Sometimes you find a film that is a comedic treasure. Each line is hilarious. Scenes build one on top of each other increasing the level of entertainment. Right when you think it can't outdo itself it does just that. That is this film. However, it's supposed to be scary so it does so with sheer awfulness.
Seth (Robert Ormsby) tells his grandson Joshua (Michael Stephenson) a horrifying fairy tale of a young man who dresses a lot like Peter Pan that is seduced by a beautiful freckled girl. He should have known something was wrong when he saw that those freckles are clearly painted on. The girl is in cahoots with goblins who make green ooze flow out of the young man's pores. The tale is a warning to the young boy who is going on vacation in the country with his family. Of yeah, grandpa is also dead.
Joshua's father Michael (George Hardy) is going to make sure that his family has fun as they trade homes with complete strangers cast right out of CHILDREN OF THE CORN. Joshua's mother Diana (Margo Prey), with her permanent dead stare smile, goes along with her husband as if she is brainwashed. Holly (Connie Young), Joshua’s older sister, is upset that her boyfriend Elliott (Jason Wright) chose his loser friends over coming along with her family.
The town where they are staying is called Nilbog, a farming town where they eat thick rancid milk and vegetables covered in what looks like pastel-colored cake icing. The food is tainted and will either turn the eater into a vegetarian zombie like the townsfolk or make them ooze green goo and transform into a tree or you could just melt into a sickening Jell-O green cottage cheese. The mythology is never consistent. Director Claudio Fragasso and his co-writer Rossella Drudi couldn’t make up their mind on their villain either. We have little people in bad Halloween masks as goblins. We have Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed), the bespectacled Druid witch in the forest. We also have the meat-hating preacher Bells (Mike Hamill), who looks like an early ‘80s pro wrestler awkwardly dressed up in a suit.
Vegetarians as vicious killers is hilarious. But nothing beats Creedence seductively dancing with an ear of corn in order to lure in one of Elliott’s horny teen friends. It gets so hot that that corn pops. So what weapon do you use against them, but a double bolonga sandwich.
The perfunctory dialogue is in the same league as Ed Wood. Each actor has a special way of mangling it too. Stephenson yells every line in a squeaky voice. Hardy puts dire emphasis in the most innocuous statement. "We have video!" is screamed in order to ensure the disinterested guests from Nilbog that their house will be fun. Prey is like a monotone robot. Reed's character might not eat meat, but the scenery is fine. The entire production has the quality of amateur theater from the stiff performances to the overdone stage lighting to cheap effects.
Even the title is hilariously inept when you think that no one mentions a troll in the entire film. The name was tacked on after the distribution company thought it could market it better as a sequel. Ironically this is the TROLL film that people remember. Well at least people who love bad films. BEST WORST MOVIE chronicles this film's surprising fanbase. So it holds a rare place in movie history along with Ed Wood's work as an awful film that has inspired a good film. MONSTER A-GO-GO can't say that.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
