Troll 2: No Trolls, No Sequel, No Mercy — The Greatest Worst Movie Ever Made
- Johnny Rewind
- Apr 11
- 3 min read
By Johnny Rewind | Nostalgia Navigator
There is no troll in Troll 2. There is also no connection to Troll (1986). What there is: vegetarian goblins, a family on a house-swap vacation to a town called Nilbog, green slime that turns people into plants so the goblins can eat them, and one of the most unhinged pieces of cinema ever committed to VHS tape. Troll 2 is not just a bad movie. It is the Everest of bad movies. The benchmark. The one against which all others are measured.
The Plot (I'm Trying My Best Here)
The Waits family travels to the small town of Nilbog for a house-swap holiday. Young Joshua is warned by the ghost of his dead grandfather that goblins are real and they want to eat the family. Nobody listens to the dead grandfather. The goblins — who are vegetarian, which is their whole thing — offer the family green food that transforms humans into half-plant creatures so they can be consumed. The town's residents are either goblins in disguise or under goblin control. A druid witch called Creedence Leonore Gielgud (yes, really) leads the operation. Joshua tries to stop everything while his family ignores him completely. The climax involves a double-decker bologna sandwich.
Behind the Madness
Troll 2 was made by Italian director Claudio Fragasso, who spoke almost no English, with a script written by his wife Rossella Drudi — also in Italian, then translated. The cast was made up of local Utah non-actors who were forbidden by Fragasso to change a single word of the dialogue, regardless of how impossible it was to actually say out loud. Fragasso genuinely believed he was making a serious horror film about the dangers of vegetarianism. He was wrong. The resulting film is so magnificently disconnected from anything resembling normal human behaviour that it achieved immortality.
The documentary Best Worst Movie (2009) — made by Michael Stephenson, who played Joshua as a child — is one of the finest films ever made about cult cinema. It tracks the cast reunions, the fan screenings, and Fragasso's continued baffled insistence that Troll 2 is a good film that was misunderstood. He is not entirely wrong, just not in the way he means.
WTF Moments
OH MY GOOOOOOOD. The scream heard around the world — delivered by Michael Paul Stephenson with his entire body — is the most famous moment in bad movie history. Then there's the scene where Joshua stops his family eating goblin food by urinating on the dinner table. Grandpa Seth stops time specifically for this purpose. The film treats it as completely normal. Creedence Leonore Gielgud seduces a teenager using a corn cob that turns into popcorn. The goblins wear potato sack costumes and rubber masks that do not move. At no point does any of this slow the film down.
This Film Is in the Book. The Book Is on Amazon.
Troll 2 gets the full treatment in VHS Fever Dreams — part of The Bad Movie Chronicles series by Johnny Rewind. Plot breakdown, behind-the-scenes chaos, WTF moments, and a drinking game that will end your evening early. If you've ever loved a movie for being spectacularly wrong about everything, this book was written for you.
Be kind. Rewind. And whatever you do — don't eat the green food.
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