It’s pretty difficult explaining to someone why people purposely pay to see awful movies. Being a huge fan of them, I often find myself having to explain it, and I generally fail. The conversation is generally something like this:

“Ya see, it’s so bad, that it’s GOOD!” – Me

“So it’s actually good?” – Them

“No, it’s terrible.” – Me

“So if it’s terrible, why are you going to see it?” – Them

“Because it’s so INCREDIBLY terrible!” – Me

“You’re an idiot. Get out of my house.” – Them

Lately, films such as The Room and Birdemic: Shock and Terror have gained a huge cult following for playing at midnight, and having hundreds of people show up to laugh and shout at the screen, far more than the amount of people who would go see “Leap Year” every week. It’s a weird phenomenon, and if you were to ask someone what would be a prime example of the “So bad it becomes good again” genre, they would point you in the direction of Troll 2. Having never seen Troll 2, I wanted to watch Troll, so I wasn’t as confused. Turns out, doesn’t really matter whether you saw the first one or not, but Netflix sends you one DVD with both movies on it. Also, I’d like to include a “shout out” to Lazer, who showed me a movie called “Undefeatable” which is another prime example of the awful turned good film.

Creepy enough to be scary, old man-ish enough to not be terrifying.

The first five minutes of this movie is fucking insane. Correction, the first ten minutes, because technically, the first five minutes is all opening credits. That’s it, just credits for five minutes. That’s when we see a little girl trying to find her ball that she lost in a basement. Sadly for her, there is a troll living down there, who takes over her body and leaves her prisoner somewhere. We know this, because the little girl is now acting a fool while wearing a green ring that we had just seen the troll wearing. She joins her family for supper, and is given a burger with “the works”, and apparently “the works”  means green mayonnaise looking shit. Once she gets a taste of “the works” she goes on a psycho freakout destroying everything in her path. Her parents’ reaction? To try to slow her down, without actually yelling at her. The psycho rage continues out of the apartment, where she assaults multiple neighbors, including Sonny Bono, who talks about getting his freak on, before being interrupted by the girl screaming “HAAAMBUUURGEERRRSSSS RAARGH!!!!” and continuing through the hallway. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss then appears, as well as some guy that used to be in the army wearing a sweat suit and running in place. The father of the little girl introduces himself, and his name is Harry Potter. HARRY FUCKING POTTER…LIKE THE BOOKS. But the books didn’t exist yet, so J.K. Rowling was obviously ripping this movie off. The little girl finally calms down, and starts laughing, and everybody hugs. THIS WAS ALL IN THE FIRST FIVE FUCKING MINUTES OF THE MOVIE! WHERE CAN IT POSSIBLY GO FROM HERE?!

George Costanza‘s wet dream.

We then find out that an old woman who lives upstairs knows about the troll and is there to protect everyone. The troll, now in the little girl’s body, goes from apartment to apartment, turning each resident into creatures he used to know as well as turning their apartments into forests for the creatures to live in. Apparently, if the troll creates all the right forests and all the right creatures, the troll will take over the universe. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS INSANITY? Anyways, the little girl’s brother and the old woman are the only thing standing in the troll’s way. We have some showdowns, some death scenes, some musical montages where all the creatures start singing as a dwarf (a politically correct dwarf, not a mythical dwarf…even though they might be one and the same) recites a poem about some magical land. So much crazy shit happens, but all that really matters is the brother defeats some monster and his sister escapes, only to have the cops show up at the end and one cop leaves wearing the ring. CLIFFHANGER!

Oh yeah, and there’s this weird talking mushroom penis looking thing.

Wow. I am impressed. I had heard so much about Troll 2, that I had no idea the insanity of the first film, which is criminally underrated. I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing when the creatures, who were puppets, were all singing and moving their heads, which seemed to last quite some time longer than it needed to. Rampaige didn’t quite get frightened as much as I had, but it was still terrifying. The only reason this movie could have existed was because it was the 80’s. Back then, you really just needed to name your movie after anything that sounded scary, whether it be Troll or Leprechaun or The Howling, and you already knew a producer would make the movie. In most of the 80’s monster movies, once you have the name, the plot writes itself. Creature shows up, people get scared, people try to find the weakness, creature is defeated. The fact that Troll went above and beyond a plot as simple as the rest of those films is commendable, despite the fact that it makes no goddamned sense. Oh, also, you see Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s butt.

Wolfman Moon Scale