MisterWhiplash 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!

Red-Barracuda The film Troll 2 has become something of a cult item in the last five or six years. It's one of the movies that truly defines the term 'so bad it's good'. It's a consistently ridiculous film that is so very amusing because it so clearly never intentionally tries to be funny at any point. Its mixture of earnest endeavour, cinematic hopelessness and general strangeness aligns it alongside the much-loved yet utterly inept work of Ed Wood. It's really a very rare occasion for any film to achieve the very specific anti-brilliance of Troll 2. So with this in mind, it only seems right that a documentary has been made to celebrate its existence.It focuses mainly on two things. The people involved in the making of the film and the audiences it has subsequently attracted. What it doesn't do – and this is a mistake in my opinion – is tell us how the movie came to be made in the first place. It doesn't even answer the question that many people find the most obvious – why is it called Troll 2 when there aren't any trolls in it? I think the story of Troll 2 warranted a little more historical context and background info, as much of the facts are fascinating in themselves.That said I did enjoy Best Worst Movie and think it's great it was made at all. I remember back in 2005 Michael Stephenson the director and child star in the film frequented the IMDb boards with other cast members and he did say back then that he was planning on making this very documentary. I must say I thought it would never happen but fortunately I was incorrect. George Hardy, the father in the film, emerges as a real star; a very likable man who seems to have lapped up his bizarre fame. Although the real main man of the piece turns out to be director Claudio Fragasso. Every time he was on screen was gold. He was a living embodiment to what made Troll 2 so entertaining in the first place, i.e. committed artistic seriousness and a refreshing lack of irony. Fragasso truly believed that Troll 2 was loved so much because it was a complex family drama. Although he at least didn't go as far as to compare it with Casablanca as Margo Prey did without any sense of jest. Prey was clearly a disturbed woman. But then so was Don Packard, the man who played the drugstore owner, he in fact was an out-patient at a sanatorium when the film was made. So this is surely an example of fact being as strange as fiction. Well, almost.Best Worst Movie is ultimately a perfect accompaniment to Troll 2 itself. The documentary somewhat strangely does not really focus on the content of the film itself. There are numerous clips of course but they're never commented on and many of the best parts are bizarrely not featured in the first place. This would perhaps be more of a problem if you didn't have the movie itself to enjoy afterwards. Ultimately Best Worst Movie is a look at a group of people who were inadvertently involved in making a movie that not one of them could have imagined in their wildest dreams would go on to become something of a cult classic. It's a strange story but one worth knowing about.

galensaysyes Best Worst Movie isn't what I expected it to be. In publicizing it, its maker and its subject gave interviews in which they recounted their experiences as actors in the movie Troll 2 15 years ago, and I expected BWM to be an expansion on those accounts: a thorough history of T2's making. But BWM includes very little information on that, less than what was in the interviews, even though it had the director, the writer, and the entire cast to draw from. It doesn't, for example, tell how T2 came into being, how it was financed, its director--an Italian--came to shoot in Utah, how he assembled the cast, and so on. A viewer who didn't know T2 wouldn't be able to piece together the story from the evidence here. Instead BWM concentrates on one of the T2 actors--a one-shot actor--traveling around the country to make personal appearances in what appears to be a touring revival of T2, primarily for the benefit of the cult it has gained since its making. But apart from one fan's account of how his cell came into being, BWM is short on facts even about the cult.So what does it show? It shows the one-shot actor telling people he once was in a bad movie and recapitulating his dialogue from it for the audiences at the revival showings. It also shows fans doing the kinds of things fans do: quoting lines from the movie, wearing homemade replicas of the costumes, and so on. A very little of this is entertaining--about enough for a five-minute feature on a TV magazine. But Best Worst Movie goes on for 18 times that length (30 times, if one counts the extras on the DVD). It's overkill. Worse yet, amidst all the repetition a somewhat unpleasant outlook comes to make itself felt. BWM likes to stare and point at people. It doesn't have the sympathy to look beyond the obvious and perceive anything more in them, or the curiosity to find out. It's satisfied to stare. And it seems to divide the objects of its attention into two categories: Geeks and Freaks. The Geeks--the members of the fan cult--are Okay. The Freaks--those who don't like T2, or like it in the wrong way, or belong to some different cult--are Not Okay. Thus one of the actresses from T2, who gave the nearest thing to a successful performance in it but has now become, or perhaps always was, a jittery recluse, isn't given leisure to explain herself, and her invalid mother, who is in no way unusual for a person at her time of life in her state of health (and has nothing to do with anything except that she happened to be on scene), is treated as a freak, whereas the movie validates people who put on goblin get-ups, gobble down green-dyed cakes, and re-enact scenes from a 15-year-old bad movie. I submit that the life of that invalid mother, her reclusive daughter, or any of the other people the film shows as marginal--if someone had the interest and sensitivity to bring them out--could be shown to have more value than the adolescent nonsense BWM chooses to celebrate. Consider the case: The moviemaker called on his hermitlike former castmate with no warning, she welcomed him into her house--and then he crapped on her. He lured the director of T2 to this country with a promise that he would see his movie appreciated at last--and then not only his appreciators but his former cast crapped on him. He's shown becoming quite testy about it, and no wonder; that kind of treatment is a betrayal. Hence, in the end the taste Best Worst Movie left in my mouth was more worst than best.

thesar-2 The dad's a (laughing gas) dentist. The mom's a (complicated) nut. The daughter's (finger-glassing) embarrassed. The son's (indirectly) an almost no-show. The storekeeper's (literally) insane. The Director's (good-heartedly) delusional. And the goblins are (a little) short on the story.Watch Troll 2. I usually don't say that about films I rate 1/5 stars, though, perhaps I might go back to revisit it, thanks to Best Worst Movie. But, I say watch it in order to appreciate the awesome documentary based on both the popularity of the trash Troll 2 is plus where the actors are today.I'll admit, I don't watch too many documentaries, and that's a pity. For the most part, I enjoy myself tremendously following. That is, for subjects I'm interested in or interested in learning more about. I can't simply Netflix a Iraq or gardening documentary because, frankly, I could care less about either.I did care, however, about more of the background of the phenomenal of Troll 2. And this movie: Best Worst Movie didn't disappoint.Mainly this documentary involves the screenings and conventions either centered or included said movie, to audiences that eat (no pun) it up like it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which, not coincidentally enough, they advertise/double bill for here as well. Also, you'll get the "Where are they now" stories – namely the attention-hungry, but incredibly positive and fun, Dr. George Hardy, who played the Dad in Troll 2 and the director of the film. Also, it all-but served as an audio, though equally visual, audio commentary.And like only a FEW commentaries, you will get brutal honesty here. You will see the people involved who readily admit they were confused, bedazzled and embarrassed about the product they put out – and when they finally saw the rarely viewed film. You will also have the defenders of the bad. To each his/her own, but it takes a good person to step back from their project – as I OFTEN DO – and say, "Well, yeah, that was cr*p."On a related note, I finally finished my first official novel 1½ years ago. I wrote one when I was a kid, but that was barely 110 typed pages; hardly a Stephen King chapter. No, this one could be published as is with its current length. Unfortunately, it would need four, five or even eighteen re-writes until I, Mr. Perfectionist, remotely deem it worthy of a paid-editor reading it. I am honest enough to say: "There is a story there; a good story" but incidentally, I know it was horribly written. As is.Stephen King taught me (SEE – or READ: the excellent On Writing book he wrote) to step back away from a project for a period of time. I forget how long, but I did end up waiting a full year. That was really good as I was able to view my "manuscript" with open-eyes and as a third party. I was astonished on how I could put away my own personal feeling and review it like I review the movies on my website. It was gawdawful. That's not to say it can't be re-imagined – God, I hope I do – but I knew then where the problems where.I don't digress here, because this is my point: though I appreciate those (namely, the director, Claudio Fragasso, and actress that played the mother, Margo Prey) who show loyalty to their given projects, you really need to spread some honesty in your life. Thankfully, Fragasso, though blind as he is, he was able to laugh about the comedic reactions those fans had to his "good work."It's not a groundbreaking documentary, but I will report this: it's so lighthearted on just a fun topic. The dentist, Hardy, is just so much fun to watch and he shows his true enthusiasm and eventual true burn out. (Who wouldn't be?) And to me, that was all honesty. In addition, it was great to see the highs and lows of Troll 2's fandom – I mostly dislike documentaries that are diligent in just showing ONE side. Sorry, Michael Moore fans. (Side note: I don't "hate" Michael Moore, as he does, in fact, give me something to think about, but I do want to see both sides at all times in all documentaries. How rare is that?)Sure, you won't learn how McDonald's makes fake meat taste like it came from true cows. You won't learn why America shouldn't be shoving its nose in world affairs. But, you will have a good time and learn about a film that all-but can't simply be duplicated. On purpose.Again, I highly recommend watching Troll 2 first, then (definitely) this documentary and then if you're lucky, catch the Rifftrax version of Troll 2 as they made it all the more enjoyable.Side note: as horrible as the original "sequel" was, I was almost tempted to buy the 20th Anniversary Blu-ray edition just to hear the audio commentary just to learn a little more. Such as the surprisingly out-of-left-field man-on-man love for the "buddies" that was not spoken of during this documentary. Well, luckily, I'll save some money, because the 20th Anniversary "Special Edition" has nothing more than what the original DVD has. When a movie's this bad, a la Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, there's nothing more I want than a funny and apologizing commentary.