I cannot imagine anyone actually caring if they are spoiled for “Troll 2″, but just in case: SPOILERS
So, here are some facts about this film, taken from its Wikipedia article, in case you are unfamiliar:
- Although produced under the title Goblins, United States distributors were skeptical about the film’s ability to succeed as a standalone picture and renamed it Troll 2 in an attempt to market it as a sequel to the 1986 Empire Pictures film Troll. The two films, however, have no connection, and no trolls are actually depicted in Troll 2.
- The plot concerns a family pursued by vegetarian goblins who seek to transform them into plants so that they can eat them.
- Let’s just see that description again: The plot concerns a family pursued by vegetarian goblins who seek to transform them into plants so that they can eat them. that’s right. It is a thing of beauty.
- It is considered one of the worst movies ever made.
- The script—originally titled “Goblins”—began as a way for director Claudio Fragasso’s wife, Rosella Drudi, to express her frustration with several of her friends becoming vegetarians. Drudi told the makers of the documentary Best Worst Movie that “Some of my friends had recently become vegetarians…and this pissed me off.” Well … okay then.
- The cast had few experienced actors, and was primarily assembled from residents of nearby towns who responded to an open casting call.
And a fact about me, so that you will better understand the rest of this post:
- I have a deep love and adoration for the most awful of horror films. I was absurdly excited to find this on Netflix, having wanted to watch it since I first found the Wikipedia article.
And now, my thoughts from notes I took while watching (yes I took notes), in list form because apparently I like list blogging:
- The film begins with a boy being told a story by his grandfather, who we quickly learn is dead at the time of the storytelling, about a goblin woman transforming a man into a half-man, half-plant, which is the favorite food of goblins. Goblins are evil, evil creatures. Contrary to the boy’s thought that it is only a faerie tale, the grandfather ominously assures him that goblins are real. The sense of doom I am assuming is intended from this opening does not come through at all.I was already giggling by this point.
- The mother is a tragically terrible actress. She is also a tragically unsympathetic mother, telling her son that he must ‘banish’ his grandfather from his mind, as he has been dead for a whole six months.
- The family is planning to spend the summer in a farming community, exchanging homes with another family. The father spells the town’s name, Nilbog, on the phone, N-i-l-b-o-g, which is goblin spelled backward. Harharhar so subtle and clever.
- There is a pretty pointless scene the night before they leave where the daughter’s boyfriend sneaks in to see her and they have an unimpressive fight. Apparently, the boyfriend spends too much time with his friends and not enough time with her, and this makes her think he might be a ‘homo’. There is a lot in this subplot that could make an entire post on gender slurs and stereotypes and societal expectations, but instead I would like to focus on the bit where the girl says that if her father discovers the boyfriend there, ‘he’d cut off your little nuts and eat them’. I mean … what? That is creepy and weird and no. What?
- This entire film reminded me of every school play I was ever forced to be in. Not that we had plays with this kind of content (that would have been awesome), but the actors in the film are as bad as we were. Very little emotion, very wooden delivery. Sounded like they were reading their lines straight from the script as they did their scenes. It was distracting. And hilarious. The father was my particular favorite; his angry lines were so very uninspiring.
- The daughter to the father, after he made some remark about her boyfriend and called him her beau: ‘He’s not my beau, he’s my boyfriend.’ Oh, I see, good thing she set him straight.
- Upon arriving in the farming community and after meeting the blank, emotionless family they are exchanging homes with, the dead grandfather freezes time and appears to the little boy, Joshua, and tells him that the vegetarian spread left for them is actually goblin potion which will turn them into human-plant hybrids to be eaten, and so to prevent them from eating it, Joshua urinates on it. His sister feels that what he deserves is ‘a big spanking for a little shit’, and the father shouts, ‘You can’t piss on hospitality, I won’t allow it!’. He then goes on a bizarre rant about hunger strikes and how he … is better at being hungry than Joshua? So if Joshua wants to go on a hunger strike out of anger, he can, but his father will win? So ridiculous, so many giggles.
- The boyfriend, Elliot, follows the family to Nilbog after failing to show up to go with them as he promised, and he brings his friends along. This is terrible because he is supposed to be choosing either his girlfriend or his friends. This is supposed to be their time to ‘be together’. His friends are kind of awful; they only agreed to come because Elliot told them Nilbog is full of beautiful unattached virgins, and they say things like, when one of them goes out in search of girls, ‘Don’t be greedy if you find any twins.’ And, when he finds a girl running in terror from goblins and she asks if he is human, he replies, ‘Very human, wanna see?’. But it’s okay because lol boys will be boys, amirite?
- Karma pays him back, though, because he and the girl he found are captured by the queen of the goblins. It is glorious–her name is Creedence Leonore Gielgud (she makes a point of saying the entire name every time she introduces herself), and she comes from ancient Druid origins and has ancestors from Stonehenge. Of course, of course she does. It isn’t cliche or stereotypical at all. I love her.
- She convinces them to have some broth that will supposedly help them recover from their injuries, but which, obviously, is actually more potion to turn them into hybrids. At this point, I became concerned that Miranda would hear me watching it and mistake it for porn, because really, the girl sounded as though she was having a rather personal experience instead of being turned into a plant. I wanted to find a clip for you but I am having no luck so far. Instead, here is the scene that has for some reason become viral on the Internet.
- While all this is occurring, Holly (the daughter) is at home practicing the speech she will give Elliot to make him choose. It contains the line ‘the beautiful Holly Waits, or your lovely little boys’. Giggle giggle giggle.
- Joshua destroys all the food in the house while everyone is sleeping, on the advice of his grandfather, so his father takes him to the general store to get more. Joshua sneaks off and ends up at a church, where a truly spectacular sermon is being given on the evils of eating meat. This is my favorite scene of the whole film. I became a little hysterical. Embedding is disabled, but you can watch the clip here. ‘Flesh. And by flesh I mean all that stinking, disgusting meat: hamburgers, steaks, the stink of sausages, and hot dogs sold by the side of the road, the stink of smoked carcasses. The humans nourish themselves with these, violating their own bodies, infecting themselves, creating uncurable ailments, smelly bladders, nest of infection, clusters of hemeroids, vicious stinky excrement.’
- Joshua is caught by the goblins, and during an attempt to force feed him ice cream (spoiler alert: it’s more goblin potion), they repeat this brilliantly creative chant: ‘Mmm, open your mouth, my little friend, please, open it.’ I mean, it has no rhythm or rhyme or … anything a good chant should have. I feel like the goblins aren’t even trying. It is saddening.
- I have a very short and unhelpful note at this point which just says ‘don’t fret’. I am pretty sure it refers to Elliot saying that to Holly, and I only wrote it down because the phrasing in the film made me laugh. ‘Banish him from your mind’, ‘don’t fret’, ‘beau’, et cetera. It was not made that long ago, who talks like that? [My apologies if you are reading this and you actually do talk like that; I still love you.]
- The entire goblin town comes to the family’s house, ostensibly to throw them a party to make up for the ‘misunderstanding’ with Joshua, which his father interrupted before it could reach its climax. During this party, there is music playing and everyone is singing a wordless song and clapping along, and although their singing is in rhythm, their clapping is not. At all. Not terribly important, just something else that made me laugh.
- This happens, complete with porn music and, when the boy says he likes popcorn, Creedence saying ‘well no problem,all we have to do is … heat it up: Meanwhile, Creedence transforms herself into a beautiful young woman and appears at Elliot’s RV in an exotic negligee, where she seduces Brent using an ear of corn. As they begin to have sex, the corn spontaneously explodes into a flood of popcorn. Brent is quickly swallowed up and left immobilized but alive; with the family’s last hope of rescue neutralized, Creedence heads back to her chapel.
- A lot of other things happen, but they are all as ridiculous as everything I have already written about and I would hate to deprive you of the joy of watching the film for yourself, so let’s just skip to the climax, where Joshua saves himself from being consumed by eating a double-decker bologna sandwich given to him by his grandfather just before he (the grandfather) disappears for good. Apparently, the sandwich taints his blood with meat. Science, how does it work? Pulling out the sandwich causes Creedence Leonore Gielgud to exclaim, ‘Think about the fats, think about the cholesterol, think about the toxins!’ But, undeterred, Joshua eats it and then gets his whole family and Elliot to place their hands on the stone of Stonehenge, which is where the goblins get their power, and, through the power of goodness (seriously, it actually says this), they destroy the goblins. And I began to wonder if I had somehow stumbled into the world’s most disturbed Care Bears film.
- Finally, goblins destroyed, they return home, where the mother finds some fruit that has been left for them and eats it. It is delicious. It is also, spoiler alert, more goblin potion, left by the goblin family who traded homes with them, and who did not get destroyed. They eat the mother-hybrid and, in the final moments of the film, offer Joshua a piece of her planty corpse as he screams. Om nom nom. A twist! A surprise ending! A setup for a sequel! [Confirmed by Wikipedia.] I wait with bated breath.
Watching this was every bit as thrilling an experience as I hoped it would be. I want to share it with everyone I know and everyone I don’t, it was that wonderful. I urge you to watch it. It is cinematic brilliance. Or … not, but you should still watch it. It made me desperately want to have a terrible horror party, but, alas, I do not know anyone except my mother and Miranda’s father who knows how to enjoy a really bad film. Which is a shame, because there are so many of them.
