Best Worst Movie

The film Troll 2 has become something of a cult item in the last five or six years. It's one of the movies that truly defines the term 'so bad it's good'. It's a consistently ridiculous film that is so very amusing because it so clearly never intentionally tries to be funny at any point. Its mixture of earnest endeavour, cinematic hopelessness and general strangeness aligns it alongside the much-loved yet utterly inept work of Ed Wood. It's really a very rare occasion for any film to achieve the very specific anti-brilliance of Troll 2. So with this in mind, it only seems right that a documentary has been made to celebrate its existence.

It focuses mainly on two things. The people involved in the making of the film and the audiences it has subsequently attracted. What it doesn't do – and this is a mistake in my opinion – is tell us how the movie came to be made in the first place. It doesn't even answer the question that many people find the most obvious – why is it called Troll 2 when there aren't any trolls in it? I think the story of Troll 2 warranted a little more historical context and background info, as much of the facts are fascinating in themselves.

That said I did enjoy Best Worst Movie and think it's great it was made at all. I remember back in 2005 Michael Stephenson the director and child star in the film frequented the IMDb boards with other cast members and he did say back then that he was planning on making this very documentary. I must say I thought it would never happen but fortunately I was incorrect. George Hardy, the father in the film, emerges as a real star; a very likable man who seems to have lapped up his bizarre fame. Although the real main man of the piece turns out to be director Claudio Fragasso. Every time he was on screen was gold. He was a living embodiment to what made Troll 2 so entertaining in the first place, i.e. committed artistic seriousness and a refreshing lack of irony. Fragasso truly believed that Troll 2 was loved so much because it was a complex family drama. Although he at least didn't go as far as to compare it with Casablanca as Margo Prey did without any sense of jest. Prey was clearly a disturbed woman. But then so was Don Packard, the man who played the drugstore owner, he in fact was an out-patient at a sanatorium when the film was made. So this is surely an example of fact being as strange as fiction. Well, almost.

Best Worst Movie is ultimately a perfect accompaniment to Troll 2 itself. The documentary somewhat strangely does not really focus on the content of the film itself. There are numerous clips of course but they're never commented on and many of the best parts are bizarrely not featured in the first place. This would perhaps be more of a problem if you didn't have the movie itself to enjoy afterwards. Ultimately Best Worst Movie is a look at a group of people who were inadvertently involved in making a movie that not one of them could have imagined in their wildest dreams would go on to become something of a cult classic. It's a strange story but one worth knowing about.

The actors just hoped for the best with Troll 2, at the time of shooting called Goblin (named for the name of the town in the film, 'Nilbog', get it?). The script was awkward, the creature effects shoddy, and most of the Italian crew, including director Claudio Fragasso, and nobody really knew what would happen with the movie. No theatrical release, straight to video and HBO, and when people saw it (save for the director, who still thinks it's a good movie, and the actress who played the mother, Margo Prey, who thought it was a solid "actors" movie) they knew how bad it was... and that included what is now the director of the documentary on Troll 2, Michael Stephenson, who played the lead kid/protagonist in Troll 2. He goes back to visit all the actors in the film, what they're up to, and then confront them with an astounding fact: Troll 2, in small-certain circles, is a big, big deal.

One of the main keys here is that the documentary works kind of like a cross between American Movie and Overnight, only it's all taking place many years after the fact. You have the 'characters' who are kind of nutty (the guy who was actually in a mental asylum and let out one day to play the store clerk in the film, Don Packard), and the ones who just tried to put it aside and get on with a career without Troll 2 (Connie Young as the daughter Waits in the film). And then there's George Hardy, who is like the anti Troy Duffy: instead of an obnoxious jerk, Hardy is the guy everybody likes (which could be to a fault, but who cares) and has that nice, sweet, all-American disposition working as a dentist and always with a smile or a laugh. And when he finds out Troll 2 is such a cult, he not only embraces it, he goes with it on tour!

This is also a wonderful treat for those film fans who know what it's like to find a movie so-bad-it's-fun like Troll 2. We see them here at the screenings that take place midnight all across the country, from New York to Los Angeles and cities in-between (most touching is the first screening that happens almost underground at a comedy club of all places and where the first real rise of Troll-mania happens). Stephenson gets what it's like for these people to be such fans, and that the cast (save for Prey who doesn't show up cause of her sick mother, and the director who is bitter about the guilty-pleasure love) gets what kind of audience loves Troll 2. As a cult you get the guy who tattoos Troll 2 on his arm. You get the people wearing their hand-made t-shirts. You get people who drive six hundred God-knows-how-many miles for a screening. And of course they all know all the words.

Stephenson captures what a phenomena like this is like, and at the same time the bittersweet coin of sudden "fame". Hardy goes all the way to Britain to promote Troll 2, and it's a little staggering to find out a) he didn't see if, you know, there were actual FANS of the film willing to go to conventions for it like they did the screenings in the states, and b) people don't seem to automatically find it cool all the time to be the "worst movie ever made" (smile). This also happens in Dallas at a convention we see, albeit the one time Hardy loses the admiration (at least from me) is when he slams the people who come to horror conventions, without realizing how horror audiences can be at such places, or that, you know, Troll 2 is still and always will be a big film for some, and for others they'll have a blank look on their faces.

Which, at the end of it all is fine for someone like Hardy, a genuine real-deal of a man who is fine with his dentist practice (albeit he is now acting in a few intentionally crappy movies like Ghost Shark 2), and for the director Fragasso and his co-writer wife who continue to berate the cast's friendly bashing of the film and the production, since, well, they think they did a good job with the movie (at one point, kind of unintentionally funny, Fragasso ponders why the audience laughs at the parts that "aren't meant to be funny", while also pointing out that the audience "saved" the movie from obscurity). Stephenson gets the human angle of everyone in the movie and understands them, even someone who could have been painted as a crazy like Margo Prey (who for some she may be anyway). And for such a movie like Troll 2 to get mainstream attention, if just for a little while, it's a swell treat for a movie so hilariously s***ty.

Moral of the story: You can't p*** on hospitality, I WONT ALLOW IT!

I'm a huge fan of bad movies and I'm particularly interested in the story behind these movies and how they got so bad. I've seen Troll 2 countless times and the narrative that has been developed about its production is incredible. So, I have been eager to see this documentary since I first heard about and went to a screening at the Music Box Theater recently.

Overall the movie was very interesting. However, it did exactly what I was afraid it would do and focus the documentary on the "midnight movie" cult phenomena aspect of Troll 2 rather than its back story. It primarily follows George Hardy, the father from Troll 2, as he explores this strange, sudden form of fame. He seems very humble and gregarious, so his experiences in going to conventions and trying to persuade country folk to see Troll 2 are a little amusing, but they take up a huge portion of the film. Similarly, we see lots and lots of footage of the cast at Troll 2 midnight showings which, while colorful, takes up way too much screen time. It seemed as though the film was developed to appeal more a wider audience who is totally unfamiliar with Troll 2 or the bad movie culture. Everyone who is in the know (which makes up a vast majority of the film's audience because it is a small release) won't be too captivated by scenes that just show a couple of random friends hanging out in an AV room and getting others to watch Troll 2 for the first time.

When the movie does explore the movie's origins and production history and interviews cast members, it is extremely entertaining. All of the story's rumors of unintelligible scripts and intended social commentary are all true. Many of the people involved with the movie are fascinating, if not heartbreaking, to see now. Grandpa Seth seems to realize he "frittered his life away," the general store owner relates that he was in a dementia/drug haze during production and was not quite aware he was in a movie, and Margo Prey (the mother) is a delusional, agoraphobic cat lady.

Most interesting of all is the segments with director Claudio Fragasso. He actually believes the movie is great and it takes him time to understand that the sudden revival of the movie is ridiculing it. Eventually, he comes to terms with the criticism all the while still berating its cast members and insisting on his skill as a filmmaker. The documentary would have been considerably more interesting had he been its main subject.

Overall, the film is definitely worth seeing, Troll 2 fan or not. However, it's frustrating to think would the movie could have been. Some scenes are amazing, but much of it is bogged down by footage of people in line for a Troll 2 showing screaming at the camera or George Hardy telling uninterested neighbors about his "piss on hospitality" scene.

Perhaps it was the build up for watching this documentary, but I found it to be the most enjoyable movie I've watched all year. I was reviewing the list of movies on display at the Sacramento Film Festival and I stumbled across the synopsis for this movie. I had vague recollections of Troll, but I couldn't really remember watching Troll 2. I recruited a few friends to watch the documentary since they'd heard of Troll 2 from some documentary about the worst movies ever filmed.

Three hours before the documentary was set to start, we gathered at my house with some chips and beers and set out to watch Troll 2. One friend had to switch to hard liquor to handle the outlandishly bad scenes in the movie, but the rest of us found the movie very watchable. It's like watching a train wreck at a high school talent show. You get a gut-wrenching feeling from watching these people make asses out of themselves, but you can't help but love their performance.

Anyway, we finished Troll 2 and we all agreed that there were several parts of the movie we'd love to have explained. That's where the documentary came in. It's like having an audio commentary extra from a special edition DVD, except you have to go to the local indie theater to watch it.

I don't know what the hell that one reviewer was writing about, but out of the 25 people who were in the small theater, at least 15 of them were constantly bursting into fits of laughter. The documentary is genuinely funny and I don't think people should watch it as a serious film... since it's about the worst movie ever. It'd make no sense.

One of my friends that went to the theater with us did so without watching Troll 2. After the documentary, he insisted that we watch the Troll 2 again that night, which we did. After watching the documentary, it's hard not to like Troll 2 since you now know the people that played the characters. It's comforting to know that they're as embarrassed about some of their scenes as you were for them.

I didn't really know what to expect from this documentary. Maybe I watched Troll 2 when I was young but I for sure can't remember it, like I can't remember any of the worse movies I watched. I watched a lot of extremely bad movies, all waste of my time, but after watching this very well made documentary you kinda want to watch Troll 2 just to see what's the fuzz about. But reason came to me and I won't. The documentary shows a couple shots every now and then and it's obvious it's painful to watch so that's already enough for me. This documentary is just well done, contains a lot of funny moments and for that alone it's worth a watch. It's more about the cast than about the movie itself, and that doesn't really matter as there are some weird people in this cast, all worth watching. The director of Troll 2, the Italian Claudio Fragasso, seems to be a bit strange as well. I guess it all makes sense if he made the worst movie ever, even though I'm sure there are way worse movies.