Troll 2 is, by acclamation, one of the worst movies ever made. It was shot in Utah in 1989 for around $100,000. Most of the actors were first-time performers. The director, Claudio Fragasso, spoke little English and the actors did not speak Italian. The film famously features not trolls but goblins; it was distributed as Troll 2 to capitalize on the success of the 1986 film Troll. The acting is poor; the script is ludicrous; the effects are medicore. Naturally it became a cult classic.
I’m not writing about Troll 2 but rather about Best Worst Movie, a documentary about that transformation to cult classic, and about which I have mixed feelings. It was written and directed by Michael Stephenson, who starred in Troll 2 as a child actor. Much of the main cast participates, most notably George Hardy, the lead actor in Troll 2 and then and now a dentist. Fragasso also participates, as does screenwriter Rossella Drudi.
There is a moment in the documentary where Stephenson and Hardy track down Margo Prey, who played Stephenson’s mother and Hardy’s wife in the original film. Prey has one other film credit, also in 1990. At the time this documentary was made she was living modestly with and caring for her elderly mother. Margo herself gives the impression of struggling with some mental health issues. Popmatters’ Dan Heaton called the scene “very awkward”; I agree and wonder if that’s not strong enough.
Awkward moments come from two other actors from the movie. Connie Young, who played Stephenson’s elder sister, talked about the difficulty in getting work because Troll 2 was on her resume. Robert Ormsby, who played “Grandpa Seth”, openly suggested that he’d wasted his life. He tried to shrug that off and walk it back a little, but the pain felt real.
A documentary filmmaker approaching a project presumably has an idea going in of what kind of story they’re going to tell. My sense is that Stephenson wanted to tell the story of the making of the original film and how it came to finally find its audience. This is all well done and it’s fine. My concern comes down to this other emerging narrative that I don’t think was handled well.
People who partake in the ironic enjoyment of an objectively bad work of art (I include myself in this category) don’t often wrestle with the hard questions, such as what did the making of this work of art do to the people involved? It’s easier to set that aside when the people involved are dead, out of the public eye, or went on to better things. Troll 2 ended careers or, rather, rendered numerous careers stillborn. George Hardy is a successful dentist who can laugh at his 1989 foible; Prey and Ormsby are private people whose stories don’t fit neatly with the main narrative.
Stories about the making of these movies often aren’t told, or they’re not told by the participants. We’ve all heard the stories of how Kubrick treated his actors in various movies, especially The Shining, because Kubrick was famous and so were the actors. I have no compunction about watching The Shining (I don’t think it’s a good adaptation), but I also can’t forget while watching it that Kubrick terrorized Shelley Duvall. If I watch Troll 2 again, I won’t be able to set aside what I know and what I can guess about how the actors’ lives developed afterward.