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I saw the original Troll many many moons ago, in the mythical faraway fantasy age of the late eighties, and it\u2019s probably my favourite Harry Potter movie of all time. Har-Har. Go to the film\u2019s IMDb page and look up the names of the characters to understand my rapier wit sarcasm. Troll stars Michael Moriarty, Noah Hathaway, Sony Bono, June Lockhart, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, and Phil Fondacaro. A pretty solid cast. It was directed by late great special effects artist John Carl Buechler and was written by the legendary Ed Naha. Google him, you\u2019ll see why I call Naha legendary. The original film even has a kinda sorta naked Elaine Benes in a few scenes. What\u2019s not to like? So today, of course, I\u2019m going to review it\u2019s sequel Troll 2. Sigh.<\/p>\n
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Just so you know, I did not see the documentary BEST WORST MOVIE. From what I hear it\u2019s a very loving look back at both the making of Troll 2 and it\u2019s legacy as a bad movie staple. I probably should watch it, but I just haven\u2019t had time. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s wonderful. These sorts of things often are.<\/p>\n
Now, with that out of the way, let us focus our attention on this terrible tortuous trashy sequel. Unlike a lot of the movies I\u2019ve reviewed for BAD MOVIE MONDAY I never saw Troll 2 when it came out on home video. Nor did I see it years later on my own. First time I ever laid eyes on the thing was last week. It was an experience, I\u2019ll tell you that.<\/p>\n
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SYNOPSIS: <\/strong>\u201cA suburban family exchanges houses with a rural farming family for a month. However, Joshua, the suburban family\u2019s young son, is told by his ghostly and perhaps demonic grandfather Seth to stay away. The strange little town they\u2019re going to stay in, Nilbog, is inhabited by vegetarian Goblins who want to turn his family into plants and eat them. However, no matter how hard he tries, nobody will listen to the boy\u2019s warnings.\u201d<\/p>\n Yeah, that sounds about right. That\u2019s the gist of it anyway. Well<\/em>…<\/strong> there\u2019s more piss humour, but I\u2019ll let you discover that on your own.<\/p>\n First impressions were rather positive. I don\u2019t know if it was the transfer or what, but this really looks like some care was put into it. It\u2019s not just thrown together The first few scenes between the kid and his dead grandfather\u2019s ghost are rather well done. There\u2019s energy and cleverness. The kid isn\u2019t the greatest actor, but he\u2019s a kid. It\u2019s his first movie and he\u2019s doing the best he can. I\u2019ve certainly seen a lot worse from a lot older and far more experienced thespians. To be honest, I\u2019m just glad he knows his lines and doesn\u2019t yell all his dialogue. For that alone, I am grateful. The spirit of Lawrence Olivier blessed you, my son.<\/p>\n The story is bonkers and derivative, but I expected that. It\u2019s a Claudio Fragasso film. The man once wrote an Italian dollar store version of Aliens called TERMINATOR II (AKA SHOCKING DARK) which has to be seen to be believed. I\u2019d review that for Bad Movie Monday except there\u2019s only so many ways to say \u201cIt\u2019s just like Aliens, but stupider.\u201d<\/p>\n Anyway, back to Troll 2, I was kind of surprised that there\u2019s no real nudity at all. I think it may have to do with the fact that they shot it in the middle of Utah, and the Mormon\u2019s don\u2019t allow fun. So it\u2019s a weirdly over the top yet subdued film. Gory, in a PG13 way, but with little serious violence. Horny, but sexless. It\u2019s always kind of straddling that very fine line between dirty nasty Italian film and clean cut American film, and it\u2019s kind of fascinating to watch to be honest.<\/p>\n TOP TEN THOUGHTS I HAD WATCHING THIS MOVIE #2 \u2013 The special effects are, um… Well, they\u2019re not good. At the same time. They\u2019re not \u201cbad\u201d either. They look like the things they\u2019re supposed to look like. No one involved should be ashamed of them. They\u2019re just very low budget. Laura Gemser supposedly worked on the costumes. She was Black Emanuelle. Now THOSE are some bad movies you can really sink your teeth into. Mrow!<\/p>\n #3 \u2013 Seriously, this is not a badly written film either. The grandpa ghost advising the boy, the plot about the Goblin queen turning people into vegetable goo so her Goblins can eat them, the weird town of Nilbog and it\u2019s even weirder inhabitants. I very much think that this might arguably have been Claudio Fragasso\u2019s greatest film if he\u2019d had just a bit of a bigger budget and a bit less trouble speaking English so he could have properly expressed what he wanted to his cast and crew.<\/p>\n #4 \u2013 This movie has half a dozen great quotable moments. \u201cYou can’t piss on hospitality! I WON’T ALLOW IT!\u201d, \u201cThis is MYYY HOUSSSSSSSE!\u201d and then simply, the great memeable \u201cThey’re eating her… and then they’re going to eat me… OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!\u201d<\/p>\n #5 \u2013 There was a huge missed opportunity here in not hiring GOBLIN to do the score. Although I think that by 1990 they had broken up.<\/p>\n #6 \u2013 George Hardy, who plays the dad, is a good Tim Thomerson type actor. He eventually became a dentist instead of an actor, which I think was probably better for the world, but I would have loved to have seen him play a grizzled private detective. The man has a face for it.<\/p>\n #7 \u2013 I also think this is a well edited film, all things considered. It\u2019s the near perfect length of 94 minutes with no boring tedious bits and it has a brisk snappy pace. To be honest, what more could you want? You can\u2019t be greedy and ask for more from a cheap Italian film.<\/p>\n #8 \u2013 This movie has none of the weird overdubbing Italian horror movies are usually known for. Not only that, but it does not even attempt to overdub the world \u201cGoblin\u201d with the word \u201cTroll\u201d. I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s because the filmmakers were refusing to break their principles or just being cheap.<\/p>\n #9 \u2013 Like I said before, this movie is oddly PG for an Italian movie, and I think that\u2019s why the teenage daughter doesn\u2019t have much screen time. I\u2019m sure Fragasso wanted to have her and her boyfriend do a few sex scenes to add a little R-rated raunch to the film, but the actress refused and so Fragasso just cut out most of her stuff.<\/p>\n #10 \u2013 Not entirely to do with the movie, but I was just thinking of how hilarious it would be if me and my wife exchanged houses with another family. They wouldn\u2019t need ghosts or goblins to make them run away screaming from my crap shack.<\/p>\n WAS IT REALLY A BAD MOVIE?<\/strong> I saw the original Troll many many moons ago, in the mythical faraway fantasy age of the late eighties, and it\u2019s probably my favourite Harry Potter movie of all time. Har-Har. Go to the film\u2019s IMDb page and look up the names of the characters to understand my rapier wit sarcasm. Troll stars Michael Moriarty, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3070],"tags":[219,349,477,703,922],"class_list":["post-43222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badmoviemonday","tag-comedy","tag-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-mystery","tag-sequel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43222"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43234,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43222\/revisions\/43234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Troll2-4.jpg\")
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\n<\/strong>#1 \u2013 As a professional bad movie watcher, I\u2019m going to cast a verdict on the acting quality and say that it\u2019s really grea… uh, not bad. It\u2019s unrefined, inexperienced, and at times unskilled. However, everyone is giving it their 101% and cranking it up to 11. After a while you get a feel for laziness in bad movies, and I see no evidence of it here. There\u2019s energy and fearlessness and love here, and that is good.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Troll2-3.jpg\")
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\nNaw, this is far from a bad movie and impossibly far from being THE worst movie I\u2019ve ever seen. I mean, I have gazed into the abyss that was THINGS. That changes a man. Makes him hollow inside. Like going to prison for a long time or having sex with a woman called Nasty Linda. You occasionally find yourself sitting naked on the side of your bed in the morning, unable to do more that have ugly flashbacks to the experience. TROLL 2 is just a bit of dumb fun. It has it\u2019s charms and silly bits, and much of it makes you smile at how absurd it all is. It\u2019s an all around good time. So I can\u2019t find much to fault with it other than what I\u2019ve already mentioned. I say check it out. It\u2019s not a \u201cmust see\u201d in my opinion, but it\u2019s an interesting experience if you do.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Troll2-5.jpg\")
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