‘Troll 2’ or — Vegetarian Holocaust?
I’d heard for years that ‘Troll 2’ (1990) was one of the worst movies ever made, although considering how much low-budget, god-awful Italian trash I’ve watched recently I knew it would have to be something truly special to live up to that title. So is ‘Troll 2’ the best worst movie ever made? Let’s find out!
If you haven’t seen ‘Troll 2’ then it’s about… actually, I don’t want to describe or explain what the movie is about as part of the fun, in fact possibly the only fun, is discovering just how bonkers and ridiculous this film is as it unfolds before your eyes. There are so many moments are that boggle the mind it’s jaw-dropping. Instead I want to have a look at what might lie behind the appeal and popularity of the movie and I think it’s down to two specific aspects.
Firstly, ‘Troll 2’ isn’t thaaaaaaaaaaaaaat badly made. I know! This really surprised me considering its reputation but trust me, there are many more god-awful films out there (‘Shark Exorcist’? ‘Love Actually’?) that are tougher to sit through and more excruciating. ‘Troll 2’ isn’t at the level of being so technically incompetent it’s unwatchable and even contains a couple of flourishes of decent filmmaking. Personally I really liked the way the evil Witch, in full Kate Bush, mode has her hand chopped off, jumps through a window which reconfigures itself behind her and teleports back to her lair. It was genuinely inventive. And the film isn’t lacking in energy, rattling along at a fair clip and it most certainly never commits the worst crime a movie can commit which is to become boring. As I said, there are many more offensively bad movies out there.
And that’s possibly the second reason ‘Troll 2’ “works — it’s not offensive. The tone throughout is one of consistent silliness, inadvertent or not, and combine that with an almost total lack of blood and gore and this could almost be a kid’s film. Yes, people are killed but considering the hook is that they are turned into plant-matter first (apparently trolls are vegetarians so I guess this film is offensive if you’re a hipster vegan) it’s all green goo that’s getting splattered about rather than the red stuff. This is a horror film a family could watch together and all find something to laugh at.
And that humour in ‘Troll 2’ comes very much from the staggering excess of incongruity. Every moment, every piece of dialogue or line reading is just that bit off-kilter or bizarre that it’s genuinely baffling… and that’s a hard tonal balance to achieve. Many comedy films strive for that sweet-spot of oddness and miss by a mile. It’s almost as though you can only hit it by not aiming directly for that particular target. This also adds to the incongruity as you are never quite sure when ‘Troll 2’ is trolling or not. Sometimes it is an authentic comedy (it does start off with a parody of ‘The Princess Bride’ after all) and is self-aware yet, more often than not, we’re laughing at the movie falling flat on its face or tripping up over its own tangled celluloid. And it’s funny as hell.
So is this the “best worst movie ever made”? In my opinion — no. It feels a little too self-aware and has the occasional (and I mean VERY occasional) flash of semi-decent direction by director Drake Floyd whose real name is… Claudio Fragasso… meaning that… Hang on! This IS an Italian movie!!!!
Yep, ‘Troll 2’ is an Italian film in disguise with the Italian crew anglicising their names to appeal to the American market. And I think this is where that magical incongruity stems from as it appears the actors (nearly all amateur) were given hastily translated script pages by a crew who barely spoke English and even when they complained that their lines didn’t make sense were told to read them as written anyway. Thank god for things being lost in translation. Plus, it also seems the entire film was made because the director’s wife was getting pissed off with her all friends becoming vegetarians and banging on about it (whether you agree with her or not you have to admit she was ahead of the curve with that one) so got her husband to make the movie out of… carnivorous spite? Films are made for many reasons but this might be a first.
‘Troll 2’ is a lot of baffling fun and being oddly good-natured in tone it’s never a chore to sit through. It’s cheap, silly and, possibly, the only gross-out horror film for the whole family. Except maybe if you’re vegetarian.
