TROLL II
Kill, kill!

  As widely hated as just about anything you'd name, this certainly ranks high among any collection of truly unnecessary sequels you'd care to list.  This movie isn't just bad, but it actually turns the viewer into a worse person.  Case in point; the effect of the juvenile star of this movie, Michael Stephenson, on myself.  Hey, I'm a nice guy.  I love kids.  Ask anyone who knows me.  But Stephenson, the whiniest kid I've ever seen blot my TV set (even worse than latter-season Owen from Party Of Five), wearing the same about-to-cry-over-something-stupid expression on his face throughout the whole film, made me want to punch him right in the fucking face.  Seriously, I wanted to beat that kid down.  There's one scene where the kid's father, very angry with him for ruining dinner, starts fiddling with his belt, and I cried out "YES!!!" because I figured it meant that he'd either beat that kid with the belt, or whip out his dink and pee on him.  (disappointingly, the explanation is "I'm tightening my belt so I won't feel the hunger pangs!")

Okay, gotta cool off before I get too wrapped up in my desire to see this kid come to harm. (Kill, kill!)

Surely backed by funding from Oscar Mayer, Troll II tries to expose vegetarians for a bunch of self-righteous nature nuts who keep trying to turn everybody else into someone just like them.  (okay, so maybe that's not too far from the truth.)  Actually, these vegetarians (the entire population of the town Nilbog) keep putting green toothpaste on their food, which turns its devourers (namely, a family of four, with the daughter's boyfriend and, uh, "friends" in tow) into food for the local population of goblins.  Yeah, that's right, I said goblins.  There aren't actually any trolls in this movie, although all those goblins look like really bad imitations of Mortiis, if that's troll enough for you.

Everything is just so bad here!  Having some peripheral connection to the first Troll movie might've helped, but probably not.  Awful synth-pop soundtrack.  Awful makeup (both goblin and freckle makeup), awful costumes (what's with that hat at the beginning?).  The acting is some of the worst I've ever seen.  The plot is even worse than you might fear, since the movie's half over before anybody notices what "Nilbog" spells something else backwards (and even he needs a mirror to figure that one out).  The silver bullet ultimately used against the goblins isn't actually used against the goblins; they just get grossed out by it and react accordingly.  There's this totally flaming gay subtext (probably too obvious to be called "sub"-anything) regarding the boyfriend of the daughter and his friends, where the hell they were going with that, I have no idea.

If there's anything, anything at all good about this movie, it's probably how easy it is to make fun of.  Oh, and the hilarious way that stupid kid ruins dinner.  This movie is the kind of shit that gave kiddie horror such a bad name in the first place.  I can't even be bothered to write up a half-spirited bashing of this stupid thing.

Direction's credited to one Drago Floyd; actually, Claudio Fragasso (and, according to the IMDb, Joe D'Amato as well). Whoever it's from, it sure sucks ass. It's #8 right now on the bottom-100 list at the IMDb.  Pardon me, I've got to go spend the next hour or so crying and screaming so that I don't punch the next kid I see.

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