Troll 2 (1990)

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.