bad movies. For that reason I’m relatively immune to the blandishments of midnight-movie fans claiming that some egregious turkey, be it THE APPLE or THE ROOM or XANADU or THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN or PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, is ‘so bad it’s good.’ Life is short, given the choice, I’d rather watch something so good it’s good. I’ve yet to come across a movie so good it’s bad.”

At the start of 2019, TROLL 2 is ranked No. 26 on the IMDb’s Bottom 100. DISASTER MOVIE (2008) currently sits in the top spot and such icons of cinematic badness as No. 2 MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, No. 3 SUPERBABIES: BABY GENIUSES 2, No. 4 THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE, No. 10 SON OF THE MASK, No. 11 FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY, No. 16 BATTLEFIELD EARTH, No. 18 GLITTER, No. 19 GIGLI, and No. 25 JAWS THE REVENGE are “below” TROLL 2.

I am far more forgiving of TROLL 2 than I am, for example, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, a movie that wasted $73 million and still looks like shit. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has four positive reviews and 144 negative; four positives are from Scott Chitwood (IGN Movies), Bob Graham (San Francisco Chronicle), JoBlo (JoBlo’s Movie Emporium), and Luke Y. Thompson (New Times). That’s just more proof that every now and then we all find things in certain movies that many, many, many others do not.

On a certain fundamental level, though, I am sure that I can quote from BATTLEFIELD EARTH just as much as TROLL 2, especially with all them damn references to the home office.

I remember BATTLEFIELD EARTH’s head villain loved to throw around the insult “rat brain.” Oh, how that Terl makes me wanna hurl.

I don’t know, BATTLEFIELD EARTH just made me feel glad that I won’t be alive in the year 3000.

Guess there’s a fundamental difference between an unpleasant bad movie and a pleasant one. You just feel it when you see it. I wanted to flee the multiplex during such cinematic mishaps as WHITE NOISE and THE HAPPENING, but I was gripped and did not want to miss the next potential bad scene or line of dialogue. I mean, I would be punching myself silly had I missed that “What? No!” scene in THE HAPPENING, but, other than that unintentional bit of hilarity, THE HAPPENING was THE CRAPPENING. M. Night Shyamalan’s PRETENTIOUS LOAD OF CRAP.

I knew coming into TROLL 2 that it would be awful, godawful in fact, and it did not disappoint on that level. For that, I give it a positive review. I am glad being in the movie’s not on my résumé, although I’m not sure that I’ll put liking TROLL 2 on mine.