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Written by Pete Timmermann Thursday, 15 July 2010 18:15

They own up to how bad the film is, but revel in the unexpected limelight it grants them all those years later.

A few years back, the by all accounts horrible 1990 film Troll 2 blew up big on the midnight circuit (see Joe Bowman's review from 2007 at http://www.playbackstl.com/movie-reviews/6542-troll-2-mgm-pg-13). After years of being passed around as the ultimate VHS whatsit or late night HBO find, MGM determined that there was an audience for the film and gave it its first official theatrical release in the U.S.—appropriately, it had gone straight to video all those years before. And now, a couple of years after that, we have a documentary called Best Worst Movie about the Troll 2 phenomenon. Timely? Nope. People seemed to forget about Troll 2 around the time Tommy Wiseau's The Room reared its ugly head, and people seem to be starting to forget about The Room now in favor of whatever other supreme turd of a film they can find. Half the enjoyment to be derived from “Best Worst Movies” is thinking not a lot of people know about them, apparently-once they blow up to a certain point people seem to stop caring really quick, already in search of the next one.

There are things about Best Worst Movie that make it go down easy enough—it was directed by the young star of Troll 2, Michael Stephenson, who was around 11 when he appeared as Joshua Waits, the young son of the family that haplessly finds themselves in Nilbog surrounded by vegetarian goblins. Having Stephenson at the helm grants us first-hand access to not only the Troll 2 superfan screenings and convention appearances, but also into the stars of the film that didn't want to have anything to do with the zeitgeist 17 years later, such as Margo Prey, the spooky looking matriarch of the Waits clan. It also helps that almost the entire cast and crew of Troll 2 are affable and seem easy to get along with—they own up to how bad the film is, but revel in the unexpected limelight it grants them all those years later.

Still, one kind of has to wonder why Best Worst Movie exists in the first place. It's hard to imagine anyone much caring about this film unless they're super hardcore Troll 2 fans, and if you're a super hardcore Troll 2 fan you can always just watch, you know, Troll 2. Or more specifically, I guess I should say that you should wonder not why Best Worst Movie exists byt why it is getting a theatrical release-the obvious criticism of the film is that it should have just been an extra on a special edition DVD of Troll 2, and that criticism sticks. Still, its U.S. distributor, Abramorama, seems to be doing well off of its release-it's already grossed a fair amount in other cities before making its St. Louis premiere this weekend-and it also affords the opportunity to pair it with midnight screenings of Troll 2, as the Tivoli is happy to oblige this Friday and Saturday (July 16-17). For everyone else that either stopped caring about Troll 2 years ago or didn't care about it in the first place, though, you'll be quick to tire of how Troll 2 star (and ostensible “main character” in Best Worst Movie) George Hardy can't stop trying to hawk the film to people who don't care, or how Troll 2's Italian director Claudio Fragasso gets increasingly confrontational about calling people stupid who don't like the film, or how director Stephenson seems to be trying really hard for the tone of Anvil! The Story of Anvil and failing. | Pete Timmermann