31 Days of Fright, Day 19: Troll

Welcome to day 19 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe takes a trip down memory lane with...

TROLL
1986
Rated PG-13

I've said it before and I'll say it again, nostalgia is a thing best left unverified. Usually, that is.

The first time I saw Troll was during summer break of my eighth year. I was at my babysitter's house, watching it with her little sister, also eight. I remember that I watched it with her little sister because I remember thinking, "Boy, I wish I was watching this with her instead of her little sister." I've always had a thing for older women.

I should probably mention at this point that the first time I watched Troll was also the last time I watched it. I would have watched it more, but I didn't own a copy, and for those of you who don't remember the eighties - either because you weren't born yet, or because you were too high on cocaine to form new memories during that time - actual VHS (or Beta, if that was your flavor) copies of movies weren't easy to come by back then, unless you had HBO. I didn't have HBO. My grandma did, and frequently recorded movies for me off of it, but horror - even of the tame variety - was pretty much verboten to me, so asking for her to record Troll was out of the question.

Back to the present! Well, yesterday, anyway.

Until the moment I hit PLAY on my Blu-Ray player's remote (Yeah, I'm livin' large.) I have no actual memory of what Troll was about. I just remember the titular creature's rather creepily expressive smile and that the movie both scared and thrilled the dookie out of me. I also have a fuzzy memory about something happening with a rubber ball in a basement, but that's it. The movie is an enigma, within which hides a shadow of looming dread. I simply have to watch it.

Well, as you've probably guessed already, this movie is anything but scary. However, Troll is also anything but unentertaining.

Troll. How do I love thee (or, at least, like thee a lot)? Let me count the ways!

Michael Moriarty can't not make me smile. From the very first scene, he's clearly in this to have fun. What other message could he be sending with that ridiculous hat? Factor in his '80s-montage-dance-scene to a protopunk version of Summertime Blues, and it's hard not to love this guy.

Anybody who doesn't love June Lockhart is a commie and a generally sketchy character. She's the ideal mother of the past (Lassie) as well as the future (Lost in Space), and if that doesn't warm your heart, you don't have one. Now, imagine her as the tough-but-kind, lonely old lady living on the top floor who is the only person a young boy in crisis can turn to for help. Got that image? Yeah. She's just as good as you imagine, and then some.

Then, of course, there's young Harry Potter. Yeah, you read that right. The main character's name is Harry Potter. Well, Harry Potter Jr., to be precise, but that's nitpicking. And the similarities don't end at the name. Turns out that the troll everybody is talking about is an ancient, evil wizard, and Harry's the only one who can stop him. When the scene finally rolls around where young Harry Potter is seated across from Eunice the witch (June Lockhart) and says, "Can you teach me to be a magician?" I just about deuced in my drawers.

And it doesn't stop there. I haven't even gotten into the way the evil troll transforms the apartment building our characters live in into a magical forest realm by turning the residents into gigantic turds that crack open and pour forth all manner of fairy forest life. Or Julia Louis-Dreyfus's prancing nymph seduction scene. Or Gary Sandy (no, you shouldn't have heard of him before) running in, looking and acting like a coked-up, American Graham Chapman. Or Sonny Bono's turn as a sleazy swinger whose total lack of taste would make even Joe Jackson cringe.

Oh, and Harry Potter is played by Atreyu. Yeah, this movie pretty much shits awesomeness.

On the downside, the story itself isn't that special. The director clearly has little to no talent, but in his defense, everybody is having so much fun here that the bad acting and scene structure sort of just add to it. There are moments where the movie drags, but at an hour and twenty-two minutes, it doesn't have a whole lot of time to bore you.

Ultimately, this movie was a good time. If you treasure recalling the chills it gave you as a child, avoid it at all costs, as rewatching will shatter those memories as soundly as a cinderblock dropped onto a crystal vase. On the other hand, if you've never seen it - or you don't mind reevaluating joys long past - I think Troll has a lot to offer by way of entertainment. It's far from the most fun I've had with a bad movie, but if you go in for that sort of thing, you could do a whole lot worse.

7.5/10

-GABE


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