A violent alien species, the Kluduthu, kidnap Aurora and take her to their desert home planet because she holds a secret power which could wipe out all of humanity. But she escapes, only to find herself in the middle of a war which has been going on for millions of years. Can she fight them, or will she become one of them?
The first time I watched Millennium Crisis I was positively blown away at how awful it was. I mean, its astonishing.
What I discovered on my second viewing is that beyond the novelty of this being one of the worst films ever, it has no other redeeming features.
Millennium Crisis is impossible to follow. It centers around several alien races who are meant to be rather different. However a complete lack of budget and imagination means that everyone is a good-looking american. It quickly sets up its own dictionary of silly futuristic sci-fi rhetoric which is hard to keep up with -especially when you don't have much reason to care about anything that's going on, nor anyone its happening to- and then forces itself into a corner, having to try and explain everything using its own confusing jargon (check out the quotes page for an example).
The acting is so dire that when a character reels off to another some senseless waffle, one cant even gauge from the response whether whats just been said is a good thing or the end of the world. There's just no weight to anything. Its pointless.
It plods along from one badly dressed set to the next, becoming more confusing and less engaging.
Its not, however, as bad as, say, Paranormal Ascendancy. Even if it cant be understood at least the dialogue is audible. And there were a few enjoyable moments preventing us all from slipping into comas. The infrequent CGI of alien landscapes and spaceships laughably look like they've been rendered on a Playstation. Someone wields a (very homemade-looking) three-barreled gun, complete with three wonky laser sights. A woman decides to come to a sword fight topless. Ted Raimi makes an appearance (too little too late) as a nerdy space-archaeologist.
Unfortunately none of this is enough to fully counteract the senselessness of the narrative.
If you are ever curious enough to want to know how low a low-budget sci-fi film can get then look no further. If that single curiosity is strong enough you may even make it through without wanting to tear your eyes out. But if you expect anything else then expect also to be a dribbling mess come the end. You have been warned.
C.
A family vacationing in a small town discovers the entire town is inhabited by trolls, who plan to eat them.
Troll 2 is an absolute delight. It hits that golden spot of good bad. It maintains a top-level awfulness throughout its 91 minutes (punctuated with little pockets of madness) but not once becomes frustrating or boring.
The badness (and therefore joy) of Troll 2 boils down to two concentrated factors: The acting and the costumes.
There are plenty of other bad points to this film, but these two are consistent throughout.
Just when you might feel your enjoyment or concentration waning you're greeted by an actor wearing a brown sack with a huge pillow stuffed up his front, and sporting the most unconvincing and hilarious goblin mask. At times the crapness of the goblins caught us off guard and it was nothing other than hysterical.
The acting is either monotone and deadpan, or completely over-the-top and pantomime. There is no middle ground. Also the delivery of some lines miss the mark by several miles.
Deborah Reed should win an award for The Most Overacting Ever In A Film in her role as the goblin queen Creedence Leonore Gielgud. She seems to have eyebrows that move independently from her face.
The cast try their hardest considering (we found out afterwards) that a lot of them had no idea what was going on with the plot. Which makes sense when it takes a good half of the movie for the characters to work out what 'Nilbog' spells backwards. It's the kind of movie that takes certain things for granted that shouldn't be - that an entire family would happily chow down upon a feast of suspiciously luminous green food, for example. The strangeness of it all is hilarious, though, and it has some of the most quotable bad movie lines ever - "There're sandwiches for tonight in here! It'll go easier on you if you eat'em. It'll make our work easy. Otherwise, we'll be forced to kill you VIOLENTLY!"
Troll 2 has developed quite a cult following (as the documentary film Best Worst Movie shows) and has dedicated fans all over the world. Even though its awful its incredibly entertaining, and there is something about it that is genuine and endearing. Troll 2 is stupid and you laugh at it, but if you met it you'd want to give it a big hug.
C.M.
