Troll

While watching Troll, I often wondered if I should bother reviewing it. It seemed like making jokes about it would be too easy. Then I thought that there must be other people out there like me, who had heard of the Troll movies in passing, and probably even heard that they were bad, but never sat down and watched them. Maybe like me, they think that the Troll movies were at the very least, silly monster movies. Now I’m not the one to say, “I took a bullet for y’all by watching this”, but I think I should at least warn others what they would be getting themselves to if they ever decided to watch these movies, which are in fact available on one DVD.

Let’s get this out of the way: Troll is pretty much a children’s movie, which I didn’t know. It opens on a family moving into an apartment building full of wacky neighbors. The family is headed by Michael Moriarty, a writer and record collector, which even for 1986 seemed to be considered old-fashioned. There’s also a mom, an adolescent son who walks around like he’s bigger than he actually is, and a little girl who looks like the poor man’s Jodie Sweetin and is probably one of the most grating child characters ever, although I guess she can be forgiven cos she gets possessed by a troll 5 minutes into the movie while curiously investigating the laundry room in the basement of the building. It’s never really covered as to why a family with two kids move into a somewhat small apartment, but I guess like most families who end up moving into apartments, they’ve fallen on hard times. That and they live in San Francisco, so the cost of living is higher.

As for the neighbors, there’s a conservative (or future militia member) fellow who calls himself “The Duke” after John Wayne and is frequently dressed in army fatigues. Sonny Bono lives upstairs, and he’s a creepy swinger guy. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is a pretty waitress-actress whose boyfriend is her real-life husband Brad Hall, June Lockhart is the cranky old woman of the building, and the building is rounded out by an English professor little person, not played by Warwick Davis, but sadly enough the same actor is also playing the main troll. It makes me sad cos his character is around to teach the family that little people can have normal lives, but then they turn around and have the same guy playing a troll.

So yeah, little girl is possessed by a troll, becomes a gross annoying kid that possesses each of the neighbors into different fantasy creatures. I’m not really into fantasy books and movies, so I’m not totally sure what the difference is between a goblin, troll, elves, etcetera. I think Julia Louis-Dreyfuss becomes a sprite or a pixie, and the English professor becomes an elf. Sonny Bono has the grossest “turning”, which is also the first. And it turns out that June Lockhart’s character is actually a kindly, spunky witch who used to be married to the troll. He’s trying to open up a fourth dimension (which I guess is different than the fourth dimension in From Beyond) and have all his magic friends with him. It’s up to the witch and the girl’s brother to save the girl and the world, I guess.

This isn’t a great children’s movie. I guess it would be entertaining enough for a certain age group, but I found it mind-numbing and I frequently wished that I had more beer to help me get through it. Two jokes I kept making throughout the movie is “So, they made this off the profits from Re-Animator?” and “Was this the movie that caused Michael Moriarty to become an alcoholic or was he already one when he made this movie?” This movie was in fact produced by the Band family, who have produced a lot of Stuart Gordon movies, and went on to open Full Moon Pictures, home of a lot of cheap, crappy direct-to-video movies and all those damn killer doll and puppet movies. And I make the alcoholic joke cos the Band family had all their films made in Rome. Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Brian Yuzna made the joke on the From Beyond commentary that since they were allowed wine during lunch, they were often drunk during the shooting. Troll was also filmed in Rome, see?

I have a random theory though about Troll. I think it’s almost a weird revenge movie of sorts. The little girl turns the two creepy men who seem most likely to harm a little girl into the ugliest creatures, while she turns the nice waitress and English professor into prettier or at least nicer creatures. Granted both “The Duke” and Sonny Bono’s character had a “go away kid, you’re botherin’ me” attitude towards her, but you get the feeling that as soon as she hit 12 years old, they would be hitting on her.

The weirdest and scariest scene of the movie by far is the scene where Michael Moriarty is badly dancing to “Summertime Blues” in his living room. Even Louis-Dreyfuss’ then-future character Elaine Benes of Seinfeld does not dance as bad as Michael Moriarty does in this movie. Try as I may, I could not find a Youtube video of it. Overall, and perhaps it was due to his slurring of his lines (my boyfriend noticed that), Michael Moriarty is painfully underused in this movie.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Michael Moriarty’s character’s name is Harry Potter. Bwah! There is a video of him introducing himself to the neighbors:

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