Question of the Day

I don't know how many of you Shakers out there are connoisseurs of Truly Bad Cinema, but for me, it's a passion. I've more crap movies in my collection than "good" movies. It's a sickness, I know. But whatever; I could have worse predilections. One of my personal faves is Troll 2. It's a film that is epic in its badness and one that has somehow gained a strong cult following despite being nearly unwatchable.

The acting blows, the writing is dreadful, the make-up maude-awful (the titular monsters amount to little more than children in cheap rubber masks). Seriously, there are only so many synonyms for "bad" that I can come up with to describe this mess. The plot is stupid, and describing it in words makes it sound even stupider. But I'll give it a go anyway:

Our hero, young Joshua, likes to spend time with Grandpa, hearing stories of evil little goblins. Joshua's parents don't like this very much considering Grandpa has been dead for six months. Joshua sees dead people. Hopefully things will get better once the Waits family starts their vacation. They're part of an exchange where they swap their suburban house for a month with a rural home belonging to a family of farmers. I don't know how common this type of arrangement is, but the film's plot sort of hinges on it. Anyway, the whole deal sounds pretty dicey to me. Nonetheless, the Waits hope to put their troubles behind them as they vacation in the quiet village of Nilbog.

Yes, the film is set in Nilbog, which makes the screenwriters nearly as clever as Dan Brown. Maybe more clever, since they thought this up way before Brown crapped out The DaVinci Code.

The film has two (sort of) redeeming moments. First, the goblins of Nilbog try to turn the Waits into plants (yes, I meant vegetation; and no, don't ask me to make sense of it) by tricking them into eating sludgy green pudding for dinner. The Waits are almost taken in by this, but quick thinking Joshua jumps up on the dinner table, unzips his fly, and whizzes all over everything.

This leads to the film's sole piece of memorable dialogue, wherein the father chastises young Joshua with "You can't piss on hospitality. I won't allow it!" That should be on t-shirts. Hell, maybe it is. The scene, like most everything else here is (checks thesaurus) ghastly.

There's also a witch running around, who, I think, is in cahoots with the goblins. Who knows? Who cares? The point being, she gets her power from the Magic Stone of Stonehenge™ (seriously, that's how it is described), a big rock that can be defeated simply by touching it. Major design flaw, if you ask me. Oh yeah, the goblins are vegetarians too, so when Grandpa gives Joshua a magic bologna sandwich, he's able to escape their clutches.

At one point, the witch (named Creedence Leonore Gielgud, and whose major costuming is fake grey spray-on Halloween hair coloring) attempts to seduce one of the teenage boys with an ear of corn. (I told you this was going to sound stupider the more I tried to describe it.) She convinces the boy to suck on the phallic vegetable until it spurts forth a load of hot, buttery popcorn. I am not sure if this was supposed to be erotic, or ironic, or just plain absurd. It's certainly the highlight of the film. It almost made the previous 80 minutes worth it. Almost.

Just see for yourself:


Which brings me to the question of the day: What totally ridiculous moment in an otherwise totally crap film nearly redeemed said film just by the sheer power of its absurdity?