Nilbog, Utah is
one wacky town. Shunning Mormons in favor of vegetarian midgets who have
acquired special powers from a steam-spewing slab of Stonehenge, this quaint
little hamlet, through the charisma of a local preacher and a Sheriff named
Freak, orchestrates the kidnapping of unsuspecting tourists, force-feeds them
green slime, and turns them into trees, all so the little buggers can devour
the plant people in a slobber-filled orgy. Thankfully, a Hemingway-esque
grandpa, conveniently dead, supplies a deus ex machina in the form of a bologna
sandwich to bring credibility to the proceedings. Confused? Undoubtedly, but
this is Troll 2, one of the all-time champs of bad cinema that just happens to
live up to the billing. Instead of cheeky irony through the route of
intentional incompetence, this is the real deal; a piece of crap made by the
deadly serious, as well as the seriously damned. Having just seen the
documentary Best Worst Movie, a wonderfully reverential revisiting of the cast
and crew, as well as a history of the film’s rise from obscurity to cult
classic, I was well armed with the particulars, but it took an actual viewing
to set it all straight.
Having no
connection to the original Troll, nor featuring trolls of any kind, Troll 2
follows the semi-retarded Waits family as they decide to take a vacation to the
one town in Utah that has no natural wonders, campsites, or actual things to
do. But dear old dad, Michael (played by George Hardy, who, we learn from the
documentary, is a dentist in Alabama, but now trades on his inappropriate fame
to the exclusion of all else), is convinced that a few ramshackle barns and
dilapidated storefronts will be enough to keep his family interested for
several weeks. Thankfully, they are exchanging homes with some locals, who
greedily accept Michael’s keys without so much as an introduction. The son, a
plucky little shit named Joshua, has been warned by his expired pee-paw to
avoid the town because of the homicidal goblins, but dad ignores such nonsense
with his usual can-do spirit. Greeting a table full of assorted green (and
poisonous) beverages, cakes, and donuts upon arrival, dad, mom, and sis are
about to dig in when grandpa appears to Joshua, stops time, and commands him to
come up with a plan in 30 seconds, or else meet with certain doom. Fulfilling
his end of the bargain, Joshua leaps on a chair, pulls down his pants, and
urinates on dinner. Tragedy is averted, but only long enough to see Joshua
punished by a screaming father: “You can’t piss on hospitality! I won’t allow
it!” The line has made Mr. Hardy famous, which he cheerfully recites at
midnight screenings, conventions, and yes, even at the film festival I
attended, where he was an honored guest.
Needless to
say, a full plot summary is both unnecessary and unbearably taxing, as the real
show lies in the acting. All are atrocious beyond compare, but no one reaches
the dizzying heights of hellishness of one Connie Young (playing the Waits’
daughter, Holly). Check it all off in turn — stilted, teeth-grindingly earnest,
painfully emotive — but her finest hour is the impromptu mirror dance, which
combines the worst of late ‘80s hair, clothing (a Garfield t-shirt!), and
gag-me-with-a-spoon vernacular. The film seems to think she’s a sexy young
vixen (she first appears in a leotard lifting weights), which is proven when
the town’s hottest stud, Elliott, comes to call. She’s not having it, however,
as he spends way too much time with his male friends. It’s an unreasonable
ultimatum, though I doubt she’d think so if she were to see the scene where he
and his buddies drive a camper to Nilbog and routinely stumble out in various
stages of undress. At one point, two of the boys are in bed together, shirtless
and unconscious. Fortunately for Holly, most of Elliott’s friends are devoured
by the goblins, though one is tortured in a bizarre mating ritual with a local
nutjob. In one of the most incomprehensible scenes in movie history, the aging
harlot knocks on the camper door, produces an ear of corn, and proceeds to make
out with the boy with the cob clenched between her teeth. The heat generated by
the kissing produces several pounds of popcorn, much to the delight of the
young man, as well as a stupefied audience.
Apparently, it
is imperative that victims eat green slop before being slaughtered as plants,
as no one is so evil as to murder a human being. All the locals treat eating
meat as the gravest of sins, including the strange store keeper, who flies into
a fire-eyed rage at the mere mention of bacon. Coffee is also strongly
forbidden. Some might interpret all of this hostility as a bizarre subtext, but
it’s hard to believe that anyone is supposed to come off sympathetically.
Nevertheless, it is important to learn, thanks once again to the documentary,
that the director, a humorless Italian named Claudio Fragasso, saw depth and
pathos where others saw dwarfs in bad Halloween costumes running around with
sticks. Fragasso has, to some extent, signed on for the cultish celebration,
but more often than not, he’s brooding while others laugh along with demented
crowds. Apparently, he saw spiritual struggle and a parable of survival, but
thus is the peril of filming a script in a language he could barely understand.
At least Hardy, fame whore that he now is, hasn’t tried to channel his lone
role into Shakespeare in the Park. Sure, he gets pissed when he goes
unrecognized at horror fests (a booth he mans goes unvisited), but he never
loses that toothy grin.
The same cannot
be said for Margo Prey, the woman who played the mother, Diana Waits. There
isn’t a single convincing moment throughout her shriek-filled performance, but
the true tragedy lies in her post-movie life, which has been filled with
loneliness, mental illness, and a future that, at best, involves hoarding or a
hasty suicide. One would think that she too would ride the gravy train of
assorted conventions and the autograph circuit, but apparently she couldn’t
survive the film’s finale, in which she is devoured before her son’s eyes, even
though the entire family had appeared to escape Nilbog’s wrath. Did they not
set the preacher on fire? And what about that aforementioned bologna sandwich,
which just happens to set off a chain of events whereby every goblin within
earshot vomits green Jell-O, falls to the floor in full seizure, and dies? And
what about those crude lightning bolts that run straight from Stonehenge to the
goblin’s frail hearts? Nope, not enough. Everyone, it turns out, survived, and
followed the Waits family home, perhaps in anticipation of Troll 3. Alas, it
was not to be. For now, we’re stuck with a masterpiece of crapola; the one that
damn near got away, only to be revived by a new generation of cinematic
masochists. Here’s to ‘em.
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