Best Worst Movie
by James Roland
It’s tough to make a good movie. Even the masters have a few celluloid skeletons in their closet. So you would think, given its first-time director and particular subject matter, the documentary Best Worst Movie would live up to the last two words in its title.
Fortunately for movie fans, that’s not the case.
Left to Right: Robert Ormsby, George Hardy, Kris Lozanovski (Troll 2 fan), Michael Paul Stephenson, Kendra Lyons (Troll 2 fan)
Twenty years ago, during a hot summer in Utah, a group of Italian filmmakers shot a cheap horror movie. They cast a local dentist as the lead actor, wrapped children in burlap sacks and cheap latex masks, and battled language barriers and an incoherent script to make what is generally considered the worst movie ever made: Troll 2.
Fast forward two decades and find Michael Stephenson (director of Best Worst Movie and child star of Troll 2) rolling his cameras at the UCB Theatre in New York as long lines of adoring hipsters wait loudly and impatiently for a midnight screening of Troll 2.
Sometime after that hot summer in 1989, Troll 2 garnered a cult following. And when the UCB Theatre posted a single Myspace post announcing its screening, the theater sold out in record time. This event gave a voice to the nameless fans of Troll 2 (this reviewer included) who had no idea there were other people in the world who understood its unintentional brilliance.
“It’s goblin spelled backwards!”
Best Worst Movie purports to chronicle these phenomena, and definitely shines a light on the underground Troll 2 movement. But Stephenson wisely focuses on the individual people, from the cast who accidentally became a part of cult film history to the hard-core fans who spend their days sewing costumes and proselytizing the masses about Troll 2.
In places the documentary struggles to find its theme, but it finally settles on the lost dreams of a small group of people who struggled and failed against the odds, working 18-hour days to produce a horrible film, and how it took 18 years for those dreams to resurface in the form of a cult classic.
The film starts with George Hardy, a dentist in small-town Alabama who had all but forgotten about Troll 2 until a patient in the dentist chair recognized the face smiling down on him. Stephenson keeps George the focus of the film and follows him as he tracks down long lost cast members, travels to overseas conventions, and revels in the unexpected spotlight of cult status.
While Best Worst Movie is fairly innocuous, opting for nostalgic fun rather than hard-hitting journalism, it does have moments of touching drama.
Troll 2 cast member Don Packard talks about his fight with mental illness, revealing that he filmed the movie on his days off from a mental asylum and was so high on pot he had no idea what he was saying. While the drug induced ‘sanity’ was responsible for his bizarre performance (a fan favorite), it also took a toll on his life that’s still evident today.
Margo Prey, who plays Diana Waits in Troll 2, still lives in Utah, but has given up her acting dreams to care for her mother. She walks through her day, telling the camera she plans to “get back into acting” and often takes notes on movies and hangs them in her bedroom so they sink into her head.
These sad vignettes are juxtaposed with light, silly, and surprisingly hopeful footage of Troll 2 fanatics around the world. They show up at screenings, work on costumes, and perform entire scenes of dialogue from memory.
While the film serves as an ultimate ‘thank you’ to Troll 2 fans, it also stands on its own. It paints such a true, unassuming picture of everyone involved that it’s impossible to resist the temptation: soon after watching you will log on to Amazon or Netflix and order Troll 2 for yourself (in fact, it was from an early trailer for Best Worst Movie that this reviewer first learned about Troll 2 and quickly became a convert).
Best Worst Movie begs the question, can Troll 2 really be bad if it’s responsible for such irreverent joy? The answer is yes, but only in terms of acting, directing, writing, cinematography, and any other rational system of measure.
In terms of fun, Troll 2 is Mecca.
And if you think that’s an overstatement, please check out YouTube footage of this delightful disaster:
Movie Info:
Best Worst Movie premiered at the SXSW Film Festival this weekend. For more information and updates about where you can see the documentary, check out their website: BestWorstMovie.com
*All photos by Ian Barkley, courtesy of Magic Stone Productions
