Troll 2 (1990)

This movie is so bad, I find mere words inadequate to convey the magnitude of its pure, unadulterated sucktitude.

The first thing you should know is that this film has no trolls whatsoever in it, despite the title, and furthermore is entirely unrelated to its putative predecessor, the 1986 fantasy Troll.

Instead we find an ordinary suburban family that decides to exchange houses for a week with a family from the mysteriously named town of "Nilbog" (its not really that mysterious - think back to the "backwards days" of your youth).

It turns out that the friendly people of this seemingly quaint town are all actually goblins (if you can accept children wearing rubber masks to be goblins). And nobody but the young boy of the family (and his demonic, deceased, hell-residing grandfather) can recognize the truth, even when the young lad repeatedly points out that "Nilbog is 'goblin' spelled backwards!"

But now these are not just any goblins. Nay, these are vegetarian goblins - they eat people of course, being goblins after all, but first they have to turn them into living vegetables by feeding them special green goop. Naturally, the ultimate weapon against these meat-fearing creatures is the mighty double-decker baloney sandwich.

It would be an injustice to the efforts of the people involved in creating this film to say that it fails utterly in every conceivable category of cinematic achievement. Better to say that it succeeds brilliantly at achieving the highest degree of failure possible. It is pointless to discuss plot when the movie so consistently defies any rational expectation of what might happen next. The ludicrously tragic ending (and I only say "ending" because the movie stops at that point for some reason) seems to have no connection with what came before.

The dialogue is a continuous stream of baffling non sequiters badly dubbed onto the flapping lips of some of the worst actors in the history of humanity (although in their defense, they were apparently selected at random from the ordinary citizens of Salt Lake City, where the film was made). The editing meanwhile, seems like the product of a randomized computer program, with some truly bizarre cuts, the soundtrack is wholly unconnected to the "action" on the screen and was seemingly composed on a $50 Casio keyboard, and the costumes ("designed" by Italian pornstar Laura Gemser aka "Emanuelle") appear to have been scrounged from your grandmother's closet.

Upon seeing Troll 2, many people are struck by the notion that they could have done the exact same thing with their home camcorder and a few friends. But they could not be more wrong. It could only have required a precise alignment of the heavens, the acquiescence of the gods, and the will of the Fates to produce a masterwork so perfectly attuned to the Platonic ideal of Failure. Only the exact people who made this movie could have achieved this, and they were born to do it.

Credits:

Director: Claudio Fragasso (as "Drake Floyd")
Screenplay: Claudio Fragasso (as "Drake Floyd")
Original Score: Carlo Maria Cordio
Cinematography: Joe D'Amato (as "Federiko Slonisko")

Cast:

Michael Stephenson - Joshua
George Hardy - Michael
Margo Prey - Diana
Connie McFarland - Holly
Robert Ormsby - Grandpa Seth
Deborah Reed - Creedence
Jason Wright - Elliott
Darren Ewing - Arnold
Jason Steadman - Drew
David McConnell - Brent
Gary Carlson - Sheriff Freak
Mike Hamill - Bells
Don Packard - Drugstore Owner
Christina Reynolds - Cindy
Glenn Gerner - Peter
Michele Abrams - Wood Tales Girl
Lance Williams - Father Bog
Melissa Bridge - Daughter