TROLL: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
Rating: Cert. 18
Duration: 82 Minutes (Troll), 94 Minutes (Troll 2), 93 Minutes (Best Worst Movie)
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: English with Optional English Subtitles
Director: John Carl Buechler (Troll) / Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2) / Michael Stephensen (Best Worst Movie)
Cast: June Lockhart, Michael Moriarty, Anne Lockhart, Brad Hall, Gary Sandy, Jenny Beck, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Noah Hathaway, Phil Fondacaro, Shelley Hack, Sonny Bono (Troll) / Michael Stephenson, Connie Young, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Robert Ormsby (Troll 2)
Synopsis: Embraced by a generation of “bad” movie fans, Troll 2 has become one of the most iconic cult films of its generation, and to this day regularly plays to sold-out theatres of adoring fans. Presented here alongside the first (and entirely unrelated) film, Troll, as well as Best Worst Movie, the definitive documentary on the film’s unexpected resurgence as a cult favourite, Troll: The Complete Collection is a celebration of one of the most unusual success stories in movie history.
TROLL (1986)
The original Troll film is a fun kids movie about a young girl named Wendy who is possessed by a wizard troll and his bid to break down the barriers between the troll world and the our world, all of it taking place inside an apartment building in San Francisco. Classing up this b-movie slice of kiddie fantasy the practical special effects work from John Carl Buechler and his team. The main troll, named Torok, is a full-on body suit with some great facial articulation, an expressive little beast with actor Phil Fondacaro (Ghoulies 2) beneath the make-up doing a bang-up job. Fondacaro also appears here in a dual role as a pint-sized professor who befriends the young Wendy, only to be transformed into a troll-creature himself.
The movie has a solid cast, we have the always lunatic Michael Moriarty from Larry Cohen's The Stuff (1985) as Wendy's father Harry Potter, yup, Harry Potter! Moriarty steals the show in my opinion in a strange scene with his character dancing along to Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues", it has nothing to do with trolls whatsoever but it always makes me laugh. His son Harry Potter Jr. (Noah Hathaway) seems to be the only one who recognizes that his sister is acting very strange, with him on the receiving end of biting attacks and groin punches. While his parents turning a blind eye to Wendy's increasingly erratic behavior he confides in a sweet old lady who lives in an upstairs apartment, Eunice, played by June Lockhart, She-Wolf of London), Old Eunice adds a wonderful, caring and magical flavor to the movie, informing Harry about the truth of what's happened to his little sister, and of brewing war between trolls and mankind, one with ancient origins and which she was part of centuries ago, turns out she's a good witch who has been standing guard at the gates of reality. She enlists the aid off young Henry to protect the world from the evil troll Torok who seems about ready to declare war on mankind, yet again.
This is just fun stuff, a totally kiddie friendly movie and a great gateway film to introduce your kids to horror, right alongside stuff like Monster Squad and The Gate. While not a great film it has got a lot of heart and some memorable weirdness, including the appearance of sonny Bono as a swinging neighbor, and a pre-Seinfeld Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a malevolent wood sprite!
TROLL 2 (1991)
Five years after Troll came Troll 2 from Italian director Claudio Fragasso (Zombie 4: After Death), a movie that began production titled Goblins that had nothing whatsoever to do with John Carl Buechler's original film, but the distributor slapped on the Troll 2 banner to cash-in on Troll's success at the box office. The film is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, but this is not accurate. In fact, I have a pile of movies sitting right here within arm's reach which are infinitely worse movies, so bad in fact that I don't even want to review them because I typically choose to celebrate movies, not shit on them, but you gotta do what you gotta do!
Anyone who thinks this is the worst movie ever made simply has not watched enough movies, or maybe they're just not familiar with the other movie of Claudio Fragasso, for instance Hell of the Living Dead (1980), Rats: Night of Terror (1884) and Beyond Darkness (1990) - all of which are equally strange and poorly made, the guy was an exploitation director churning out cheap knock-offs. None of them are high-art but they're not the worst movies ever made, they're nowhere near as bad as Manos:The Hands of Fate, but like that movie they're also very entertaining for a myriad of awful reasons, but none are the WORST. It's also worth mentioning that all of these films have an audience and have been released on Blu-ray, I own multiple copies of a few of these!
The story such as it is concerns a family who arrange through nefarious means to swap homes with a rural family from the town of Nilbog, because the father Michael (George Hardy) has always dreamed of being a farmer, much to the chagrin of his teenage daughter Holly (McFarland) and son Joshua (Stephenson) who are in no hurry to trade in their comfy city-life for farmer's tans. What none of them realize is that Nilbog has been overrun by evil goblins who want to eat them, but before they can eat them they have to trick the family into consuming a green liquid which they bake into tasty treats.
The kid Joshua is haunted by visions of his dead grandfather Seth (Robert Ormsby) who warns him throughout the movie of the impending danger and the evil of the goblins. On the night they arrive in Nilbog the spectral grandpa warns him to not let the family eat the green-tainted food left for them by the exchange family, However, the family is famished and are keen to eat-up, with no other options the boy jumps up on the table and pisses all over the food! This is my favorite scene, which is followed by his father carrying the boy to his room while yelling how "you can't piss on hospitality!"
There's a b-story involving Holly's boyfriend Elliot and his friends who follow the family to the town of Nilbog, which *SPOILER* is Goblin spelled backwards! The teen have an encounter with the Goblin Queen Creedence Leonore Gielgud played by Deborah Reed, who looks, acts and sounds like she would make a fun horror-host on late-night cable TV. She tricks them into drinking the green liquid and they are transformed into human-plants with small branches sprouting from their fingertips, sweating chlorophyll, which is an oddly effective special effect, in my younger years watching this on VHS it definitely made my skin crawl. However, unlike Troll (1986) the creature effects are very poor this time around, rubber-faced goblins - not trolls mind you!
A lot of the weirdness of the movie comes from the fact that the Italian director and crew knew almost no English , so the Italian written script was translated directly from Italian, the literal translation coming across as comically stilted coming from the mouths of untrained actors who received little direction. They're doing the best they can, but with a clunky lines like "I'm the victim of a nocturnal rapture. I have to release my lowest instincts with a woman", there's just not much you can do with it. The unintentional humor has aged like a gourmet cheese for connoisseurs of trash cinema, this stuff and has proven to keep fans coming back for more, time and time again. That bit where Elliot is punched in the nuts by Holly always makes me laugh, he explains that getting punched in the nuts is how guys are turned homosexual!
BEST WORST MOVIE (2010)
A nice upgrade on this release is that it includes the Blu-ray debut of Michael Stephenson's documentary about Troll 2 - Best Worst Movie (2010), which on the Scream Factory release is presented on standard defintion DVD. The affectionate doc offers pretty much anything you could ever want to know about the making of the cult-classic. A bittersweet look and the awful movie directed by former child star Michael Stephenson who played the freckle-faced boy Joshua in the movie. He sort of filters the experience through the eyes of actor George Hardy who played his hospitality respecting father in Troll 2, and has since become a successful dentist.
It's a Hell of a fun watch with the varying stories of making the movie, some new it was awful, some had no idea and everyone is surprised by the cult-following the movie has garnered through the years, though director Fragasso doesn't seem to thrilled to hear people celebrating his movie as one of the worst movies ever made, even if they call it the "best" worst movie! And who can blame the guy, I imagine it takes a special mindset and brand of self awareness to not just appreciate, but to celebrate the fact that you've made a bad movie, and he made a lot of them. Every shitty movie should have a doc celebrating it that is this entertaining.
Audio/Video: Troll/Troll 2 arrives on region B Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment using the same HD transfer used by Scream Factory for the region A release. The 1080p HD image looks solid, there's a fine layer of film grain present and the colors looks good if a bit on the soft side from time to time but overall this is a solid video presentation. Audio on both films comes by way of an English LPCM 2.0, they're not the most dynamic tracks you've ever heard but they're clean and well-balanced, with optional English subtitles.
All of the disc extras are carried over from the Scream Factory release, we get a nearly hour long making-of doc with Charles Band, Writer Ed Naha, Composer Richard Band and Director John Carl Buechler, hour of deleted scenes and extended interviews from Best Worst Movie, several music video tributes, and Q&A with the director and a very cool interview with the Goblin queen herself Deborah Reed, who once again dons the goblin queen wardrobe!
Special Features:
- Limited Edition O Card slipcase featuring artwork by Devon Whitehead
- 1080p presentation of Troll, Troll 2 and for the first time ever on Blu-ray, Best Worst Movie.
- DTS-HD MA 2.0 audio on Troll and Best Worst Movie, with LPCM mono audio on Troll 2
- Optional English SDH subtitles for Troll and Troll 2
- A Public Service Announcement From George Hardy (1 Min)
- Meat Noam Telnobody 2 (6 Mins)
- The Making of Troll - featuring director John Carl Buechler, producer Charles Band, Writer Ed Naha, composer Richard Band and more (51 min)
- Feature length audio commentary on Troll 2 with Actors George Hardy and Deborah Reed
- Best Worst Movie - over an hour of deleted scenes and interview footage not included in the final cut of the documentary (57 min)
- Interview with Troll 2’s Goblin Queen, Deborah Reed (13 min)
- Screenwriting Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, Michael Stephenson and George Hardy (81 min)
- “Monstrous” - Music Video by ECOMOG (4 min)
- A limited edition collector’s booklet featuring rare archival material
- Troll Trailer (2 min)
- Troll 2 Trailer (3 min)
- Best Worst Move Trailer (2 min)
Eureka have put together an attractive presentation for Troll and Troll 2 for UK fans of the films, plus we get the Blu-ray debut of the Best Worst Movie doc. For U.S. buyers who are region-free this might be worth a double-dip if you're looking for superior packaging which includes a limited edition slip with artwork by Devon Whitehead, plus a collector's booklet. As far as the A/V presentation and extras go this release is identical to the Scream Factory release with nothing new, but is sure is a handsome set.
TROLL SCREENSHOT COMPARISON:
TOP: EUREKA BLU-RAY (2018)
BOTTOM: SCREAM FACTORY BLU-RAY (2015)
TROLL SCREENSHOT COMPARISON:
TOP: EUREKA BLU-RAY (2018)
BOTTOM: SCREAM FACTORY BLU-RAY (2015)
EUREKA MENUS, EXTRAS AND TITLE CARDS
