Troll - Teil 3

My review was written in October 1990 after watching the movie on RCA/Columbia video cassette.

This chintz followup to the "Ator" fantasy films of the early '80s is aimed at small fry with its complement of silly monsters (all played by one actor in fake outfits). It's too little too late.

Helmer David Hills (reputedly one and the same as horror director Aristide Massaccesi) has fairly decent command of English dialog here, but that's about it. Blond muscle man Eric Allen Kramer portrays the son of Ator (long ago played by Miles O'Keeffe after his Tarzan debut) on a quest to free the beautiful Margaret Lenzey.

Laura Gemser (who also did the pic's costumes) guest stars with a fancy hairdo as an older woman who gets a crush on the hero. Donal O'Brien is extremely hammy as her brother.

A near-incest subplot is hardly suitable for kidies buthandled as lamely as the rest of the picture. Heroine Lenzey is quite lovely but can't act. The director doesn't help her cause by leaving a flubbed line of hers in the final cut.

I find I often like really bad movies,they can have a certain charm that is appealing. I can't say that this is one of them. Poorly written, bad editing, clumsy acting, goofy costumes, incredibly disjunct yet so simplistic you don't have any trouble following the lack of a sensible plot. It's sooo bad that it sucks you in and you feel compelled to see it through to the bitter end (ack, make it stop.....). Viewers will recognize Eric Allan Kramer from 'Men in Tights' and other movies, plus his most recent stint as 'Bob Duncan' on the Disney Channel. I like him a lot but I'm not sure what compelled him to do this rather fascinating bit of rot. At any rate even though I'm sounding really negative about it, if you've not seen this flick it's probably worth watching once so that you can say with pride that you suffered through it and can comment knowingly about it.

This movie has some very goofy parts. Mainly when the troll, which was the same exact one that was used in "Troll 2" gets split in half by the mighty sword. This should not be a surprise since the director is the same for both films. The sets are also a hoot. Even though the film was made in 1990, it feels like you've been magically whisked away to an old episode of "Star Trek". The props and costumes also give off the aura that they are truly made of cardboard. I'm not even going to go into detail on how non-mighty the super sword looked.

The cream of the crap... This movie was literally the worst I've ever seen. Everything was wrong: plot, acting, music, costumes, special effects, script... the list goes on extensively. Every film-making mistake imaginable was made in this film... yet I loved every minute of it. Its hard to imagine it as being a legitimate effort at making a motion picture, but as far as I know, it wasn't intended to be humorous. A movie so terribly bad that it becomes so wonderfully good. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good laugh; I'm actually considering purchasing it (that is if I can find it anywhere... I doubt it).

I'll always have a special place in my heart for this movie, bad as it is. My sister and I ran across it years ago on HBO and quoted lines from it all summer. In fact, we taped the movie and I often made other people watch it, but nobody seemed to think it was as funny as my sister and I did.

I think what I find most interesting about this movie is that the filmmakers would even try to produce an action-fantasy epic with the $500 budget they apparently had. Usually, your independent filmmakers have a general sense of their limitations. They tend to shoot small films that can get by on small budgets. But the folks who made "Quest for the Mighty Sword" thought BIG. They must have had remarkable confidence in their film-making ingenuity--a real belief that through a little clever camera angling, they could turn their fifteen cents into a dollar--turn their plastic sword, overweight lead actor, and single troll costume (used for almost every monster who shows up in the film) into a passable fantasy experience. This isn't "the little movie that could." It's "the little movie that thought it could, but couldn't." Something about that, however, makes the film lovable in its own way.

In any event, I sincerely envy these filmmakers. Their power to view the glass as "half full" must be nearly inhuman. They must be pretty happy people, generally speaking.