3. Best Worst Movie (2009)
There are bad films and then there are films that are so bad that you just cant help but enjoy them. Coming from some sick place of schadenfreude, we embrace these terrible films providing them the cult status they eventually obtain. Midnight screenings abound and it becomes a sort of rite of passage among film fans to have experienced these pieces of garbage filmmaking. We revel in the awful and completely forget that many of these films were made in earnest and not to have their amateur quality celebrated.
Troll 2 was released in 1990. Produced under the working title
Goblins the film has no connection to
Troll and in fact not a single troll appears on screen. The film follows a family that has moved to the sleepy town of Nilbog without knowing that the town is inhabited by vegetarian Goblins who will stop at nothing to turn the family into plants for their consumption. The film was written and directed by an Italian couple who decided that they alone were the authority on American life. The film was a major failure and only found resurgence on late night television and VHS. Michael Stephenson, the child actor at the center of the film, sets out to tell the story of the films making through the eyes of the many confused actors involved while also examining the explosive cult status the film has earned. For fans of cult films like
The Room,
Birdemic: Shock and Terror and
Manos: The Hands of Fate,
Troll 2 is required viewing. The film inhabits that beautiful place of inept filmmaking that to not find enjoyment in it is awfully difficult.
Best Worst Movie is a celebration of these films fandoms, those devoted filmgoers that wait in line for a midnight showing wearing a burlap sack and a goblin mask. As almost a thank you note to those that have resurrected these long since deceased reels, the film will make you feel good about them. In addition, the film searches out the original cast of
Troll 2, a bevy of first time actors just hoping to break into the business. We have long wondered what must have been going through the heads of all those involved while the film was being produced and we finally get our answer. Stephenson even brings in the mind behind the film in director Claudio Fragasso. His interviews are uncomfortable as you begin to realize that this man does not understand the reception his film has received. The emotional center is George Hardy, who played Stephensons father in the film. The man has an unbridled joy for life and his newfound fans make his smile even wider; his happiness is infectious.
Best Worst Movie offers us a look back at a terrible film that eventually found the audience to lovingly embrace it; it is endlessly entertaining. Watch it as a double feature with
Troll 2, you will not be disappointed.