Troll 2 transcript
Season 1 · Episode 9. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
Hello and welcome to the worst movie podcast. I'm Ade.
And I'm Aaron, and in this podcast, we guard the bridge between bad movies and human sanity. It's not a cry for help, but it could be.
This ends our month of horrible horror. Hope you enjoy.
Today we're going to talk about Troll 2, a movie from 1990 starring Michael Paul Stevenson and George Hardy directed by Claudio Fragasso. Am I saying that right? Fragasso and written by his wife, Rosella Drudy. It's streaming on the Roku channel. You want to give us a brief synopsis of what this movie is about?
Grasso.
Sure, a family's vacation to the strange town of Nilbog turns nightmarish when their son discovers the locals are actually goblins who turn humans into plants for food.
This movie is widely considered to be the worst movie of all time and gained a cult following over the years. It's rated 13 % on Rotten Tomatoes, but that probably belies the fact that most critics originally gave it zeros and has a 2.3 average rating on Letterbox. Again, a very polarized ratings, a lot of five stars, lot of one stars.
This had a hundred thousand dollar budget and we'll talk a little bit more about the production of this. it ended up going straight to video. It was on VHS and then, had the rotation on HBO back in the nineties. Had you heard about this movie before we covered it?
No, not at all. I am surprised I hadn't heard about it before, actually. But yeah, I was completely fresh going in.
Yeah, I don't remember when I first heard about it. I hadn't seen it until we decided to cover it for the podcast, but I may have heard about it because there's a documentary that came out called Best Worst Movie and it was created by the star of this movie. He was a little kid at the time, little boy in the movie. And I hadn't watched the documentary either, but ended up watching it for this episode. Pretty fascinating.
Basically this movie again came out in direct video in the early 90s and yeah, just over the years there have been screenings and cons and stuff like that where people have gathered to talk about this movie, watch this movie, get autographs from some of the stars and yeah, pretty fascinating.
I watched that documentary last night and it made me appreciate the movie in a completely different way.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we'll definitely dive into that a little bit more. So maybe let's talk a little bit about the background of this movie. Some of this you can learn from the documentary or just, you know, I've spent too much time this week reading about Troll 2. The first question you probably might ask yourself is, do I need to watch Troll 1 to see this movie?
And the answer is a resounding no. They have nothing to do with each other. Did you unc- Yeah, so that's another point. So from what I can understand, and maybe you can fill in any gaps if I'm missing something, but the producer of Troll 2 basically acquired the rights to some of the imagery from Troll 1. Troll 1 came out in, I think, the mid-80s.
There's not even trolls in this movie.
86.
Yeah. And was not a huge movie, but somewhat successful. And basically it was just kind of a financial engineering thing to say, let's just piggyback off the reputation of this IP that was already out there and took an existing movie, this movie, and just renamed it Troll 2. maybe you can talk a little bit about the...
the goblins trolls thing. What's the difference between a troll and a goblin?
I have theories. haven't I haven't actually done any research, ⁓ which is on brand for me. My theory is that a troll guards a bridge or a road and collects tolls and eats anyone who doesn't pay. Whereas a goblin is like a more nomadic and they kind of roam around and there may be like killing for sport. They're like evil in that way. It's not it's not a money thing with them.
Okay, what are your armchair theories?
Okay.
Okay.
So the trolls are capitalists and goblins are just nomads who kill for sport. Okay. Do they look the same?
They're nomads, yeah. Yes.
No, I think a troll is like squatty and like big and a goblin is like slender. They're they're built for moving. Whereas a troll. Yeah, whereas a troll plants itself by a by a bridge.
They're athletes.
So you've got the fat cigar chomping capitalist monster and then the athletic, you know, socialist monster. Okay. ⁓
Yeah.
Yes, correct. Did you, did you look
this up? How far off am I?
I did not look it up at all. My theory is I don't give a shit. The difference between them. They're fake. I don't know. ⁓ Yeah, it's, I don't, I don't know what it is psychologically. I, I probably have lots of opinions about vampires and zombies and can talk about that, but trolls and goblins. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe it's too, too much into the fantasy world that
Hahaha!
Fair. ⁓
Yeah.
I just don't really watch a lot of fantasy stuff.
I may also be influenced by the troll toys, the little figurines that we had in the 90s. So, I don't know.
Yeah. Yeah.
That is also worth noting. This is Troll 2, singular, not Trolls 2. Very different franchise. So.
Yes.
Presumably
better than this as well.
I know, I saw a preview for the latest Trolls movie and it looked terrible. Or maybe that was Smurfs, I don't know. Yeah, I think I'm thinking about Smurfs. Sorry if I'm slandering some good movies here. But yeah, so the funny thing about Troll 2 and Goblins, back to that is they don't mention the word troll at all in the movie, it's just all goblins. So we'll just talk about goblins.
⁓ yeah.
This movie was produced
under the name Goblins, originally, which is a much more fitting name. I don't know why they changed it afterwards. Because they were like trying to piggyback off the success of Troll, which itself was poorly reviewed. Like, I don't know why they thought that would be better. Just make your own thing. And there's a Troll 3 that also has nothing to do with any of the other. There's actually two Troll 3 movies. I don't know if you saw that, but...
You
Yeah,
I did not see that.
This
franchise is hardly a franchise.
Well, the documentary ends with the director saying that him and his wife are working on Troll 2 Part 2, which maybe would be named such to differentiate from Troll 3. But the documentary came out in 2009. Is that right? So, yeah, as far as I can tell Troll 2 Part 2 has not been released yet. So maybe that's still.
Yeah, 09 or 10.
upcoming.
We got
something to look forward to.
Yeah. Well, a little bit more about the background. mentioned the director a few times. think it's notable to say that the director and the writer, the husband and wife team are Italian and they shot this over the course of three weeks in Utah and used almost complete amateurs to as far as like the cast and even some of the production crew, it seems like.
They hired people who had never like makeup people and stuff like that that had done maybe had some background in just normal makeup and hair. Yeah. It seemed like not even that, not a lot of like theater background. I could tell a few of the cast members had done some theater or a little bit of like commercial work, but most
theater and stuff maybe.
of the cast. is their only IMDB credit and seemingly not much background in acting or anything otherwise.
The
general store owner was literally just a man from the local mental hospital that was out on day passes.
Yeah.
Yes. ⁓ and he was creepy at it. He, he really, he's in the doc. Yeah. He's in the documentary and says something about how he doesn't, he doesn't remember much of the shooting because he was also using a lot of weed at the time to stay, stay put together. I forget how he words it, but, ⁓ and then when he watched it later, he was like,
He was creepy. He was believable.
Yeah.
I actually wasn't acting. That's just the look of a very disturbed man.
Yes, he was maybe the most believable character in the movie.
this will be a tough movie to cover.
maybe let's just start with like the first several scenes. Do you want to talk about kind of the grandpa Seth and the premise of the movie?
Yeah, so it starts with a very Princess Bride opening of a grandpa reading a troll slash goblin story to his grandson in his bedroom. ⁓
Yeah,
almost I should say, mean, it looks like they ripped off even the shots from Princess Bride.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's very, very close with the distinction between the two being that the mom comes in and is like, Seth, what are you still doing up? And the grandpa is not there. He's he's seeing visions of his grandpa. We find out that his grandpa has been dead for like six months and he's still seeing him. So that's the only difference that I picked up from this and Princess Bride.
But he's basically telling his grandson that the goblins are real and he needs to be wary of said goblins.
Wait, wait.
which that scene brings one of the best quotes from the movie. I should just say there's a lot of dialogue in this movie that it comes up in the documentary and other things that the cast members have talked about where the writer and director spoke a little bit of English, but according to the cast, not very well. According to the director, he's like, bullshit.
Hahaha
I speak English very well. I'm a great director. I've directed in many languages and like that was his, he mentioned that in the documentary is like one of the things that makes him a director, a great director is that he knows many languages. But anyway, the script was translated from Italian into English and the director, it seemed like was very strict with the cast about don't improvise, don't change the script.
I want you to say it exactly how it's written. And so the cast claims that there are a lot of times where they're like, I don't think Americans would talk like this or say these things. And he was just like, no, do it this way. But it's.
Yeah, he would tell them he
knows how American teenagers talk. They don't know how American teenagers talk. So.
Yeah, exactly.
So during this scene, the mom is talking to the little boy and says, Grandpa Seth has been gone for more than six months now. You're at the funeral and I know it's very difficult for you. It was also very difficult for your father and for Holly and for me, his daughter.
Yeah, I love the part that
comes right after that was an amazing man. Grandpa Seth has remained in all our hearts, but you must banish him from your mind. Why? What?
The parents get really mad about, I mean, I guess he's seeing clearly he needs therapy. The little kid needs therapy. He's struggling. They're seeing, he's seeing visions of grandpa Seth through the whole movie and grandpa Seth, I guess as the audience member, like he actually is there because he's doing things in the physical world. But
You
I think they all do.
Yeah, his parents are just not empathetic at all with the fact that he's saying grandpa Seth.
No, this was like right in line with those 80s movies where the adults in the movie are useless. The kids are the true heroes.
Although I would argue that this movie has no heroes, but we can get to that later.
So the story transitions by talking about how the family has decided to take a vacation to a small town out in the country called Nilbog. And the whole idea is that they're going to do a family exchange where a country family is going to come to the city and this family is going to go to the country and stay for a month.
Is that a real thing? Do people do that?
I wrote the same question. I don't fucking know. That sounds insane. And the dad, the dad has like this vision of living like his ancestors for a month. He said like peasants and farmers. ⁓ But like it's a month. It's a month of living in somebody else's home and them living in your home. I don't know if things like that even exist, but I would not go. That sounds horrible.
It does.
Yeah.
There are so many
weird pieces of dialogue about this premise. they show, like they're, expect to just start working this farm with no, ⁓ no introduction or like, exactly. there are animals and crops and things like that. And he just shows up, they exchange keys and he's like, all right, we're going to start working this farm. And then I found it funny how.
You
They're not farmers.
Yeah.
It was a major plot point that they walk in and they're hungry and they were just like, they, I'm sure they left something for us and they're looking around for food. Like there's no planning to this at all.
No, food is a big plot point in this movie. ⁓
Yeah. So
the, you know, the big twist, I guess, is that Nilbog is Goblin spelled backwards and everybody in the town is a Goblin and the whole thing is a ploy to like turn. Okay. So, trying to think how to summarize this. So it sounds rational that they're going, they try to get humans to eat this food, to turn them into plants.
based matter, which human plant based matter is the goblins favorite food. Am I explaining it correctly?
Yeah, it sounds like it. give humans this poisoned food that turns them into vegetables and plants so that they can then eat them. But I don't understand why you don't just eat vegetables and plants. They already exist. Why do they have to be humans turned into?
Yeah. ⁓
They have these working firms.
Yeah,
they're growing their own food.
Yeah. So apparently, so the goblins are vegetarians, they humans, guess. But anyway, I guess once the humans have transformed into this plant based goo, it's, you know, it's, vegetarian friendly. And the writer talked about how she was just pissed off about how many of her friends had been turning vegetarian. So she decided to write like a movie.
⁓ satirizing vegetarians
Yeah, I think she
completely missed the point of vegetarianism. I don't think that she got them as good as she thinks she did. ⁓
Well, as
somebody who's been a vegetarian most of my life, my first question was like, do you hate vegetarians that much? Okay, all right. That's what I thought. That's what I figured. ⁓
Yes, we do. I'm just kidding.
Yeah, I don't know why she's
so threatened by vegetarianism that she made a whole movie about it.
There's so many funny things in this movie about how the goblins, so the goblins take the shape of humans and there are all these, like every time meat comes up, the goblins are just like, ugh, ugh, disgusting.
Yeah.
And one of my favorite things is the goblins have the little kid cornered towards the end of the movie and he just whips out a double decker bologna sandwich, which I don't know. He's been carrying in his pocket for three days or something, I guess.
No, Grandpa
Seth gave it to him at the seance at the end in a bag. Yeah, it wasn't very clear. I only found that out by reading the plot ⁓ on Wikipedia.
⁓ I missed that. I totally missed that.
Okay.
But he, starts eating it and all the goblins are like, no, the of the preserved is the, the, yeah. Yeah. And they're, they're just like, they're just disgusted.
The cholesterol, his body was poisoned now so they couldn't eat him. But they've probably
all been eating meat their whole lives. So their body is just poisoned from the get go, right? Like if they won't eat him because he ate a bologna sandwich, it's not his first bologna sandwich that he's eaten, I'm sure.
Yeah, I mean...
yeah, and as a vegetarian, can say that I think your body's just poisoned from the... all the time. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so...
⁓ And this is why we hate vegetarians.
Yeah, there are other things too. The goblins hate coffee. Somebody goes to the general store and asks the store clerk for coffee and he's like, no, that's the devil's drink.
Yeah,
coffee, eggs, they hate all of it. It makes them physically recoil just hearing about it.
Yeah. ⁓
Don't you feel like the lore of the goblins and a lot of what happens in this movie, it felt to me like they kept tacking stuff on, like they kept making it up as they go along. Like we are introduced to the queen of the goblins and then it's like, she's like, I get my powers from Stonehenge and she has a stone in her castle or church or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah, she lives
in a church, but it's weird inside. It's like it's obviously another set.
Yeah.
Yeah, and they just keep adding stuff on there like, ⁓ the way that you defeat the goblins is by eating bologna sandwiches. And then you have to touch the stone at the church and it's goodness that's going to defeat them in the end. I, it was just hilarious how I just kept piling on.
Yeah, I was very confused by...
Yeah, I was very confused by the mechanics of how they defeated them. It was like, have to touch the stone and really concentrate on goodness, I guess, which I don't know what that means, but yeah. ⁓ The goblin queen was my favorite character by far. She...
Ha
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think this was maybe her first IMDB acting credit. She's probably acted in other things like locally or whatever, but she gave the role everything she had and it was so good. It was so over the top.
Yeah.
Yeah. She was, she was at 11 and, and, uh, I think, I think it's fair to say she's the only one who really understood what kind of movie she was in. Everyone else seemed a little tentative and confused. And I think we're, doing their best I felt in many cases, but she was just like, yeah, I'm going to go full camp and
Yeah.
Eyes bugged out the whole time. Like, yeah, it did work. She was, she was amazing.
It worked.
Yeah, I couldn't help but respect her for it.
towards the end. The popcorn scene with the goblin queen is the most batshit thing I've seen in a movie and I loved it. Do you want to talk about it a little bit?
Yeah.
I had this down as the most ridiculous scene in the movie. So for the whole movie, the Goblin Queen is like this kind of hideous woman. She's got like really nasty teeth and dark sunken eyes and everything, but she touches the Stonehenge rock or something and becomes this beautiful young woman. And then she goes to seduce the friends of
Yeah.
The daughter, well the daughter, this is insane.
Yeah, we
can come back and talk about that group. But yeah, let's just say a guy.
Yeah, so there's a group of boys
in an RV, like teenage boys that that are outside of town in an RV, and she goes to seduce one of them in the RV. I don't know why. ⁓ Just to just to kill.
Yeah, I don't know. She's
just slowly working through this group of boys, I think. She's already transformed two of them.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, she turned two of them into plants already. She goes for the third and he's in the RV and she is seducing him with a ⁓ ear of corn and. And she asks him what his favorite food is or something. He says popcorn and she was like, we can do that. We just got to apply a little heat and they start. They start both eating off the corn cob at the same time.
Hahaha
Yeah.
And then the room just explodes with popcorn. And he drowns in popcorn.
Yeah,
I wrote the exact quote, all we have to do is heat it up. And so she's like, they're lying on bed. She's like lying on top of him on a bed and they're both eating the popcorn like a lady in the tramp style, I guess. And it's so funny because you can almost see somebody right off camera throwing bags of popcorn onto the bed.
Yeah
Yeah.
Yeah.
like they're just coming in streams.
Yeah. And also I don't think that's how popcorn works. That was a cooked ear of corn that they were eating. It was so good.
No.
Yes, that's definitely not how popcorn works. It made no
sense. I'm sure it makes no sense to people listening now, but man, what a scene.
Yeah, yeah, that was that was maybe my favorite scene.
Since we brought up the RV guys, you want to talk about just that whole plot point?
Yeah, they I feel like they were completely useless to the movie. They didn't need if I were rewriting this, I'd write this entire group of people out. what they were was the daughter of the family had a boyfriend named Elliot, who the conflict between her and Elliot was that he kept choosing his friends over her. He would bring his friends everywhere. And like.
She was basically telling him, you got to choose between me and your friends. And she's leaving in the morning for this month long family trip and she asked him to go and she's like, you can go, but you can't bring your friends. And he doesn't,
Which
I think you need to plan a little bit ahead of time to get on a month long trip.
Yeah, he just
agrees. He's like, OK, I'll go for a month. He's going to disappear. He's just he's a teenager. That actress, think, was like 15 when this movie was made. So I'm assuming he was around the same age. But he doesn't show up for them leaving for the trip, but he does rent an RV or they have an RV and he shows up in Nilbog with all of his friends. He brought his friends anyway, even though she said not to and.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they don't really interact with the main family until the very end. They are just there to be killed off, I think, by the goblins and the goblin queen early on.
Yeah, they, I think it's funny the themes that kind of run through this movie about that relationship. So it seems like the dad of the family really hates Elliot, the boyfriend, and it's not clear why it's really funny. So one of my other favorite quotes is when Elliot and Holly are first talking about going on the trip and Elliot like climbs into her bedroom.
Yeah.
to scare her while she's doing bench presses. By the how many bench presses did she do? That was a really long shot of her just doing bench press reps. ⁓ And Holly's like, you scared the shit out of me. And Elliot says, I'm the victim of a nocturnal rapture. I have to release my lowest instincts with a woman. As a teenager, ⁓ American teenager, this is how they talk apparently.
I don't know.
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah.
So Holly punches him in the groin and says, release your instincts in the bathroom. And Elliot says, are you nuts? You trying to turn me into a homo? That doesn't make any sense. Then Holly says, wouldn't be too hard if my father discovers you here, he'd cut off your little nuts and eat them. He can't stand you.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know how that works.
He'll cut off your lil' nuts and eat them!
And yeah.
It was my favorite. was immediately
once that was just like very early in the movie when she says this and I was like, I'm going to like this.
Yeah, I was like, made no sense. Holly, by the way, I don't remember if this is in the documentary or if I read this, but so most of the cast is part of the Church of Latter-day Saints, Mormons and the actress that played Holly was and she said she was really uncomfortable saying that line and kept asking the director to change it. And he was like, no, do it as is.
I feel a little bit bad for a teenage Holly, yeah, some of the delivery probably explains that they're just really weirded out by this movie.
Yeah.
Yeah, it reminded me
of Mark Hamill talking about the dialogue from A New Hope with George Lucas and he's like, can't, you can write these lines, but you can't say them on film. Like it just doesn't work. The dialogue was really bad. And after watching the documentary, I get the impression that there was a lot of ego with this director that he felt he knew best and this was not his first movie. I think he's made like
Yeah.
25 or 30 movies or some shit like that ⁓ So my impression is he just figured he knew best and he wasn't gonna listen to these little kids even though that they were giving him good advice like the dialogue Was not good
Yeah, he's made a lot.
Yeah, and to be fair, none of them had any movie making experience. So he probably felt like, yeah, it was.
Who are
they to criticize his wife's writing? Yeah.
Exactly.
so the, group of boys in the RV. So first off they were the, the friends of the boyfriend were convinced that Nil, Nilbog was going to have plenty of single, attractive women for some reason.
Single unattached
horny girls is what they kept saying.
Yeah. this was just something that the boyfriend said to convince them to go. they were like, yeah, it makes complete sense. The small town out in the country. That's, that's what's there. there was definitely a, ⁓ bit of an eighties vibe of like, you know, porkies and that's where like this group of horny boys were just, you know, so there's a scene pretty early on where some
You
Yeah.
girl is just running through the woods and we never really understand where she's from or but this attractive young woman running through the woods. And one of the boys is like, just starts chasing her through the woods. And it was a little disturbing. seemed like he finally tackles her. She's running from something and scared. And he like tackles her to the ground and is basically like, is he going to rape her?
No.
Yeah.
don't know, it
seemed a little implied, like he might.
I didn't know what was happening there. It was just really weird. And then the group of a group of trolls comes out of the trees and he's like, let me take care of this. Or yeah, goblins, sorry. Goblins come out of the trees and he's like, let me take care of this. And then he walks over and is just like, here's what you're going to do. It was, it was just like, no human would act this way. in real life.
Goblins.
Now he immediately got a spear into the chest.
Well deserved,
horny, dumb, rapist kid.
that was a good one.
I like the, so there's a scene where there's no, there's no food in the house. So Michael, the dad and Joshua go into town to try to buy some food for the house. And the general store is closed because everyone in town has gone to the sermon ⁓ somewhere. And so the dad is like, we'll wait. And he sits outside and reads a book immediately falls asleep.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, just
look.
So Joshua gets on his skateboard and goes looking for this sermon and he finds everyone in the church being preached to about like how evil humans are, I guess, and that Joshua has the skateboard that he sets on the ground.
Yeah.
Right next to a ramp that goes into the room that all these people are in. They're all goblins. They look like humans. And then he's trying to like peek through the floor to see or listen to what they're saying. And when he does that, he knocks the skateboard and it falls into the room and they immediately capture him. But like, did you notice in that scene, there's all these extras and and some of the
Yeah.
main actors are closing in on the on Joshua and there's this woman off to the side staring straight into the camera the entire time. Also, that's not so the the Goblin Queen also breaks the fourth wall and just stares straight at the camera at one point too while delivering a line. I'm like, this is so good.
No, I didn't notice that.
Yeah, I
should say about the acting, almost every actor at some point is like smiling during the delivery of what's supposed to be serious dialogue. It's very amateurish.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of my favorite scenes is why they don't have food in the house. when they first show up, there's all this food that the exchange family, I guess, has set out. And this is the poison food that's going to turn them into plants. And the ghost of Grandpa Seth warns Josh to prevent his family from eating it. So he pees on all the food. They don't show it, thankfully.
I was just gonna bring this up. ⁓
But yeah, one of the best scenes of the movie is when the dad is scolding Josh about it.
he's carrying Josh down the hallway and he's pointing. He's stopping at every door and pointing at the sign and like looking back at the camera. And he's like, do you see this writing? Do you know what it means? Hospitality. You can't piss on hospitality. I won't allow it. Yeah. And then he starts tightening his belt. And Josh was like, what are you going to do to me, daddy? And he's like, I'm tightening my belt.
I won't allow it. Yeah.
It looked like he was, it looked like he
was going to pee on us. Like it looked like he was taking off. I was like, where's this movie going? But now.
I know. Yeah. Yeah,
I was very confused by that scene. I didn't know where it was going to go at first. But yeah, he was tightening his belt so that, you know, he he wouldn't feel the hunger pangs. That's what he said.
⁓
Yeah, that whole line is so, or yeah, the whole scene is so weird. Just the dialogue. He's like, tightening my belt by one loop so I don't feel hunger pains and your sister and mother will have to do likewise. Okay, Josh, you want to get rough with me? You want to show me that you don't like this? The choice of this house for our vacation by going on a hunger strike? Well, I'll accept the challenge. But just remember when I was your age, I really did suffer from hunger. We'll see who gets through this.
But remember, I've got more practice than you. Like, it just went off the rails in terms of.
Who speaks like this?
who this character was and why he's doing what he's doing.
Yeah, it's insane dialogue.
a scene.
Another another one of my
dialogues is when they're in the car on the way to Nilbog and Joshua sees his grandpa on the side of the road holding a sign that says, stop them or something like that. So he's like, stop the car, stop the car. And the dad says, what's the matter, Josh? And the mom turns around and says, do you have to throw up? And he goes, yes, I have to throw up.
Yes.
Hahaha!
⁓ Also from the drive, one of my favorites, this is pretty early on in the movie. They're arguing and the mom just interjects and says, Joshua, start singing. Come on, sing that song that I like so much. And Joshua is like, I don't feel like singing mom, just sing. And then he starts singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat. That's the song that she likes so much.
Yeah.
And they all start singing, how they like stagger it. Yeah. And it was, it sounded really bad.
In the round. Yeah.
You
there are just so many, like, batshit scenes that...
Yeah, like you can't, you can't, everyone is, is as good as the last one.
Yeah. I should have said that the, the, the rapey kid and the, woman go to the Goblin Queens church and they transform the woman into a plant and start eating her. And I think one of the most famous lines from the movie, this has been memeified over and over as the kid's name is Arnold. And he just says, they're eating her and they're going to eat me. my God.
you
And I can't do it justice how he delivers that line, but it is choice.
You just have to watch it.
I don't know if you noticed this, but when the family first pulls into Nilbog for the first time, they're in their minivan, they pull into town. Clearly the middle of when they're filming this. And Joshua says, where is everybody? And Michael says, this is a farming community. Remember at this time of night, everybody goes to sleep. Like, night? It's the middle of the day.
Ha ha ha ha.
Yeah.
He's gonna be really successful as a farmer. ⁓
He's
asleep by like two in the afternoon
Yeah.
⁓ we didn't talk about the costumes at all.
They were like the masks I thought were spooky looking like they were creepy. They weren't well done, but.
I mean,
no, some of them looked like they melted in the heat or something, they were very amateurish. like there's a scene, one of the first scenes with like this woman, like she had freckles and it was like clearly just somebody put like pen marks as freckles. mean, and then there are.
Yeah
Yeah.
There's a lot of green sweat in the movie. I don't know. I don't want to try to explain it, but it was just like this, you know, weird fluorescent green liquid that it's like jello or something like that. That's being poured down people's heads.
Yeah.
Yeah. Would you eat any of the food in this movie?
no, I mean, it was, it was such a weird choice in terms of like all the, all this like poison food. It's like, it's like corn with frosting on it, like green frosting and like weird pastries that it's like, yeah, like one of the kids gets handed a sandwich with like just green filling in the middle.
It looks fucking disgusting.
Yeah.
And
he just takes a giant bite, doesn't even ask what it is.
It's a hamburger bun
with just green goop in it, like toxic green goo.
Yeah.
She's like, are you hungry? Yeah. The food in this movie was really weird. I didn't understand that.
Hahaha
it either looks like something horrifying you would find in like a 70s casserole cookbook or like Aunt Bethany's jello mold from Christmas Vacation that had the cat food in it. It's all horrible looking shit like that and like weird icing on stuff that shouldn't have icing on it. It was disgusting.
Yeah.
I mean,
maybe that's an Italian's idea of what Americans eat. It's just all fluorescent and full of sugar and this weird process of junk.
Yeah.
Did you find the ending satisfying in any way?
the very end where they set it up for a sequel.
Yeah, I guess. Yeah. do you want to talk about how the movie ended?
I
they escape Nilbog. The whole family gets out, they go home and the daughter, Holly, and Michael the dad go into town for something. They have something else to do. So it's just Joshua and his mom at home. And Joshua is like, I'm going to go to my room. And the mom's like, I'm going to eat these apples.
They're
still good.
They're still good.
They taste delicious. turns out that they had been poisoned by goblins, which I don't know when the goblins had time to go there and poison their apples. This whole movie takes place over like a day and a half. But shit.
Yeah, and
they supposedly got rid of the goblins through the Stonehenge power of goodness thing.
Yeah, and also the family that was supposed to come to their house to stay there never left Nilbog. They were still there later in the movie. They hadn't. They said they had car trouble and didn't leave. So I don't know who came and poisoned their apples, but she starts turning into a plant matter and they eat her at the end. And then Joshua just screams into the camera and that's how the movie ends. So essentially they haven't destroyed
the goblins, the mom dies at the end and nothing happens. like, was that satisfying for you for it to end that way?
I mean, no, I thought it didn't make any sense for the reasons you mentioned. yeah, it just seemed like it was tacked on there so that there'd be a sequel, I guess. I don't know.
Yeah, like I said earlier that I felt like there were no heroes in this movie because they don't actually accomplish anything. don't have any role in the outcome of the movie. They kind of just walk around and goblins jump out at them and they scream and they kind of fight them off one at a time. So really they just go to this town, goblins try to eat them and fail and then they leave.
and then the mom gets eaten at the end. like, it felt like they didn't have any role in defeating the goblins other than touching the stone and...
Yeah, Grandpa Seth was really the only hero. He was the one who kind of guided them through how to defeat the goblins and how he knew all this. Who knows? But he seemed to know everything about the goblins and had experience with them before, maybe.
Yeah, like it would have been cool. So Joshua had this skateboard through the movie. You see it in the first, five minutes of the movie against the wall in his bedroom. And then he's riding it through town later. why couldn't they have made that some kind of prop or a weapon that he used? You know, like Dennis, the menace, a slingshot or something like it could have been something that was he could have used to affect the outcome in some way. But, ⁓ yeah, I don't know.
I didn't think it was, I didn't think that the characters really had much of an impact on the plot.
So on that note, what did you think of this movie?
I think it is quite possibly the worst movie ever made. It's maybe the king of So Bad It's Good. I had a really hard time giving this movie a rating because it's objectively terrible in every discipline of filmmaking, like the writing, the directing, acting, costuming, special effects. It's a train wreck.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like everything has to come together perfectly to make a movie this bad. Like you can't do this on purpose. So like in that regard, it's it's a perfect movie in the worst way. It really made me question my rating system that I have, like if we're if we're rating the worst movies ever made, this is a five star bad movie.
Yeah.
Ha ha ha.
Like it's a must watch.
It's funny because I think I went through some moments of like questioning my own sanity and introspection this week as well. I was like, yeah, I was like, this is, mean, this is a one star or zero star, depending on what your floor is. It's, it's, it's bad. There's no question about it. I can't convince anyone that this is a good movie. And before watching this,
You
To be honest, kind of had a little bit of a, I realized that I was kind of judgmental towards people who were like, I like watching bad movies. Cause I'm like, do you? Like, are you just trying to be, you know, counter culture, like edgy or whatever? Like it's a bad movie. Just admit it's a bad movie and you know, it's fine. Or do you just have really bad taste? And I had to actually look deep to realize that I had some of that judgment inside because
I was like, there's, there's nothing good about this movie, but somehow I was smiling the whole time I was watching it. And I was like, I would watch this again tomorrow. And, and I haven't said that about any movie we've covered so far yet. Like, and, I really don't understand what's the difference between this and the Winnie the Pooh movie, on a surface level, because they're both.
Yeah.
Yeah.
really bad movies and there's bad acting and all that stuff. so, yeah, it's really hard to pinpoint, but I think you're right. I think it just kind of came together that everyone was so bad at this, but attacked it earnestly. ⁓ They were like really trying to make a good movie and didn't.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that that earnestness is what makes it charming in a way that and and the fact that really it's not actors that are in this movie. ⁓ So you can't fault them. It's not like these were trained, experienced people making a bad movie. They were just pulled off the street or out of the mental hospital in some cases. So like I love it for that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
so in the documentary, the director says that film should make you feel something. should register on an emotional level. like, I think it did that. if it made you question the way you judged other people and the movies they it's a success. Like I laughed through the whole thing. And I think that, I think that he has ego about it and was a little hurt.
at the way people laughed at it, that they were enjoying it in a way that he didn't intend for them to enjoy it. But I think it's still a successful movie and that like here we are 25, 35 years later, whatever, still enjoying the movie and talking about it. And there's still a big cult following for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's talk about the documentary for a bit. I think it was a really solid documentary and I'm really glad that it was made because like you said earlier, it added some perspective to Troll 2 that I don't think we would have got otherwise. So it takes place roughly 15 years after the movie was shot. And it mostly follows
George Hardy, who's the dad in Troll 2. I thought it was great to have him as the central person in the documentary because he probably has maybe the happiest ending of anybody on the cast. And it gave some balance against some of the sadder parts of the documentary, which we'll touch on, I'm sure. But George Hardy is a dentist by trade and was a dentist when he was cast in this movie. He just happened to be a dentist in Salt Lake City and...
Yeah.
had acted a little bit in high school and college, but was just a dentist and saw the casting call for this.
And he was still practicing his
dentistry during the shooting. Like he said he would be like two days doing dentistry and then three days doing the movie.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah. and still is a dentist to this day, I think. he's like a classic extrovert. Everybody in this small town that he lives in loves him and he's like super cheesy and clearly takes a lot of like pride and, and joy from being in what's dubbed the worst movie ever made.
and follows him through most of this. It's funny, it seems like he gets sucked into reliving his glory once he realizes that there's screenings and it's a massive cult following. And I think one of the funniest things is when he starts going to conventions and nobody knows him and he's trying to convince people to ask him for his autograph.
We have.
Yeah
Yeah.
and they're just like, I don't know anything about this movie or who you are. And then he's at some horror movie convention and he's just like, these people are weird. And he just keeps like, he's clearly like weirded out by everybody there and just leaves early.
Yeah.
Well, he has this really poignant moment. I don't know if he, if he knew that it was poignant, but he was, he was kind of mocking the people that are into these really shitty low budget movies. he was walking around and looking at stuff and he's like, I don't know how anybody could like that stuff. And then he was like, but then again, you know, here I am. Like I don't, you know, who am I? And I was like, yeah, like he was such a likable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
guy in the documentary that I felt so happy for him that he got his celebrity moment. got his 15 minutes and and even the director he they they were having screenings in LA and like it seemed like he was really excited that his movie's being shown in Hollywood. Like it's it was kind of heartwarming.
Yeah.
Yeah, the documentary spends a decent amount of time with the director and a little bit with his wife who wrote the movie. And I was a little bit torn on that. It seemed like he was really battling internally with both being happy that a lot of people were watching his movie and questioning what they were saying. For the most part, everybody who was interviewed on the documentary that loved Troll 2 was like, we're not.
Yeah.
laughing at it, actually is bringing me joy and happiness and like, enjoy it. But clearly they're also all talking about how bad the movie is. mean, just like kind of we have today, like I'm like, smiled throughout. I enjoyed watching it. I'll watch it again, but it's terrible. and the director is like torn because he defends it. He's like, it's, know, the story is an allegory about
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
how families are attacked by the external world and it's about life and death. he's like, attributing these deep themes that I'm like, really? And skeptical of, and he doesn't like that. And he keeps at these like conventions, he keeps interrupting the actors when they're talking about like what went wrong. He's like, bullshit, you forget. And he's just really...
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah, the actors are saying like,
we didn't have a finished script. And he was like, no, you don't remember.
Yeah,
it was tough to watch sometimes. Like clearly he was wrestling with that.
Yeah, he obviously didn't set out to make the worst movie ever made. And I think that, you know, it kind of hurts his feelings a little bit that he did. But I don't know, it seemed like he was really struggling to accept the cult status that it had and that people liked it because it was so bad. Like he didn't he couldn't quite grasp.
Right.
why people were into it. so he liked when they laughed at the parts he thought they would laugh at, but he didn't like when they would laugh at the rest of the movie that he didn't intend to be funny. But it just is.
Yeah, yeah. And you know, that would be hard, I think, to watch that. The documentary was also interesting following the rest of the cast. mean, everybody seemed to have their own journey with this movie. know, Connie, that played the daughter, it seemed like she really struggled for a long time with how bad the movie was.
Yeah, she left it off her resume
for a long time. I don't even know if it's still on there.
it's, said at the end of the documentary that she still hasn't added it back to her resume, but it's, it's, you know, it's on her IMDB. And I think she's, I don't think she's acting at the moment. it seemed like by the time the documentary is shot, she kind of came around to it, but was still like,
She said something in the documentary every time that she asked for an autograph. Somebody asked her for an autograph. She was like, internally, are you sure? Like, do you guys like this?
Yeah.
Well, she said too that like anytime anybody found out that she was in Troll 2 when she was auditioning, she was like, I would not get the job. Once they watch the movie, they're not going to hire me. like, it's that's tough to be in that spot where it's not her fault. But yeah, you've made something so bad that it's career limiting in that way.
Yeah.
Yeah, that would be hard. And then.
She probably had the
most success acting-wise beyond this movie of any of the cast, I would say. That I saw anyway. She was in lot of episodes of TV and stuff like that, some movies here and there.
Yeah.
Yeah. And then there were some sadder, I think cast members, Margo who played the mom. They didn't really dig deep into it. And I'm kind of glad that they didn't cause it seemed like there was probably some dark stories there in terms of, yeah, it was hard to watch. I think this was, maybe she was in one other movie, but didn't really seem, at least from what I saw to
It was hard to watch.
to be in much beyond that and still kind of, I think, struggling with that.
Yeah, she seemed like there was maybe some mental health issues there with her and she seemed like she was struggling and had basically secluded herself. Certainly from the movie and any fans of it, but it seemed like largely society itself. She'd kind of she had a big sign outside her house that was like, don't even knock the eye at the door. Like, don't come up unless you're the mailman. Stay away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, you know, I think the documentary was great in terms of like really balancing kind of that whole range from kind of the darker stories to the fun of watching George Hardy, the dad and just who he is in real life.
along those lines of where everybody ended up, seemed like George actually has returned to acting. He was most recently in a movie in 2020 called Sist, which is where he plays a dermatologist. Did you look at anything about this movie?
Yeah.
No, I mean, I looked over his IMDB page, but I didn't look into any of the movies. They seemed like kind of some budget horror movies.
Yeah, low budget horror movies, you know, clearly his, his you should watch the trailer for cysts. It's, funny. It seems like he, you know, he's, he's approached this with the level of camp that I think would have been appropriate for a troll too. It's, know, closer to the goblin queen, um, performance in, in cysts it seems like. and it also has, uh,
Arnold from Troll 2, Darren Ewing. He was the one with glasses.
⁓
it seems like him and George at some point got roped in with a director who's directed them in a few of these like low budget movies. it seems, it seems like those two are the ones who are working the most at the moment.
Yeah, good for them.
So what would be your alternate pick here? Do you have one?
I couldn't think of anything. I couldn't think of a single movie that is even close to this. This movie is like singular in its terribleness. ⁓ There's nothing that rival, like maybe Plan 9 from Outer Space is the movie ever made, but there's nothing quite like this movie that I've ever seen. So I can't compare it.
I agree.
Yeah, I think the only one that came to mind was Princess Bride just because of kind of the first scene ripping off from that. you know, it diverges pretty starkly after that first, you know, story reading scene. I can't, I couldn't think of any Goblin movie I've seen that I to is a good movie. But I think overall, like I said earlier, this is first time that I would watch this movie again of the movies we've covered. So.
You
I'd say my pick is actually watch this movie. If you're skeptical, watch the documentary, best worst movie. And the documentary is a good doc in and of itself. And you get a few shots of Troll 2 in the documentary. So it gets to whet your appetite. See if you're ready for the real thing. But yeah, at the very least, maybe watch a few scenes. We'll post the trailer for Troll 2 in the show notes.
You can get a sneak peek in 90 seconds or so and see if it's for you, but really can't do justice without some, you know, watching the popcorn scene or some of the other stuff that, yeah, you can watch it out of order. It doesn't need to make sense.
Yeah, this is the first movie we've watched that I would implore you to go watch.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right, well, I think that's probably all we can say about Troll 2 for now. I'm sure we'll come back to it over the years. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you have any feedback, send us an email at theworstmoviepodcast at gmail.com. I am Adé.
And I'm Aaron. Thanks for listening to the Worst Movie Podcast.