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Directed by Claudio Fragasso
Written by Rossella Drudi, Claudio Fragasso
Starring Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Deborah Reed
PG-13 • 1990 • 95 minutes
by Deeky Wentworth
Where to begin? Where to begin? This film is such an unmitigated disaster, it's hard to find a starting point for a critique. The acting blows, the writing is dreadful, the make-up god-awful, the special effects are special in the way one refers to kids with Down's Syndrome as "special." Seriously, there are only so many synonyms for "bad" that I can come up with.
The plot is stupid, and describing it in words makes it sound even stupider. 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 houses for a month with a family of farmers. I don't know if this is common in Utah, where this was filmed, or not. Sounds pretty dicey to me. Nonetheless, the Waits hope to put their troubles behind them as they vacation in the quiet village of Nilbog.
Did you catch that? Were you paying attention? Yeah, exactly. This movie is that stupid. And did you notice that this movie is about goblins, not trolls. A movie with “troll” in the title and yet has no trolls in the film clearly has nothing but contempt for its audience.
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So, the goblins of Nilbog try to turn the Waits (and a group of teenage boys who look like they’ve come straight from a Sebastian Bleisch video shoot) into plants by tricking them into eating sludgy green pudding. The Waits are almost taken in by this on the first night on the farm, but quick thinking Joshua jumps up on the dinner table unzipping his fly, whips it out, and pisses all over everything.
Seriously. I’m not making this shit up. No, someone else made this shit up. And got people to act it out. And got someone else to film it. Christ, this is (checks thesaurus) ghastly.
The trolls are pretty lame, amounting to little more than midgets in cheap masks. They are all ruled by a witch from Stonehenge named Creedence Leonore Gielgud, acted with all the finesse and subtlety of Gary Oldman on meth. Despite what you might think she isn’t the worst actress in this thing. No, the young lady playing the Waits’ teenage daughter is so terrible, it’s as if she came straight to the set from her ninth grade production of “Our Town.”
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The witch gets her power from the Magic Stone of Stonehenge™, a big rock that can be defeated simply by touching it. Major design flaw, if you ask me. Oh yeah, and the goblins are vegetarians, so when grandpa gives Joshua a magic bologna sandwich, he’s able to escape their clutches.
Seriously, I am still not making this shit up.
At one point, the witch 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 explain it.) She forces 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.
Everything about this movie sucks. Seriously, I am not making that up either.
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