Best Worst Movie

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 had never seen Troll 2 before this film, but decided to watch it before viewing Best Worst Movie. After I saw it, I immediately watched the documentary as I was now hooked and had to know the story behind Troll 2.

Now, I liked Troll 2. As a connoisseur of "bad" movies, Troll 2 has it all. I keep putting "bad" in quotes because they are only labeled that, and in my mind are not REALLY bad. They are wonderful. And that's exactly why Best Worst Movie is wonderful. It celebrates with love the awesome earnestness of strange film making that is Troll 2.

It catches up with many of the film's stars and the highlight is George Hardy, the leading man in Troll 2. He's a living Ken Doll - you can't believe how sincere and likable he is. (I recently met George, and let me tell you, he is really the nice person he portrays.) At one point in the doc, George and the documentary's director (Michael Stevenson, who played the little boy in Troll 2) are on a mission to show the film to George's hometown. George, who is a dentist in his non-acting life, has known these people for years. But most them are not aware of this illustrious Hollywood moment he had in 1989. George goes door to door, handing out fliers, and acting out moments from the film. Even though many of his neighbors stare blankly as he repeats a classic line from Troll 2, he gives the moment his all - smiling and laughing the whole time. You know then that this is a man who loves to exist in a world where he can tell people to see a movie he starred in that most actors would remove from the IMDb page.

I can't do justice in this review the documentary's many great moments because the reality of those scenes have to be seen. But what you take away from this film is that the love true cinephiles have can breath life into films and give them meaning never meant by a filmmaker.

And this is the amazing magic of movies - like a good novel, they continually have new meaning. THAT is what makes "bad" movies - or any movie for that matter - a classic.

I saw the infamous "Troll 2" many years ago on Cinemax or HBO or somewhere. It was a prime example of the "so bad it's funny" category. Every now and then I'd describe the crazy ending and horrible acting to friends, but for the most part it stayed below my radar.

Then I read a review about "Best Worst Movie", co-directed by the actor who played the kid. I didn't know that "Troll 2" had such a furious following. The film is being four walled at the Village East Cinema this week, and I thought I'd check it out. I expected that I would be one of the few people there. Imagine my surprise when there was a line to get in!

I thought the movie was a delight! Most of the actors in the film have moved on and take there odd notoriety in stride. The woman who played the mother, however, thinks that "Troll 2" is on par with "Cassablanca". The director, who seems to think he's the heir to Fellini's throne, genuinely thinks he made a great film and a parable about modern society. Still, everyone seems to have had a great time making this film. Like "Ed Wood", "Best Worst Movie" celebrates the people who made the movie. They may not have made a great movie, or even a good movie, but they did SOMETHING that has endured.

Although I love Troll 2, I cannot concur with the general consensus that it is even close to the "worst movie ever made." (For that honor, you have to look at something that takes itself really seriously, with pretenses to high art, like a "film" by Godard). Troll 2 is a nutty little comedy with a ridiculous plot, silly dialog and amateurish costumes, and, as such, I really enjoyed it. It's fun.

IMHO, the main fault of this good-natured and generally excellent documentary is its failure to mention Deborah Reed, whose way over-the-top portrayal of veggie villainess and hippie druid Queen "Creedence Leonor Gielgud" is the wacky heart of the movie. She morphs from maniac priestess to gorgeous Elvira-like vamp whose hotness can literally pop corn (in the film's most overtly comic scene). Did Deborah Reed ask to be excluded from the documentary? (She does have an incomplete website). Was there a conflict between the documentary's creator and the actress? The documentary's failure to make any mention of Reed causes a real WTF moment. Anyway, Deborah was a doll, full of manic comic energy, and I was surprised to see that her career as a film actress seems to be limited to Troll 2. What happened to her? We want to know! But all-in-all, I am very grateful for Troll 2, and for Michael Stephenson's delightful documentary. Both of these films have made my life a marginally happier place. Bravo! And hang in there Margo! I really sympathize with your feelings about crappy neighbors!

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!