The popularity of this bizarre trainwreck, which features not a single troll, owes a great deal to the efforts of NY comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, whose screenings made it a smash on the midnight movie circuit. Not bad for a picture sneaked out on VHS three years after being shot, whose cast claimed not to understand the script or, due to a post-production title change, even know of its release. Lensed in Utah under the title Goblins, Troll 2 is your typical movie about vegetarian dwarves in rubber masks and burlap sacks that lure unsuspecting families to the town of Nilbog and devour them once theyve been turned into vegetable matter by consuming green gloop. The only people that can save the Waits family are young Josh (Michael Paul Stephenson) and his dead Grandpa (Robert Ormsby), who can freeze time, cause objects to move and appear as a disembodied head but cant manifest himself in the correct room. In the most memorable sequence, Josh has to devise a split-second plan for preventing his family from eating the contaminated food, which he does by urinating on the table to the understandable surprise of his father, who delivers the immortal line: You cant p*ss on hospitality I wont allow it! Watch it on a double bill with Best Worst Movie, Stephensons documentary about the film.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
