When I call Michael Stephenson for an interview about Troll 2, the 1990 film in which he made his screen debut at age ten, the first thing he asks me is, “Have you seen the movie?” When I say yes, he responds, “Okay…should I apologize now?”
Troll 2 is a bad movie, and one whose sheer horribleness has been transformed into an underground cult phenomenon. Stephenson stars as little Joshua Waits, the youngest member of an all-American family who has moved to the town of Nilbog (spell it backwards). Things become complicated when cannibal monsters and goblins begin to attack. Little people in unconvincing costumes play the goblins, and there is a heavy reliance, I’m afraid, on green ooze, which doesn’t usually spell Oscar nomination. Incidentally, you may wonder why I haven’t mentioned any trolls. This is because the movie contains only goblins. The original title was Goblins, but the name change is the least of their problems.
Troll 2 contains just about everything you could ask for in a cheesy movie. The acting and dialogue are weak (sample: “They’re eating her! And they’re going to eat me! Oh my GAAAAWWWD!”), the special effects are inept, and certain scenes are so misguided they achieve a certain surrealistic brilliance (Joshua discovers that goblins have poisoned his family’s food and he needs to find a way to prevent them from eating it. He unzips his fly, and…) But what benefit can rational criticism serve when faced with such a strange movie? It’s good, campy fun.
On May 31 at the Bloor Cinema, Toronto audiences will have a chance to attend Canada’s first theatrical screening of Troll 2. Organized by Rue Morgue and Toronto After Dark, cast members Michael Stephenson and George Hardy will be in attendance. And yes, you too will have a chance to ask them what they were thinking.
Fortunately, I was able to ask Stephenson this exact question. Troll 2 was an Italian production, produced by legendary schlockmeister Joe D’Amato (who created such classics as Cave Dwellers, Porno Holocaust, and Caligula: The Untold Story) and directed by Claudio Fragasso under the brilliant pseudonym Drake Floyd. Of the audition process, Stephenson says, “I just remember Claudio, the director, just kind of in this smoke, and he’s chattering in Italian to all the other crew members. And then Claudio kneeled down in front of me and said, ‘Okay, Michael, we improvise’—y’know, in broken English—and he started saying things like, ‘Pretend there’s a scary spider on your face! Pretend you’re in haunted house!’ And I just screamed and had fun and made a lot of faces.”
“My dad, he’s kinda conservative, and he started reading the script, and got halfway through it and said, ‘Man, Michael, this is a weird movie. Are you sure you want to do this?’ And of course, I was all for it, and so they thought at the time, ‘Well, maybe movie magic will intervene here and the script won’t be as bad as we think it is.’”
The shoot, as in most low-budget horror films, was rushed and chaotic. “Claudio’s got a lot of heart. He’s very, very passionate, but very intense, and on the set everybody was kind of afraid of him, because he was just always yelling. Like, one take and it was always like, ‘Move on! You’re too slow! Move on! FASTER! QUICKER! FASTER!’ You know, always yelling. Nobody knew what was going on, there was constant confusion, there were actors off to the side going through their lines together saying, ‘But, this doesn’t make sense; should we change this?’”
“As a ten-year-old, I got paid not very much at all,” says Stephenson. “But I got paid to show up on set and make faces and scream and run from midgets in potato sacks and ride a skateboard, and it was a lot of fun.”
Released in Europe in 1990, the film was dumped unceremoniously to video in North America. For years Stephenson was “horribly embarrassed” by his inexperienced performance. “I just thought, ‘I’m going to die and be remembered as the guy who pees all over his family dinner!’”
But in recent years, as fan mail has built up and curators invite him for Q&A’s, Stephenson began to reevaluate his opinion of ‘the Citizen Kane of bad movies.’ “You see things on people’s MySpace pages under favourite movies like, The Shawshank Redemption and Crash and Troll 2.” In addition to touring with the film, Stephenson is directing a documentary about the production called Best Worst Movie, scheduled for release sometime this year.
Despite being slammed as ‘so-bad-it’s-good,’ Troll 2 has played to packed houses, and Stephenson himself has consistently received kind words. But if making fun of bad movies is traditionally a mean-spirited activity, how can Troll 2’s fan base be so affectionate? Maybe it’s because unlike a big-studio bomb, Troll 2 is not really an insult to either our culture or our wallets—it’s harmless stuff. Viewers tend to like whatever makes them laugh, no matter how intentional or unintentional the guffaws become.
Last year, Stephenson contacted Claudio Fragasso to tell him about Troll 2’s ironic popularity. “There was this long pause, and then finally he said, ‘Why now, after 18 years, they finally decide they like my movie?!’”
Troll 2 plays at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.) on Saturday May 31 at 9:30 p.m.
