Troll and Troll 2



Troll (1986) is probably one of the better films future Full Moon Studios founder Charles Band produced. It’s an obvious rip-off of Germlins (1984), though with more of a fantasy flair. It’s sort of a kids film, though some of the humor and effects don’t seem like the kind of thing I’d let a kid watch. The plot is simple. The Potter family moves into a new apartment. The little girl of the family goes to the basement and is kidnapped by a mystical troll. The troll, disguised as the girl, interacts with the rest of the Potters and goes to various apartments in the building, turning the residents into mystical woodland creatures.


Time to shave Bilbo!

I might as well get this out of the way right now: The father and son in the Potter family are both named Harry. The name “Harry Potter” is used dozens of times in the movie.


That's got to be illegal, even in California.

One of the odder characters in the movie is a swinging bachelor played by Sonny Bono. He doesn’t see like an appropriate character for a kid’s movie, even before we find out that the running gag for his character is that he yells “Shit!” at little provocation. The troll breaks into his apartment and transforms the bachelor pad, leaving it full of grass and short, ugly, hairy beings. So not much of a change at all.

Troll 2 (1990), on the other hand, is a very, very bad movie. It’s not really a sequel to Troll, but rather a riff on similar mythology created by the Italian filmmakers responsible for such classic movies as Zombie 4: After Death (1988) and Rats: Night of Terror (1984). A family drives to the rural town of Nilbog to engage in some sort of ill-defined vacation exchange; the Nilbog family will go live in their house in the suburbs. The family’s child is seeing his dead grandfather, who in turn is telling the kid stories about goblins and encouraging him to piss on the food the Nilbog family left out. Nilbog is in fact the home of goblins in disguise, and they try to make the outsiders eat Nilbog food so they will turn into edible plants. Because the family has to survive the movie there is a van-ful of horny teenagers who get killed by the local witch.


Rejected muppets.

There’s so much bad about this film I really think I should do a full review. I will mention two things now. This movie has an ugly cast. I hate to say that, but after 90 minutes of staring at them, I feel compelled to point out just how unattractive every actor is. And though I’ll go to hell for saying this, that includes the kid.


"Ugly...? That hurts, jerk!"

The “twist” ending is also horrible. After the family get home safely the kid comes downstairs to the kitchen to find the goblins inexplicably there, eating his mother. Just to make it super-traumatizing, Mom is naked, and the goblins ask the kid if he wants to eat her too. Thank you, makers of Troll 2, thank you so very much.

Posted: Tue - January 31, 2006 at      

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