The first time I was lucky enough to see Troll 2 was, like many things that have happened to me, probably the result of my own laziness. It was late at night during the Halloween season and I had just finished watching the original The Hills Have Eyes, which was showing during the annual marathon of horror movies they typically show on AMC around that time of the year. So, The Hills Have Eyes finished and I saw, to my chagrin, that Troll 2 was next up. Having never seen the film, I based my initial feelings toward it solely on its predecessor, Troll, which I remembered from my childhood as a campy tale of a vindictive troll taking over an apartment building to find some ring while battling his witch ex-wife mostly in the form of a little girl and turning the tenants into plants. Needless to say, my immediate thought was, "No." However, as has happened so many times in my life, my plans were foiled by the incredible distance of the TV remote from my already comfortable position (I was on the couch and the remote was on the TV stand). So, rather than subject myself to 1) Getting up 2) Walking 3 feet and 3) Returning to the couch, I decided to let it ride and take my chances. That was the best horrible decision I've ever made in my movie-watching life.
The movie opens with a grandfather reading a story to his grandson (sort of an eerie version of the opening of The Princess Bride) about a young boy named Peter (who appears to be about thirty in the scene accompanying his voice-over) who has lost his way in some mystical forest and is being chased by what look to be little kids in horrible Halloween costumes carrying sticks. Seriously, the masks these tiny actors are wearing look like the cheap variety my friends and I would buy at Rite Aid when we were 11 or 12 because, well, we were idiots. You know, the ghoul or goblin masks with the huge eye holes that smelled like latex mixed with BO? Yeah, those guys. Anyway, it's obvious early in the grandfather's story that he's taking the crap he's reading to his grandson way too seriously (At one point, Joshua, the grandson, asks his grandfather what the creatures wanted with Peter and if he had done anything to them. Grandpa Seth, with a creepily serious look on his face responds, "That's the point. Goblins don't need to justify their cruel acts.") So, yeah, this guy obviously has some pretty strong feelings toward goblins. Who doesn't? Needless to say, from early on, one cannot help but ask, "What the hell is this crap?" Anyway, it is in his telling of this story that we are first introduced to the green "concoction" that becomes so prevalent later on in the...I can't bring myself to say film. After being chased by the goblins while music reminiscent of the dance competition at The Max on "Saved by the Bell" plays in the background, Peter falls, bumps his head, and is then awakened by a "beautiful" young woman with either dirt or freckles on her face who offers him green sludge to eat. Peter, without questioning what the hell this green stuff is, eats it and begins sweating what is described by Grandpa Seth as "chlorophyll green." Now, as you've probably already guessed because it's the only logical explanation, the group of goblins (of which the beautiful girl is actually a member) has fed the green goop to Peter to turn him into plant matter so that they can eat him, as Grandpa Seth describes, "with a voracity that has no equal on earth." Now, I know what you're asking yourself. "What kind of grandfather tells his grandson a bedtime story like this?" Well, it's the dead kind, because we find out from Joshua's mother that Grandpa Seth died six months ago.
OK. So, as an aside, I want to tell you here that the acting in this movie as a whole is so horrible, it's almost as if these people have never had conversations with any actual people, ever. But, the actors who play Grandpa Seth and Joshua are only mostly horrible, whereas the actress who plays the mother is completely and utterly horrible. Not to mention that she has, quite possibly, the craziest eyes any human being has ever had. I knew at this point in my first viewing that this was, and always would be, the worst movie I'd ever seen. But something interesting also happened: I could not stop watching it. It's like a cinematic train wreck that you cannot help but suspect of being completely intentional.
So, we find out that Joshua's father, Michael, has planned a month long vacation to a town called Nilbog so that the family can "live like their ancestors did 100 years ago" while a Nilbog family stays at their house (sort of like a timeshare exchange). First off, who, in their right mind, would plan a vacation to a town called Nilbog (which is almost immediately recognizable to anyone except every single character in the movie as "goblin" spelled backwards)? If you want to get away from the city, you go to a cabin in the mountains or a house on the lake, but not if the cabin is on Nilbog Mountain, or beside Lake Nilbog. No one looks at something relaxing or beautiful and says, "We should name this Nilbog." Because Nilbog is a stupid name. But anyway, the family leaves the city and heads to Nilbog. On the way, the father and Joshua's sister, Holly, begin arguing because he did not wait for her boyfriend, who was supposed to come, but didn't show up at the agreed on departure time. After some horribly awkward back and forth, the mother has had enough and tells them to stop. To ease the tension in the van, she asks Joshua to "sing that song she likes so much." And what is Mom's favorite song? Why, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," of course. I think it was the song she and her husband danced to at their wedding.
Alright, so Joshua and his family head to Nilbog, followed by his sister's boyfriend and her friends, and find out, eventually, that the sleepy farming community is actually the Kingdom of the Goblins. Actually, it takes almost the entire movie before the rest of Joshua's family will believe him (he tries to convince them repeatedly, especially after seeing a sign in the rear view mirror of a car and realizing the whole Nilbog being "goblin" backwards thing). By the way, if you ever witness the following warning signs, you should exit the location you're in immediately and count yourself lucky, because you just avoided being eaten by evil, vegetarian goblins:
1) You enter a house and the food is covered in green "icing" or you are offered a sandwich by a sheriff that consists of green sludge between the two halves of a bun.
2) Your father gets really serious about "hospitality."
3) Townspeople keep referring to the building that is obviously a church as "that house that looks like a church."
4) You ask the sheriff what the girls in town do at night and he replies "The girls?" while driving off and laughing maniacally.
5) You're in a place where the sheriff's last name is "Freak."
6) The creepiest old shopkeeper you've ever seen gives you free, unrefrigerated milk and tells you to "have some of your friends try some also."
7) The semi-attractive girl that shows up outside your camper comes bearing a corn cob.
Alright, so to make a long story short, the goblins find out that Joshua and his family know they're goblins, Grandpa Seth kills the goblin preacher (who knew goblins went to church?) with a lightning bolt and gives Joshua a backpack with contents that he tells his grandson he may only use "when he really needs it." Joshua is then somehow transported into the "house that looks like a church," which is the lair of the Queen of the Goblins (who I guess is a druid, or something, because she has one of the "Stonehenge stones" in her living room), and uses the double-decker bologna sandwich in the backpack his grandfather gave him to stave off the goblins until he and his family all put their hands on the stone and the goblins explode in a flood of "chlorophyll green." The movie moves toward the end after the family has returned home, seemingly triumphant until Joshua's mom decides to eat one of the apples in the kitchen that turns out to be goblin-tainted. Joshua then runs down the stairs only to look up and watch a softball come bouncing down with the words,"YUMMY. MOM IS SO GOOD" written on it in green. Joshua then walks into the dining room to find the goblins eating the plant food remains of his mother and is, understandably, distraught. The movie ends with one of the goblins looking up to ask the boy a question (possibly the best line): "Do you want some, Joshua?"
Troll 2 is a movie so horrible that it becomes good again. The day you watch it for the first time, your life will be changed...or it won't. Either way, you'll take away these lessons: Vegetarians are evil (seriously, this guy hates them with all his being), country folk can't be trusted (Ok, so Deliverance already taught us this), and you can't piss on hospitality (but you can piss on a dinner table in the correct circumstances).
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