The Bad Movie Club Presents: Troll 2 (1990)

We figured with our first Bad Movie Friday, what better place to start with than a Horror flick, and one that is widely regarded as The Worst Movie Ever Made. It's not the worst movie we've ever seen, mainly because it's so bad that it's fun as hell to watch, but it definitely deserves to be on the short list of "Worst Ever" consideration.

We're going to break down the plot with the help of pics and videos, mainly because they can actually convey the utter insanity of what went on in the movie better than words in some cases. Keep in mind that Troll 2 has a crazy big cult following out there, and is beloved by many. We'll talk about that later.

*We originally posted this review back in 2012, but we never continued with the Bad Movie Friday thing. Now that we're finally planning on doing Bad Movie Fridays, we thought it appropriate to bump it up. Plus, it's funny enough to re-feature.  

Let's start here: Troll 2 has no trolls in it.

The movie opens with a Grandfather reading a shitty story to his whiny little Grandson. The story is about a gang of Vegan Goblins (not trolls), who make you eat this vegan vomit stuff, which turns you into the same vegan vomit stuff, so that the Vegan Goblins can eat you. Can't they just eat plants? Seems overly complicated to me. Also, what a horrible bedtime story to tell your Grandson.

Also, Grandpa is a ghost.

Gay Peter Pan drinks a bowl of vomit and then sweats green Kool-Aid. Then, he gets eaten by the goblins.

Little Joshua (the Grandson) and his family are planning a trip to some shitty little town called Nilbog for summer vacation. Nilbog. Yes, that's Goblin spelled backwards. (I guess it sounds better that Llort, Which is Troll spelled backwards.) His hot sister. Holly, is all upset about the pending trip, because her boyfriend wants to hang with his friends more than he wants to go with her. A sweat-induced workout montage ensues, followed by one of the best Bad Movie lines ever.

"Are you trying to turn me into a homo?" By hitting you in the nuts? If getting hit in the nuts turned you gay, I'd be a cross between Liberace and Rip Taylor by now. (I've taken a lot of nut shots.)

On the road to Nilbog, the Goblin-Trolls reveal themselves in dream form... and they look like angry puppets?

Once in Nilbog, Joshua's Ghost Pappy freezes time during dinner, and tells his grandson not to let his family eat; if they eat in Nilbog, they will turn into Troblin (Troll + Goblin) food. So Joshua decides to piss on everyone's dinner. Seriously.

The butter on that corn looks like toothpaste. Also, that little dinner-pisser would have caught an ass whipping.

After pissing on dinner, Joshua is taken to his room by his Dad. The kid is laying on the bed and says "What are you going to do to me Daddy?" at which point the Dad starts undoing his belt, and I was like "Oh come on man, you can't do that to your..." When I realized that the scene wasn't as creepy dirty as I had made it out to be, I laughed. This scene contains what might be the most popular line of the movie.

"You can't piss on hospitality! I won't allow it!"

Away from the action of the dimwit family, a Winnebago full of Holly's boyfriend and some other lame 80's dudes have followed the family on vacation. One of them, Arnold, goes for a hike in the woods. He sees some chick running away from him in terror, so he follows her, tackles her, and lays on top of her. You're figuring a rape is on the way, right? Wrong! The Troblins show up, stab Arnold with a spear, and then two of them run and hide in an old church.

In the church they meet this bitch: Creedence Lenore Gielgud. That may be the worst character name ever, especially for someone who is supposed to be creepy.

"Oh my Gooooooooooooooood!"

While Arnold is screaming for God with a fly on his head, we return to the family to find Holly doing one of the worst interpretive dance routines of all-time. My original Tweet while watching this scene was "WTF, is she Flash-dancing? For her life?" Below We've included a clip of the scene, which someone made into a Mentos' parody. Whomever made this clip gets my undying respect for life. It's flippin' brilliant. Cheers to you, good sir!

Who thought this was a good idea?

Dead Pappy Gene interrupts her shitty one person dance-off, prompting her Dad to run into the room and try to fight the mirror. Everyone leaves save for Joshua, and they talk some more.

We then switch to two naked surfer dudes "taking a nap" together. One of them wakes up, hungry from the long, hard "nap," and heads into town for some food.

In the general store, surfer boy meets this old coot. Here's a funny note about this guy: The actor who played him said that at the time, he was high and mentally unstable, and really wanted to hurt people during his scenes. Regarding the kid who plays Joshua, I believe his actual words were "I hated that little fucker, and I wanted to stab him with that spoon" or something close to that. True story. Creepy.

Elsewhere, Arnold is now turning into a potted plant.

Then the Brawny Man shows up.

Of course everyone in Nilbog is a Trolloblin, and wants to eat the moronic newcomers. Creedence Clearwater whatever-her-name-was even turns herself into a hot chick, and tries to seduce the last surfer frat boy... with a corn cob. Go ahead and watch the video below, and realize that what you're seeing is actually happening. On a side note, if I'm laying in bed and a hot chick who is trying to seduce me whips out a corn cob, I'm assuming it's for someones B-hole. FYI: Not my B-hole.

What...

Back at the house, the family decides to hold a seance to try and contact Pappy Gene. Hot little Holly asks "But how do we get him to come?" Oh, you know how, honey. You know how.

It's finally little Joshua who figures out how to stop the evil, vegan Trobgoblins. Know how he does it? With a double-decker bologna sandwich... A bologna sandwich is all it takes to defeat a Goblin?

FIN.

If we've learned anything from Troll 2, it's that Bologna + The Power of Goodness = Lightning Strike.

Of course there's much more to the movie that we didn't cover, mainly because this post is already half a page long, but you get the gist. It's an awful, insanely bad movie with some of the worst writing and acting ever witnessed by human eyes (and ears.) It's also fun as hell to watch with friends while you have a drink or two.

So bad is Troll 2, and at the same time so beloved by so many fans the world over, that the kid who played Joshua grew up and made a Documentary about the movie and its fans called Best Worst Movie. You really should watch it, because it's great stuff.

You can buy Troll 2 HERE.

You can buy Best Worst Movie HERE.

Troll 2 is a movie that should be painful to endure, and it truly would be, but it was so fun that the pain becomes a badge of honor rather than one of shame.

It makes it to tier 4 of our Threat Level scale. 

THREAT LEVEL 4: STINGRAY

The Devil's Pass (2013)

In the Winter of 1959, nine ski-hikers (whatever the hell those are) went missing in the Ural Mountains in Russia. They were eventually all found dead, in varied states of decomposition and condition, skin colored orange, with one of them missing their tongue.

The incident has been a hotbed of legend and lore ever since, with everything Paranormal from Aliens to Yeti's being suspected as the cause of the group's demise. Exposure to dangerous weather and radiation are also said to have possibly been factors.

That is all an absolutely true story.

This movie... this sloppy, incoherent, ridiculous movie... is a Blair Witch-style Found Footage flick that attempts to explain what happened to the Dyatlov Group, via the investigation of a bunch of witless College students who have no clue what they're doing.

Hilarity and frustration ensue.

Beware: Here there be spoilers!

 

 

When a Psychology major decides that she wants to unravel the 50 year-old mystery behind the disappearance and death of some hikers in Mother Russia, she gathers up some of her College cronies, applies for a grant, and they all head off to the snowy Ural Mountains to do some investigating. On film, of course.

Along the way, all sorts of odd things happen to them; they find a tongue in an ice-box, wake up to find odd footprints surrounding their campsites, they have acid flashbacks, locals start shooting at them, they're attacked by a herd of Ukranian exploding mountain goats... it soon become apparent that these idiot College Hipsters should have stayed home, because they are ill-equipped to deal with the rigors of the Russian Wilderness.

Press on they do however, because "they just have to know what happened here 50 years ago!" From here on out this movie turns into some ramshackle craziness about time travel and Government conspiracy, and involves some oddly-placed mutant-things which look like discarded CGI tests for the creatures in I Am Legend...

Head shaking and frustrating groans ensue.

Lame.

The scenery and locations were gorgeous. Gemma Atkinson (who is Rowan Atkinson's daughter?!?) is really nice to look at, and... yeah, that's about it as far as anything good is concerned.

The acting is pretty bad; from the horrible line delivery, to the melodramatic emotional displays.That is absolutely the script's fault, in part, because it too is truly awful, but man, that acting... When Gemma Atkinson is the most solid player you have in a film, you know that there's an issue. That's no knock on Gemma, you understand, but I mean she's no Meryl Streep, you know?

Even those dogs look annoyed at their co-stars.

This has to be one of the worst scripts I've seen made into a movie all year. Not only is the story ridiculous and just plain silly, but the way everything is put together is just amateurish and clunky. It's supposed to be a Found Footage flick, but it's more than obvious that the characters in the movie are reading poorly written lines. Nothing feels real or natural about anything in this movie.

All of the overly-familiar and lame Found Footage tropes are present here, and used ad-nauseum; from the handy old FF stand by of "keep filming no matter what, I want there to be a record of this" to the fact that the characters actions play to the camera, even though no one would act in such ways in real life, and in such harrowing situations...

...and exactly how did the footage end up being found anyhow? The whole time travel plot kinda makes that an impossibility, unless I missed something.

-The avalanche scene, in which the characters basically murder one of their friends by leaving them to die in said avalanche, in favor of saving a supply pack, made us laugh. They killed off the best character with that bit, and in such a cheesy way.

-And did this movie really just try to connect The Philadelphia Experiment with the Dyatlov Incident?

-And by the way, Kholat Syakhl doesn't mean "Mountain of the Dead" you shitty, ill-informed writer, it means "Dead Mountain" as in not fruitful.

-There are some mutant-things living underground that look like rough CGI versions of the mutant-things from I Am Legend. That is to say that the CGI looks really bad, and felt really random.

At the point where the one chick started swinging a chain over her head at the oncoming mutant-things, I had to laugh and say "screw it!"

This movie also really smacked of Blair Witch, from start to finish, in its set up and plot structure...

 

The dialogue in this movie is horrible.
"Come on Ivan, the Cold War is over, we're friends now!"
"Are you telling me you didn't see those charges, or is that a herd of Ukranian exploding mountain goats!"

I could quote this shit pile all day, but most of the bad lines need to be seen in context with their poor delivery to be truly appreciated...

At least this close-up zoom of Gemma Atkinson's rack was satisfying...

I went into his one with the hopeful optimism that its creators would give us an interesting fictional addendum to the real life Dyatlov Pass Incident, but that is not the case. Renny Harlin's direction isn't bad here, but whoever this Vikram Weet guy is, he needs to go back to working on the Kardashian TV Show, and never write a script again.

Aside from some gorgeous location shots, this movie is frustratingly bad and offers little in the way of anything enjoyable...

I advise thee to skip this one, or at least catch it when it hits Cable for free in a few weeks. You know that's where it's headed, after all.

I refuse to believe that this hot-as-the-sun girl came out of Mr. Bean's penis.

Review: Amber Alert (2012)

It's getting to the point where making fun of and/or ripping apart the average Found Footage/POV Horror flick is like picking on the slow kid in class; the slow kids can't defend themselves, and it's usually a complete asshole who picks on the defenseless, and we really don't like being the asshole.

While I would never pick on anyone who is defenseless in real life, I really have no choice but to be the asshole when it comes to the slow kids of the Horror world.

Amber Alert might be the worst movie I've seen all year, and that's saying a lot.

The premise of this movie is a truly great one, and if done well, it could make for one hell of a FF flick. As it stands though, this movie is little more than frustrating and horrible.

 

Nate and Sam are two wacky friends who are out and about making an audition tape for some Reality TV Show that they want to be on. Nate is the pudgy, doting best friend who is secretly in love with Sam. Sam is the cute, thin girl who keeps Nate in the friend-zone, because she has no interest in him whatsoever, but can still get him to be her bitch on command.

How fun are they?

While driving down the highway, taping everything for their audition, they come across an Amber Alert on a freeway billboard. True terror sets in when they realize, about ten seconds after seeing the alert, that the car in front of them is the car mentioned in the Amber Alert! Even more terror sets in when we get to witness two of the dumbest people in existence argue back and forth for the next 70 minutes.

These are the aforementioned two people.

They follow the car, alert the Police to its whereabouts (even though they are too busy doing something more important to investigate), and they even walk up to the car in a gas station to get a better look. Sam sees the girl in the backseat, and instead of breaking the window and grabbing her, she drops a microphone in the car, and they follow they driver some more. And argue some more. And do things that no one who isn't mentally retarded would ever do.

This movie should have been called Screaming Alert.

Finally the Cops show up! Of course after being told to go to the Sheriff's Station -to hand over the tape that they have and give a statement- Sam decides that they should keep looking for the girl instead, and Nate the pussy whines about it, but does her bidding anyway. Worst of all, her reasoning is so weak, that as bad as this movie has been so far it just became painfully worse. Its obvious that shes a moron, and homeboy should have long since told her to shut the fuck up, but then again that's why they're friends; she's in control. That's also why he's in the friend-zone, because his bitch-ass deserves to be there.

Dude, move on.

Darkness falls, and they lose their quarry. Somehow though, Sam catches wind of an address (?!?), Googles it, and they head there to investigate. It's his house! Wow, she's good. So then they break inside, search the ramshackle home in the dark, and find some guns... and then they keep searching.

Then it ends, like every other FF flick seems to end, and we breathe a sigh of relief.

OMG I found him on the Google!

It ended.

"

His shirt says "Cuck."

Plot points, and the ridiculous nature of their failure; that's the clinic that Amber Alert put on for us. This movie fails to make sense on such a massive scale, that it really felt like a middle finger from the people who made it.

- The Amber Alert is broadcast on a billboard while our main characters are driving down the highway, and 10 seconds later, one of them is like "isn't that the car right there?" Now, the driver was feverishly talking to and paying attention to the chick in the passenger seat, they pass under the Amber Alert doing average highway speed, so how did he know what it said? Did he really read that sign, absorb its contents, and have time to process it so quick, all in the midst of a lively discussion?

- So they call the Cops, and say they see the car with the alleged kidnapped kid inside, and the Police say they have a lot of calls and they won't be there for 15 minutes? Wouldn't they stay on the phone? A lot of calls or not, wouldn't Police investigate a call in which someone says "We see the guy right in front of us!" first?

Kill him now. Please.

-If this is a Found Footage tape, how is the licence plate blurred and why is the swearing bleeped out?
Raw footage? Are you saying that the Cops edited this "real" tape, to highlight their ineptitude and culpability in the events of the kidnapping and attempted rescue?

- This movie is full of people doing things that no one in their right mind would ever do. I could see following a car if you really thought there was a kidnapped child inside, but I would have been on the phone with the Cops until they showed up. I'd lie to get them to show up. And for the record, if I'm driving the car, and some witless banshee of a she-bitch in the passenger insists on screaming at me the whole time, the car trip would be over in very short order. Then again, I don't have a vagina like Nate apparently did, so we would have never been driving anywhere together to begin with.

Shut up or walk, issue solved.

I can barely read that, and it's a still image from a movie trailer.

In many FF flicks, the main issues are believability and characters, and their lack of quality. In Amber Alert, we are presented with what may be the two worst, most annoying characters we've seen in recent memory. The girl in this is seriously the most annoying and moronic bitch ever. I can't fathom how anyone would write a character like her, and think that she'd be compelling in the least.

The protagonists were so annoying, and their constant arguing so distracting, that I never once felt any sort of dread about their situation or even the kidnapping. Even when Sam drops a microphone through the window of the car they're following (?!?), and we hear the creepy guy talking menacingly to the scared child in his backseat, it evoked nothing. I cheered for the creeper to kill the heroes. That's bad.

Hipster? Hispter.

Amber Alert takes a truly great premise for a Found Footage flick, and makes a total mess out of it. This movie is more about two people arguing and bickering incessantly than it is about two people following a guy who may have a kidnapped kid. The characters are horribly annoying, the local Police are horribly inept, and not one thing in the movie makes any sort of rational sense whatsoever.

If you're looking to watch a movie that will leave you pissed off and wanting to punch things, this is your flick. Enjoy.

Not even this QT could save Amber Alert from being the trainwreck that it is.