I've seen Troll II about three times. The first time on HBO back in the mid-90's. It was listed in the paper as showing one Saturday afternoon. I was stoked! When I was a child I used to watch the first Troll constantly! I had an obsession with small creature features like Critters, Ghoulies, Hob-Goblins, Munchies and of course the grand-daddy of them all, Gremlins and it's awesome meta-sequel. So, I made sure to clear my very busy seventh grade Saturday schedule to check out Troll II, a sequel I didn't know even existed. This was to be a big moment, cinematically speaking in terms of what a 13 year old without a girlfriend liked. Then the movie starts and about 30 seconds in I knew I wasn't watching anything resembling my other loved small creature movies OR the original John Carl Buechler directed Troll. Now, back then I didn't know much about Italian cinema, so I had no clue why this abomination was called Troll II. I just thought it was a lazy shitty sequel to an 80's movie. I even thought some of the trolls, errrr, I mean goblins looked similar to the lead troll Torok in the original Troll.
Years later, fifteen or so, Troll II becomes a thing. An ironic 'so-bad-it's-good' movie that grinning idiots like to smile about with their grinning idiot buddies to show how 'fringe' they are. So births the hipster 'I only like things ironically' as opposed to liking things because, ya' know, you like them movement. Not to condemn anyone who genuinely enjoys Troll II on it's awful level. I'm more referring to the mainstream folks who embraced it and ruined it for all us true-blue fringe dwellers. Personally, the 'so-bad-it's-good' thing needs to end. When big or small movie studios are purposely making self-aware shit to market to the mainstream who now think they're 'in' on the joke, we have officially killed any joy of the whole fringe movie market. When someone comes up to me and says movies like Troll II or Sharknado are the worst movies they've ever seen or that were ever made, my only response is that you obviously haven't seen that many movies. Ah, who am I kidding? Nobody has ever come up to me and said that. But I'm sure they have to others.
Anyway, to come full circle we get the very entertaining and a bit sad documentary Best Worst Movie. It's not a deep documentary. It doesn't really go into the whole fringe sub-culture of these types of guilty pleasure movies, but rather revels in the brief phenomenon known as Troll II. Some of the behind the scenes stories, conventions, parties and screenings are fairly entertaining, but the whole doc rests on dentist turned actor turned dentist again George Hardy. A truly entertaining and likeable guy who's smile does light up a room. The best scene in the movie is his total uncomfortableness at a horror convention. The movie should've focused on him more. Hey, I'm no critic, so what do I know. I do know that right now I am re-watching Best Worst Movie and during one of the scenes involving a screening during the post movie Q and A a patron asks Troll II's director Claudio Fragasso, "Why is the movie called Troll II when there are no trolls in it." You see the movie, if you don't know by now, is actually about goblins who have taken over a small town. There are no ties to the first Troll movie, no one says troll the entire movie, and the characters clearly define the creatures as goblins(the name of the town they have taken over is called Nilbog--Get it?). Fragasso goes on the defensive and simply replies, "you don't know anything." And on a level he's right. This 'movie fan' doesn't know anything. He certainly doesn't know that for decades Italian filmmakers, through legal loop-holes, some escapable and some not, have cashed in on in-name only titles of popular American movies. It ranges from hits like Alien 2, Jaws and countless action movies including Terminator 2. If this 'fan' had known that or even had a clue about what Troll II actually was, he wouldn't have smugly asked his question to snickering audience members just as clever as him.
Bottom line: it used to be a special thing to be a movie nerd, or a nerd of any kind. You truly were an outcast. You danced to your own beat and knew and loved things that were unique to you and the few other creatures of like-minds that you knew. Now EVERYBODY is a nerd. The word nerd doesn't even have the same meaning anymore. Nerd is cool. Problem is these people who claim to be nerdy aren't really. They have just jumped on a band-wagon marketed to them from the mainstream and co-opted something that they really don't understand and will pass like all fads eventually do. I sound like a crotchety old man, don't I? I won't argue with that.
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