The Best Worst Movie

In 1989, a group of Italian filmmakers set up in a small Utah
town to film their version of a typical American horror film. They
hired a group of mostly Mormon locals with virtually no prior acting
experience. None of the actors spoke Italian, the director and crew
almost no English. The director, Claudio Fragasso, insisted his script
(written in broken English) be recited verbatim. The cast, who were
mildly terrified of him, obliged.

The final product, Troll 2, is a work that defies
categorization even by lowbrow standards. There aren’t even any trolls
in the film—just awkwardly costumed goblins, ludicrous dialogue,
weird, terrible acting and a story that must be seen to be
believed.

In one scene, the film’s main character Joshua saves his family’s
lives by urinating on their dinner; later there’s a sex scene involving
copious amounts of popcorn. Troll 2 isn’t just a B-movie—it’s
universally considered one of the worst movies ever made.

“At the time, I was having a blast,” says Michael Stephenson,
calling from Los Angeles. He played the main role of Joshua when he was
10. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I get to ride a skateboard and throw a fake
Molotov cocktail!’ Then I watched the movie on Christmas morning, like,
a year later, when my parents tracked down the VHS and gave it to me as
a Christmas present. So we put it on and everyone was quiet for awhile.
Then my dad put his hand up to his forehead and said ‘Oh, Michael, this
is a baaaad movie.'”

Like a lot of shitty late-’80s movies, Troll 2 has enjoyed a
resurrection on DVD. But the film’s popularity has expanded beyond that
recently, with super-fans hosting Troll 2 parties and midnight
screenings selling out at underground festivals and repertory theatres
from Toronto to New Zealand. Like the Rocky Horror Picture
Show‘s audiences of the ’70s, Troll 2 fans are rabid—and
devoted.

“I’ve watched it 30 or 40 times,” says filmmaker and Picnicface
member Andrew Bush, who is screening Troll 2 at the Bus Stop
Theatre on Friday night, along with a trailer for his
Xanadu-inspired roller-schlock film Roller Town. “I have
to keep showing it to people. The lines are amazing. The director has
no idea how to shoot, but he got it done. It’s so earnest in that
regard—everyone is so genuinely excited about what they’re doing.
It’s a beautiful film.”

The movie lodged in Jason Eisener’s heart when he watched it at a
friend’s birthday. “We were just blown away,” says the Treevenge director. “The acting is horrible. The direction is horrible. You are
actually embarrassed for the actors. It’s a miracle for a film to be so
bad and so funny at the same time.”

Stephenson realized Troll 2 was becoming a borderline cult
phenomenon when fans from all over the world flooded his MySpace page a
couple of years ago with photos and comments about their Troll 2 parties and screenings. “I spent a long time really trying to distance
myself from that film,” he says. “I didn’t want to die being known as
that kid who pisses all over his family’s dinner. But then I started to
see how genuine all these fans were, and how much fun they were having
with a bad movie.”

The idea piqued Stephenson enough that he spent the next three years
working on a documentary about the film and its impact called Best
Worst Movie. In the process, he says he’s come to terms with “being
the star of the worst movie ever made.”

“It’s very genuine and sincere,” he says. “I think there’s a lot of
films that lack that authenticity. People are having genuine fun with
this, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really special.’ I’ve had other
acting jobs since then, but I’ve done nothing as remarkable as Troll
2.”

Roller Town trailer and Troll
2 with Picnicface, Friday, March 20 at Bus Stop Theatre, 2203
Gottingen, 8pm, pay what you can. Best Worst Movie is
currently showing at South by Southwest.

This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2009.