In the wake of the success of Joe Dante’s classic Gremlins in the mid-’80s, movie theaters were flooded with low-budget horror movies about pint-sized creatures wreaking havoc on unsuspecting humans. No one took better advantage of this phenomenon than Charles Band, who would build a dynasty of films about little monsters first with his Empire Pictures and later with Full Moon Features—everything from Ghoulies to Puppet Master, Demonic Toys to Dolls. One of Empire’s first fantasy horror films about little monsters, 1986’s Troll makes its HD debut on Scream Factory’s Blu-ray alongside its notorious sequel, Troll 2, often considered one of the worst movies ever made.
The original Troll, directed by makeup effects legend John Carl Buechler in his feature debut, tells the story of the Potter family, recent transplants to a San Francisco apartment complex who begin to notice strange goings-on in their building, especially after daughter Wendy gets possessed by the troll. Slowly, the creature begins attacking all of the tenants of the building and turning their apartments into forest fantasy worlds in the hopes that when he is done he will be able to transform the world at large. With the help of a friendly witch who lives upstairs (June Lockhart), young Harry Potter (The NeverEnding Story’s Noah Hathaway) is the only one who can put a stop to the evil troll Torok and restore his family and his world.
The plot of Troll 2 is considerably harder to describe. The movie famously features no trolls; instead, it centers on a family that moves to the farm community of Nilbog, where vegetarian goblins want to turn humans into food by getting them to ingest some magical substance. Like Harry Potter before him, young Joshua is the only one who knows what’s going on and, with the help of the ghost of his grandpa Seth, must save his family before they become goblin food.
Both Troll and Troll 2 are special for very different reasons. Troll remains one of the standouts in Empire’s catalogue (there’s a reason it’s one of a handful of films that reached a wide audience) for its creepy and bizarre mix of fantasy and horror, plus a whole lot of latex puppets. While today it’s best remembered for using the name Harry Potter years before he would become The Boy Who Lived, Troll offers a healthy dose of ’80s weirdness—the kind that was widely accepted in the decade of genre movies and would live on in endless cable repeats.
The eclectic cast has no doubt added to the movie’s cult status too, with a roster that includes not just Atreyu and Maureen Robinson but also Sonny Bono, a pre-Seinfeld Julia Louis Dreyfus and the great Michael Moriarty. While the movie follows Empire’s frequently used model of setting all the action in a single location, director Buechler wisely attempts to open the scope of it up somewhat to make things feel less confined and claustrophobic. Even the transforming of interior locations into forests helps, subconsciously offering a change of scenery and making the movie feel bigger than it really is. Troll is not a great film, but it is unique enough to be its own thing and stand out in a crowded genre.
And then there is Troll 2, which has joined the ranks of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Birdemic and The Room to be celebrated as one of the worst movies ever made. The distinction is both accurate and unfair. Yes, the film is inept; the writing is nonsensical, the acting several steps below amateurish and the direction (by Italian mainstay Claudio Fragasso, a regular collaborator of Bruno Mattei) messy to the point of being surreal. But the movie is also made with sincerity and passion, which is more than can be said of any cynical Sharknado bullshit. I’d much rather watch a bad movie made by people who mean it than something that drapes itself in irony and spends its running time cheekily winking at its audience. For better or worse, Troll 2 really means it.
Sincerity alone does not give it a pass, because it is still a “bad” movie by all traditional metrics normally used to judge such things. It feels like a movie made by people who maybe shouldn’t be making a movie. But its weirdness makes its flaws transcendent—it is “bad” in a way that is utterly fascinating and hypnotic. Fragasso attempts artistry, aiming for a horror film that is dreamlike and singular, and while he comes up short, his efforts contribute to the overall strange beauty of the movie. Troll 2 ends up circling right past “bad” and comes all the way back around to being sort of wonderful. All bad movies should be this good.
Though Troll 2 was previously available on Blu-ray from MGM, Scream Factory’s new double feature disc marks the first time the original Troll has been available on the format. Both films are presented in their original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratios, and though they appear grainy (particularly during optical effects, which are more plentiful in the first film), both features look good overall. The disc comes with trailers for both movies, a photo gallery of production, and publicity stills for the first Troll, a really terrific and nearly hour-long retrospective documentary on the making of Troll and a newly recorded commentary track for Troll 2 with actors George Hardy (Dad) and Deborah Reed (who plays the witch Creedence Leonore Gielgud).
The first 5,000 pressings of the disc come with a bonus DVD of Best Worst Movie, the wonderful 2009 documentary directed by Michael Stephenson (Troll 2’s Joshua) that chronicles the cult fandom that grew around Troll 2 in the ’90s and 2000s. In addition to exploring why people are drawn to the movie (some of which includes hipster irony), the documentary catches up with many of the participants, each of whom has embraced their relationship with the notorious film in a different way. It’s a wonderful tribute not just to Troll 2, but to the communal spirit of film on both sides of the screen. I love this movie.
With both features and Best Worst Movie included, Scream Factory’s Troll double feature is essential for fans of these movies or weird ’80s horror fantasy films in general. Regardless of its respective merits, each has its own special place in cult movie history. This disc celebrates that fact.
Troll Score: 3/5
Troll 2 Score: 3/5
Disc Score: 4/5
Patrick lives in Chicago, where he has been writing about film since 2004. A member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society, Patrick's writing also appears on About.com, DVDVerdict.com and fthismovie.net, the site he runs and hosts a weekly podcast.
He has been an obsessive fan of horror and genre films his entire life, watching, re-watching and studying everything from the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s to the modern explosion of indie horror. Some of his favorites include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931), Dawn of the Dead (1978), John Carpenter's The Thing and The Funhouse. He is a lover of Tobe Hooper and his favorite Halloween film is part 4. He knows how you feel about that. He has a great wife and two cool kids, who he hopes to raise as horror nerds.
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