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


Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, or even suggest a movie for future review. And don't forget to check back every day in October for a new installment in our 31 Days of Fright!

31 Days of Fright, Day 7: Monkey Shines

Welcome to day 7 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe devolves to the level of a child when he watches...

MONKEY SHINES
1988
Rated R

When I was a kid, cruising the horror section of Star Video (our local video store – remember those?) for a thrill on a Friday night while my parents tried to find something to rent that was both age-appropriate for me and wouldn’t bore them to death, the cover of Monkey Shines scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know the first thing about it. I didn’t know who George A. Romero was. I didn’t know it was about a quadriplegic former champion athlete who, all unknowing, gets a genetically enhanced monkey to aid him around the house and begins developing a psychic connection to it. I didn’t know it was a slow-build thriller that probably would have kept me on the edge of my seat, but wouldn’t have actually scared me if I had dared to watch it. All I knew was that demon monkey toys with straight razors were just about the scariest damn thing I could imagine.

Seriously. I had nightmares about it.

As you’ve probably already guessed from my not terribly well-veiled hints, this movie isn’t scary. It’s a decent science fiction (Or does the term science fantasy apply here?) thriller, ably written and directed by the Godfather of zombie horror, George A. Romero, but it's decidedly not scary. If you’re looking for a scare, look elsewhere.

Having said that, the movie isn't bad. The vulnerability of the main character creates solid tension throughout, even if his performance (at least at first glance) seems a bit uneven. But then, anybody who goes into a Romero movie expecting top-notch acting probably hasn't seen many Romero movies. The man is a legend because his ability to craft a tense scene and tell an interesting story is such that we can forgive him his choice in (or perhaps it’s his use of) performers.

The science fiction (again, I’m plagued by the suspicion that I’m using the wrong term here) element seems pretty far-fetched, but though it’s the device that facilitates the story, it isn’t what the story is about. The story is about Jason Beghe’s character, Allan, and the question, Is his psychic connection with Ella the monkey turning him into an animal, or is it simply bringing out the animal that was always there?

Uneven- and/or over-acting aside, the movie’s biggest problem is that – once he has established the conflict, ratcheted up the tension, and moved all the players into place – Romero doesn’t seem to realize that you can’t pull off a final confrontation in the conventional, fast-paced way when the key player can only move from the neck up. Scenes that should be real nail-biters become inadvertent comedy when approached this way.

EXAMPLE:

The soundtrack shrieks with tension as the antagonist stalks the shadows. The housekeeper doesn’t realize the monkey is not only dangerous, but filled with murderous intent, armed with a scalpel, and fully capable of using it to deadly efficiency! Allan must warn her! He’s running out of time! He leans his head forward, pushing the wheelchair’s joystick with his lips, and the wheelchair rolls ahead at a sedate 1.8mph.

Though I’ve deliberately seeded the above scenario with inaccuracies to protect the spoiler-sensitive, I think you can see how it would be nearly impossible to approach that setup in the traditional, the-killer-is-inside-the-house way. The final conflict needs to happen, not only to resolve the story, but also because it is refreshingly unconventional, in that it gives us a hero who is uniquely vulnerable and an antagonist who is uniquely dangerous. A situation so original demands an original approach, and this is where Romero fails. He shoots it traditionally, and it becomes largely absurd.

I will say that the final resolution (that's not the conflict, but the RE-SO-LU-TION) genuinely affected me, and I think it was excellently done, in that it not only tapped into the core questions of the story, but also left me feeling deeply conflicted. It didn’t pander to either my need for vindication or my love of irony - at least, not until the epilogue. But let’s not talk about that.

Monkey Shines is filled with flaws, but it’s also unique and genuinely affecting. It’s not scary, but that doesn’t mean it’s not horror. It’s horror of the truest kind - of the Romero kind - that asks us who we really are and what – having crossed the limit of our ability to cope – we are capable of becoming.

6/10

-GABE


Thanks for riding along! Be sure to click on the banner below to check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch our videos, "like" them, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment or a question, or even suggest a movie for future review. And don't forget to check back every day in October for a new installment in our 31 Days of Fright!