SCHLOCK VAUE vs. TROLL 2
Spawned in the year of...actually, the less you know the better!
"Do you see that writing? Do you know what it means? Hospitality! And you can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!" - actual line from TROLL 2
*thoughtful pause*............Okay, here we go. On his death bed, TROLL 2 director Claudio Fragasso will have to answer for himself as a filmmaker (starting with ZOMBIE 3), and as considerate and compassionate as the big guy upstairs may be, I have not doubt that Mr. Fragasso will spend eternal damnation shoveling a never ending mounds of festering fecal matter. A punishment befitting the man responsible for one of cinemas all time worst, utterly outrageous, so very, very wrong, makes me want to puke-fests. So ashamed by his work (and rightfully so) Claudio Fragasso worked under the pseudonym of Drake Floyd. You see TROLL 2 exists on a plane few films have ever come close to. There's bad; there's worse; there's the worst. And then there's TROLL 2.
Locating the fountain of youth, then getting a member of the KKK to shake hands with a black man and convincing the pope to engage in a bukkake/skat/golden shower gangbang with six twelve year old Taiwanese lady- boys would be an easier task than locating a plot within this cesspool of Z-movie crud. The cheese comes thick and fast, with zero coherency and void of any logical reasoning, and I haven't even mentioned the fact that the films title is one great big lie. TROLL 2 is the most troll-less troll movie that’s ever boasted the word “troll” in the title. For the entire 95 minute run time, there’s not a troll in sight.
Apparently the script was original meant to be its own entity titled GOBLIN, no doubt a TROLL rip-off in and of itself, but instead turned into a name-only sequel to a film that quite frankly didn’t deserve a sequel. In any case, it sets an unprecedented standard for how bad a movie can be and by God is it entertaining. Like a magician, I will now try to make you believe the unbelievable and describe to you the film, a plot doesn't exist so much as a series of events transpire on screen one after another. Prepare yourself...
The movie centers around the Wait family, a family comprised of some incredibly odd and questionable individuals; there's the son (Joshua) who has an imaginary friend that just so happens to be the ghostly apparition of his long dead grandfather; grandpa now appears as a disembodied floating head that gives elderly advice to his young cohort; there's the customary romantic character, the exercise-a-holic Holly; and her 
good for nothing boyfriend Elliot (whom the entire family despises mind you); the father is a bi-polar hick; and the mother makes you want to reach into the screen and throttle her from time to time. They decide to take a family vacation at - wait for it - Nilbog! Now I don't know about you guys, but my bags are already packed because dammit, I want to live at a place that adds the word 'bog' into its name. Also, did you happen to catch that ever so witty play on words? Nilbog is Goblin, spelt backwards! Yes, like you, I was shocked by the originality and wit…moving on.
So the family makes it to the witty little town of Nilbog and settles in for a nice family 
dinner. But wait, all is not as it seems! Grandpa's otherworldly self appears to Joshua to warn him that the food the family is about to tuck into is dangerous. Pint sized hero that he is, he must be the one to stop them. So Grandpa pauses reality (sorry, I can’t even come up with a half baked explanation as to how that was possible) and gives Joshua the time he needs to save his family from consuming the evil food. Joshua decides the most logical course of action is to jump up onto the table and piss all over the food! He can’t just throw it all away. No, he actually has to drop trousers and take a squirt all over dinner.
During this time, Elliot (Holly's ill fated boyfriend) - and a bunch of irrelevant friends what’re brought along to be little more then tasty man chow for the non-troll trolls - decides to tag along for the vacation. However, they wind up crossing paths with a number of non-trolls and let me tell you…I've seen some shoddy looking costumes in my life but man, do these ones take the cake. It looks like, no scratch that, they ARE wearing potato sacks and generic as hell masks that look like they were purchased for $10 at any run of the mill costume store. They are so embarrassingly bad it's shocking anyone on set could have taken them seriously. Honestly, if the director came to you and said this is the villain of the movie, you take one look at it and call the white coats to come collect the poor guy, because anyone under the delusion that these could be scary need to have his head checked.
Two of the boyfriend’s friends are taken to the non-trolls domicile of choice where they meet one Creedence Lenore Gielgud; a chick that speaks will elongated S’s and looks like the nerdy girl from any slasher movie slept with some form of inbred hillbilly and had offspring that was then hired to play the part. She proceeds to start babbling about the vegetable kingdom like some crazed vegetarian scientologist. Thinking nothing of it (because why would you?) the soon to be ended buddies of not very important boyfriend down some smoking brew that Creedence happily provides them. They’re clearly not thinking anything bad could possibly happen. So it come to their surprise (though not to us) when one of them starts to melt into a bright green human/vegetable Slurpee which the non-troll goblins start chowing down on, because these non-troll goblins just so happen to be vegetarians!
And all the while the other guy is just standing there, giving us a play by play of the oh-so-very horrific sight he's witnessing, featuring such memorable lines as: "Oh no, my girlfriend is turning into a vegetable!" "I can't move my legs. There must be a logical explanation for this!" and my personal favorite: "They're eating her. And when they're done, they'll eat me!" Yes, not only is Claudio Fragasso’s direction incoherent but his writing is of the same caliber.
Holly shows off
her spectacular dancing abilities (Jamie Lee Curtis in PROM NIGHT, eat your heart out) while the last remaining irrelevant friend of just as irrelevant boyfriend finds his way into the Creedence home to discover his buddy in a rather bizarre state of vegetation. See when you drink or eat anything the non-troll goblins have given you, you start turning into a human vegetable that they will then eat. Creedence catches the two friends with their pants down and proceeds to pull a Leatherface on the hapless chaps. As if the previous moments in the film weren't weird enough, Mr. plant-man gets abused by Creedence's chainsaw, and all the while he's laughing, and giggling, leaving you wondering if you’re tripping on some bad acid.
Drum roll if you please, because it's time for possibly the strangest scene in cinematic history, it's certainly one of the oddest sex scenes in existence. Creedence shows up in Elliot’s RV, having shed the dorky hillbilly combination. She’s all primped and ready to get her gobliny freak on with the last remaining friend using an ear of corn, all the while the cheesiest stock porn music playing in the background. The scene climaxes in a shower of popcorn raining down on upon them! Like I said, hands down, one of the strangest scenes in cinematic history.
The family then decides the only solution to their predicament is to performing a séance to try and bring back their grandfather to the physical plane, having been banished to some shadow realm earlier in the film by a goblin magic guy. Joshua is inexplicably transported to the Creedence home where coincidently enough old grandfather also appears, to save Joshua and bless the young child who once pissed on his dinner with not just a magical backpack but get this…the magic stone from Stonehenge that gives the non-troll goblins their awesome powers of human slurpification.
The finale culminates with Joshua conjuring a bologna sandwich from his mystical backpack! Oh good god not a sandwich, hell knows no fury like a boy with lunch. Ah but you see, there’s method to this madness. The non-troll goblins are vegetarians after all, and they begin cowering in terror at the sight of the all powerful bologna sandwich. Creedence desperately tries to persuade Joshua against his high cholesterol plan by explaining how fattening such a meal could be. But Joshua eats the thing regardless and combined with the power of the magical stone, young Joshua banishes Creedence and the rest of the non-troll scum to god only knows where.
Pleased with their victory and desperate to get out of Dodge (otherwise known as Nilbog) the Wait family head home. All over, right? Nope! Joshua wakes up the next morning only to find his mother, having eaten a goblin juice filled apple, lying on the dining table all gooy and green and being feasted on by the non-troll goblins, who have somehow come back from wherever it was they were.
Joshua watches on in horror.
CUE CREDITS!!!
Thus concludes one of the all time greatest Z-grade movie schlockfests of all time. It’s positively astounding that this movie went on to garner such fan love... but maybe not so surprising after all. For all the incompetency, cringe- worthy acting, the abysmal effects, this is one of the classics of bad movies. It’s 95 minutes of your life you will never get back. But then, if you have any sense of Schlock Value, why in Nilbog would you want to!?
- Mad Man Dan
It's with more than a little sadness that I report this. It appears Fangoria Magazine is parting with its editor of more than 20 years, Tony Timpone. In a shakeup at the magazine, Chris Alexander of Rue Morgue Magazine will replace Timpone, according to 
live movie set, it’s always controlled chaos. And I do mean always! Except when you show up during dinner break, like I did last night for my on set visit with Adam Green’s latest film, Hatchet 2.
The godfather of tree-felling slaughter flicks celebrates a birthday massacre today! Yes, Tobe Hooper himself turns 67.
favorites are SALEM'S LOT, LIFEFORCE, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 and THE MANGLER.
