The kid on the poster isn't the actual kid in the movie and there isn't a single creature that looks like that anywhere to be found. But they're not kidding when they say that this will haunt you forever. So I guess one out of three ain't bad.

Donkey: I’m sure you’re like me (and reading this back to myself, I realize that I’m TOTALLY like me…how did I know? That’s fucking brilliant) in that when I think of particular movies, music, or games, I often associate them with certain events that were taking place at the time when I first experienced them. That’s the power of a first impression, and that shit can stay with you forever. So when I first heard about this week’s film and it’s staggering stature among those who have made it a cult classic, I was intrigued yet apprehensive. You see, I had seen the first movie, Troll, years earlier at a time that I’ll never forget. My family was visiting relatives when our parents all decided to go out for dinner and leave me and my brothers to spend the night with our cousins under the supervision of our oldest cousin. And to keep us from lighting ourselves on fire in an attempt to stave off oppressing boredom, they had rented two movies for us to watch. Those two movie were, and keep in mind that I was about ten at the time, Youngblood and Troll. For those of you that haven’t seen them, Youngblood is a hockey movie that’s about as close to real hockey as an episode of Three’s Company, and Troll is a horror movie that’s about as enjoyable to endure as lung cancer. I remember very clearly watching those movies and ending the night with the one clear thought: “Who the fuck picked these goddamn movies?” Of course, much later I realized that particular cousin who was watching over us and had chosen the movies was nuttier than a goddamn O Henry bar, so it made a lot more sense. But for years thereafter, all I could remember was how much I hated those movies almost as much as the entire night on which I watched them. So when it came to watching Troll II for the first time, there was an inherent amount of pain involved before we even pressed play. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded, as Troll II does it’s best to make sure that I can’t even remember the first one existed. God bless you, Troll II. You sure can ease the pain.

The Plot:

Donkey: It’s a special kind of sequel that makes no attempt to be even remotely related to the original, but Troll II takes that kind of brave stupidity one step further. Not only is it not related to the first movie in any conceivable manner, but it’s not even related to its own goddamn title. That’s right; there’s not a single fucking troll in the entire movie. Not one. Hell, the word troll isn’t even so much as uttered by accident, even to describe a really boring method of fishing. Instead the movie is about goblins, and while my inner geek might be showing a little too much here, anyone who’s ever read any fantasy can tell you that a troll and a goblin are not the same damn thing. I can only guess that at this rate the third film would be about a young boy’s battle against the local city council to get the proper permits to rezone his parent’s property title to allow them to subdivide…and that planning committee is made up of blood-thirsty ogres!

So what is this crusty bowl of ballsauce actually about, you ask? Well shut the hell up for a minute and I’ll tell you. It’s the tale of a young boy named Joshua and his average nuclear family vacationing in the fictional town of Nilbog, longing for the peaceful and highly inbred lifestyle that you can only find in a populace the size of a professional football team. But their dreams come to an end when Joshua is warned by the ghost of Grandpa Seth, with whom he communes on a regular basis, that trouble is afoot and that they’re walking into a deadly trap.

The Case for Greatness (aka The Lowlights):

Exhibit A: Grandpa Appears In My Room At Night To Tell Me About Monsters…And Touch My Bathing Suit Area

There's something dense about this scene alright, but it ain't the fog.

Donkey: Not bothering to fuck around with pomp, circumstance, or even proper editing, Troll II starts immediately with its first scene and corresponding dialogue literally no more than a second after the roar of the MGM logo, almost tricking you into thinking that you’ve missed a chunk of the movie already. Fear not, as it wouldn’t matter even if you did. The tale opens with an old man named Grandpa Seth telling a bedtime story to his grandson, Joshua. The old timer’s fable is about Peter, a courageous boy of what appears to be about 32, who becomes lost while traveling through the forest due to a dense fog, so thick that it you can barely see it seeing as its undoubtedly made by five crew members blowing cigarette smoke into frame on an otherwise bright, sunny day. Lost and alone, Peter is followed by midgets in burlap sacks and shitty masks that the movie has the audacity to call goblins, until he randomly falls and is knocked out cold. When he awakens some time later, he finds himself faced with a beautiful woman with horribly fake freckles who offers him a shitty green mix of Cool Whip and Jell-O. Once he begins sucking it down without question, he starts to sweat green Kool-Aid or what they call chlorophyll, before turning into a half man and half plant so that the goblins can eat him. The end! Goddamn that’s a great story. And while Joshua tries to digest the unbridled worthlessness of this parable, Grandpa Seth finally gets to the fucking point and explains that goblins are real. This would probably be a more ominous revelation if the goblins didn’t look like complete ass. You might as well have made them out of sock puppets and then hit me with the news that the sock puppets are real. Seriously, how scary can midgets in potato sacks be? But just in case the level of idiocy dropped on us so far wasn’t enough, right about then Josh’s mother steps into his bedroom and asks why he’s still awake. He begins to say that Grandpa Seth was telling him a story when he suddenly slaps a hand over his mouth and we realize that Grandpa Seth was never really there at all. You see, it turns out that Grandpa Seth has been dead for six months despite the fact that Joshua still talks to him on a regular basis.

Before you get to sleep, son, let me ask you something: have I ever told you about that time I killed a drifter and wore him as a jacket?

Why do you keep calling me Hayden Fox?

After settling Josh down for the night, the mother enters the living room where the father is talking about their vacation plans with some unknown dude on the phone. To get back to their settler roots, the family is planning to go to Nilbog, a town with a population of 26, after swapping houses with a local family. But once that riveting conversation ends, the mother turns to the father in all seriousness and asks him who the goblins are. He seems as confused as I am as to why the hell she’d ask him that question, since he hadn’t said a goddamn thing about goblins, but the scene ends before he can ask her what the fuck is wrong with her. I realize this is a very bad attempt to build tension, but it would have made no less sense for her to ask him who framed Roger Rabbit.

I can relate to this. When I'm exercising in the privacy of my bedroom, not only do I wear an outfit that barely contains my balls, but I also wear a weight lifting belt when lifting 15 lbs.

While the parents wrestle with their own idiocy, things prove to be equally mindless back upstairs. After accidentally going to the wrong window and scaring the hell out of Josh, a teenaged boy sneaks into his sister Holly’s room to surprise her while she’s power-lifting in an outfit that’s slowly losing the battle to cover her vagina. Started by the incredibly homely visage of her boyfriend, Elliot, Holly hits the dude square in the nuts, to which he asks if she’s trying to make him a homo. Apparently that’s how they thought people ended up gay in the late 80’s. As he slowly recovers from barely dodging a new love of manchowder, they begin to argue about how much time Elliot spends with his friends, just as his pals conveniently climb up to her window themselves to say hi. At least I think they’re three friends of his. But considering how stupid the idea of three dudes managing to climb up a single ladder at the same time is, it might be that Elliot is friends with a pimply, awkward virgin Hydra. To try to prove to Holly that she’s the only honeypot that he wants to teabag, Elliot offers to come with her and her family on vacation. Of course, he then completely cripples his own point by asking if he could bring his friends, to which she says that he is welcome to join her family in the morning, but if his friends come, she never wants to see him again. I haven’t seen teenage drama this intense since Archie blew off Betty and Veronica to give Jughead a tugjob while he sucked back a dozen hamburgers.

Exhibit B: Fuck Disneyland, Let’s Spend Our Vacation In The Abyss

To once again prove that this movie was edited by a gerbil treating its Attention Deficit Disorder with a cocaine addiction, the movie then suddenly cuts directly to the family van the next day as Holly, Josh, and the parents are driving to Nilbog. Holly’s horrible attempt at crying leads us to believe that Elliot didn’t show up, and this is confirmed a moment later when she and the father begin to argue about how useless he is. To break the tension, the mother demands that Josh must sing that song she likes. After first refusing, he finally begins the mysterious song that she loves so much, treating us to a few bars of…Row Row Row Your Boat. Wow. I guess they’re saving Happy Birthday To You for when they want to kick this party into overdrive. But just when you think things can’t get any worse, they all start singing at once. I’d describe their feeble wailing as being in harmony, but I’m pretty sure the English language would be able to charge me with sexual assault if I did. The scene cuts away from their chorus of insanity to reveal that Elliot and his three friends are trying to catch up in an RV before once again returning to Josh, as he has a nightmare about spouting chlorophyll and turning into a plant as his family are revealed to be goblins. Once he wakes up out of that, the nightmare continues in the real world as the family passes a hitchhiker holding a sign that says “STOP THEM!” Recognizing the mysterious stranger to be Grandpa Seth, Josh convinces his father to stop the van, saying that he’s gotta puke. As soon as they’re stopped, he runs over to get a stern warning from Seth that they’re heading into danger. But before he can provide information that would be in any way useful, the family backs up the van to see what the hell this idiot kid is doing, breaking the spell and allowing Josh to see that he’s actually bantering back and forth with a drifter.

I had a Superman Halloween costume with a plastic mask that was scarier than this.

The family’s journey continues and as they get closer to their destination, the tide of stupidity does little to recede. They pass by Elliot and his friends, who have somehow managed to make it past them and park their RV about fifty feet down an embankment off the side of the road, before finally driving into the vibrant community of Nilbog. Immediately Holly notices that there isn’t a soul to be seen anywhere, but the father assures her that this is normal for a farming community, as everyone is home in bed by this time of night – “This time of night” quite obviously being about 2 PM. They carry on and moments later finally arrive at the house, where the exchange family stands out front waiting for them. They all gather to stand face to face, sizing up the others like they’re about to have a Deathmatch Tug-o-war battle when Josh notices that they all have a scar on them. It’s obviously supposed to be similar, but the only thing that each one has in common is looking like shit. Having little to say, the host family loads into their truck to leave, ignoring Josh’s father as he gives them a sales pitch so awkward that you’d think he was selling harvested baby organs while assuring them that they’ll love his house. But as one last kick in the balls, as the family begins to drive away, the youngest member throws Josh a ball from the back of the truck. Josh catches it and turns it over, revealing green writing that says “eat before we eat you”. Now that makes fucking sense. If I were going to set an elaborate trap to lure in an unsuspecting family into becoming the primary ingredient of my Asshole Casserole, I’d toss out ominous clues that are as subtle as a punch in the babymaker.

Feel free to watch our tv and eat our food, but stay out of our Chinese Fuck Swing!

Now that they’re alone, the Swiss Family Taintstains start to make themselves at home when they discover that a shitty meal has been prepared and left for them. They jump right on it, sitting down to eat so quickly that you’d think they’ve spent the last month fasting, not even bothering to note the fact that every food item, including the drink left for them, is an obnoxious green color. Just then Grandpa Seth appears at nearby window, beckoning Josh over and warning him to stop them from eating anything or they’ll all be killed. So while the family takes an extremely long time to pass the food around without actually eating any, Josh struggles to come up with a plan. To help make things a little easier, Grandpa Seth uses some random power that every ghost apparently has to freeze them all for 30 seconds, with food literally inches from their mouths. At this point I’d like to note that they didn’t have the budget or filming skills to actually freeze the shot of the family while Josh walks around in front of it, so instead the actors do their best to just sit still, failing to do so just enough to make it painfully obvious that no one is actually frozen. After plugging away at his tiny brain while circling them like a vulture, Josh finally comes up with a master plan, climbs up on the table, and pisses on all the food as they snap out of their coma. Of course, I understand how that ruined the food on the table, but I’m not really sure how that managed to stop them from stuffing the food that was less than an inch from their mouths down their throats.

If he had more than 30 seconds to work with, it wouldn't be Josh's piss that was soaking into the food...

You don't piss on hospitality! Generosity, sure, but not hospitality!

With the meal ruined, the father takes Josh upstairs and has delivers an awesome speech, giving a meandering, aimless rant before saying something about a hunger strike. The best line in the whole affair is when he proclaims, “You can’t piss on hospitality…I won’t allow it!” That shit is classic. Left in the bedroom to think about what he’s done or at the very least to ponder why the hell he’d bother saving this gaggle of ass excavators, Josh looks around at the walls to find illustrated pictures of goblins hung everywhere. Again, why the fuck you’d plan an elaborate trap and then put out obvious warnings, I have no idea. Unless that’s goblin porn that the youngest one is spanking it to at night, in which case it makes total sense.

Exhibit C: Buffet Of The Damned

Ouch! This almost broke skin, you sons of bitches!

The movie turns back to the trailer of douches, where Elliot and his three friends are watching a movie that looks so shitty that I MUST know what it is. One of the friends named Arnold decides that he’s had enough and leaves the other three there, going outside the trailer for a cigarette. While I’m sure this is supposed to make him look more mature and badass, when it’s coupled with his “1987 Chess Team Champion” appearance, it actually manages to make him look even fruitier. But in no time at all, he sees a girl in ripped up clothes running through the forest a short distance away, clearly fleeing from danger. Instead of getting help from his other friends, Arnold tears off in pursuit and eventually tackles her. As she explains that she’s been forced to eat something and thinks she’s dying, a group of goblins appears from out of nowhere and approaches them. Not thinking this is bizarre in the slightest, Arnold walks over to them and casually explains that they’ll be in for a world of hurt if they don’t leave. As he walks back to the girl to strut around in his awesomeness, the goblins give him their response in the form of a spear thrown at him, lodging a whole inch into his shoulder. The boys back in the trailer hear his scream, but dismiss it as Arnold getting laid. The only way that’s a fair assumption is if Arnold has a reputation for running into the woods and screaming at the top of his lungs while fucking a pine tree. Otherwise, that’s goddamn retarded.

Back outside, the girl helps Arnold pull the spear out of his shoulder before they wander off deeper into the forest, again because this is a much better fucking idea than going back to the RV and getting the fuck out of there. Moments later they come across a church in the middle of nowhere, entering it to find a bed, a weird alter, and apparently a smoke machine inside. It turns out to be the lair of Creedence Leonore Gielgud, the greatest overactor in the history of cinema and leader of the goblins, who uses a slab of Stonehenge to control the army. Yep, you heard that correctly; Stonehenge. I can’t wait for Spinal Tap and the dancing midgets to show up. Creedence, whom we’ll call CCR out of sheer laziness, welcomes them to her church of, oh let’s say Scientology and offers them a broth to heal their wounds, which consists mostly of dry ice apparently. After they have both sipped the green Kool-Aid, the girl wanders upstairs to a balcony, screaming in agony while Arnold stays below, frozen and watching on. Succumbing to the potion, the girl lies down on the floor and has her entire torso turn into a green slimy cake-like substance. With her transformation now complete, a slew of goblins suddenly appears and begins to feast on her. Well, I think that’s what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re actually just dipping their hands into green slop and smearing it around their unmoving mouths, but who’s keeping score? While watching in what one would assume is supposed to be horror instead of complete boredom, Arnold takes a rather unremarkable line and delivers it at a level of awesomeness that simply cannot be described:

On second thought, those acting lessons might have been a good investment.

Arnold: “They’re eating her. Then they’re going to eat me. Oh my Gooooooddddd!”

Seriously, look that shit up on YouTube and watch it. It shouldn’t be hard to find as it is probably the most referenced line in the movie, but it will take years off your life.

Turning away from that act of unspeakable and apparently unactable horror, we check back in with the family that evening to find Holly in a Garfield nightshirt, performing a fucking ridiculous dance routine in her room to techno music that is about nine intellectual notches beneath a tune that you could produce with a Seiko calculator watch. Unfortunately she gives up shortly, instead entertaining herself by pretending to give Elliot a lecture while staring into her mirror. But just then Grandpa Seth shows up in her mirror, calling for Joshua in a sad attempt to cover for the fact that he was watching in the hopes that she’d take her shirt off. Hearing her scream, the whole family runs up and to investigate. Finding nothing of course, Josh offers to swap rooms with Holly, which she gladly accepts. Once they’re all gone, Josh summons Grandpa Seth in the mirror again, who again warns Joshua that they must leave, revealing that this is the kingdom of the goblins. Yeah, we got that already, asshole. So what’s the point of this scene them, you ask? If you could see that fucking dancing, you’d know. Oh, you’d know.

I'm Batman.

Come on, boy...those short shorts are just begging for it.

With one friend down for the count already, it’s time to pick off the next pawn. So the next day we return to the RV and focus on another one of Elliot’s friends named Drew. He looks in their fridge only to discover that even though the four of them had piled into an RV for a vacation, not one of them was smart enough to bring a single thing to eat or drink. Apparently they were under the impression that their madd skillz with the ladies would allow them to sustain themselves entirely on overflowing buckets of vagina. After being dismissed by a groggy Elliot who’s busy dispelling Holly’s suspicions of his homosexuality by doing some naked spooning with Brent, the fourth friend, Drew decides to literally run into town to pick up some supplies after stopping momentarily to do some light stretching and calisthenics. But his journey isn’t too long, as moments later he gets picked up by the local sheriff, a man named, no shit, Gene Freak. Sheriff Freak offers him a lift into town as well as a bright green fucking Play-Do sandwich, both of which Drew happily accepts without question. After being dropped off at the general store, Drew finds himself faced with a group of hayseeds standing out front, forming a silent gauntlet of inbreeding for him to slink his nervous virgin asshole through. Once he makes it through and enters the store, already sweating the telltale green Kool-Aid of ridiculous doom, he is greeted by the remarkably child molester looking clerk who talks him into accepting a free bottle of Nilbog milk. The clerk begs him to make sure that both he and his friends drink it, in no way confirming that he’s a fucking rapist. With the roofies slowly kicking in, Drew wanders back out of the store and back through the gauntlet elementary school drop outs, who tell him that Arnold left a message for him, asking to meet Drew at the old church. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe the 80’s were a very different time, but if I wanted to get important information to my pal, I wouldn’t assign the biggest group of menacing cornholers the task of spitting a chewing tobacco covered message at him. I might just sashay my ass back to the RV instead, but again, that’s just me.

$50 says that no matter what he's dreaming, it's more coherent than this movie.

But Drew isn’t the only person to visit the thriving metropolis of Nilbog that day. That morning back at the house of shame, the parents discover that they too have nothing to eat or drink, save the several jugs of Nilbog milk sitting in the fridge. However, I’d just like to point out that if you’re going to leave a trap consisting of bottles of milk, hoping that they’ll chug it a succumb to your poison, the milk probably shouldn’t be so thick that it could be mistaken for horse semen. Because apart from possibly the father, I don’t know who the hell would drink that. Eager to prove their meager worth, Josh and the father declare that they’ll make the trek into town for sustenance. They soon arrive at the same corner store, but rather than being greeted by a gauntlet of phonics assassins, they find only a sign saying that the shop is “closed for 20 minutes, back after the sermon is done”. As the father extols the virtue of patience, Josh goes to the sideview mirror on their car and tries to summon Grandpa Seth, only to see a sign in the reflection and realize that “Nilbog” is “Goblin” spelled backwards! How kind-of-not-really clever! He turns back to share this revelation with his father, only to see that he’s completely passed out on a chair by the front door of the corner store. That’s goddamn ridiculous. Narcoleptics don’t slip into an REM state that goddamn quickly. Deciding to take matter into his own hands, Josh rolls off on a $15 skateboard from K-Mart circa 1988.

Someone please explain why the metamorphosis to a plant forces you to hold a fucking mug.

While our hero in Hush Puppies undoubtedly rolls off to get himself killed, we’ll take a quick moment to check in with the other fodder. Back in the church of Scientology, we finally see what became of Arnold as he stands in a pot, slowing growing into a plant while being watered by CCR. The best part of this idiocy is that not only is he a plant himself, but for some reason that I can’t possibly fathom, he’s holding a coffee cup which also has a plant growing out of it. Having learned of the new family in town, CCR decides to take her leave then to deliver a welcome pudding, setting up what has to be one of the most pointless scenes in the movie. She delivers it to the house, introducing herself to the mother just as is Holly is about to head down to the RV to tell Elliot to choose between her or his friends. She drops off the pudding, which is neither eaten nor dismissed as a threat, and then leaves, having learned NOTHING more than she had before she got there. But hey, at least that ate a good ten minutes of film time. Back at the church, Drew wanders in and eventually discovers Arnold’s predicament. He tries to drag his plant pal to freedom by the pot, escaping at glacier like speed. But before he can make it out the door, CCR returns and slaps Drew clear across the room and onto the bed. As punishment for trying to leave, she takes a chainsaw to Arnold, who simply giggles while she does it. Goddamn…I want 30 minutes of my life back.

Let's make this quick. I've got a duet with Barbara Steisand to get to.

With that distraction finished, we return to Josh as he sneaks into a building to find the townspeople listening to a sermon being belted out by a preacher that looks like the bastard lovechild of Barry Gibb and Rowdy Roddy Piper. And because you know how much kids love religion, Josh decides to sneak upstairs and get a closer look, peering down through a hole in the ceiling, about two feet directly above the preacher’s head as the fifth Bee Gee is giving a sermon on the evil meats that people consume, which consists of him naming off a bunch of random foods. Just then Josh’s skateboard falls down from the precarious perch that he left it on. As Josh looks up in surprise, a hand shoots up through the hole in the ceiling and grabs him by the face. He screams, but you can barely hear it above the roar of our laughter. With his cover blown, Josh is taken down to face the mob, who decides that the best course of action is to force-feed him what they call Nilbog ice cream, but what I can Dogsnot Soufflé. But before the goblins can stuff anything into his piehole, Josh’s father, whom has apparently woken up from his little siesta, hears Josh screaming and runs in to interrupt the assault of stupidity. After a couple of tense moments where the father wonders what the hell they were doing while Josh tries to explain to him that these people are actually goblins in disguise, Josh and his father slowly back out of the building like they’re trying not to get mauled by bears. But just to end an idiotic scene with the used diaper smell of the arbitrary, the father and Josh begin driving back to the house and pass by the RV, which for some reason is now about 200 yards down off the road, where they spot Holly arguing with Elliot. The father pulls down and demands that Holly come home. To try to salvage the one opportunity that he might have to get laid that doesn’t involve making the decision to spit or swallow, Elliot decides to join them, leaving behind Brent, the last friend.

It would have been much worse if that hand wasn't Palmolive soft.

Exhibit D: It’s Time To Party Like It’s 1988…And We Just Had Full Frontal Lobotomies

They all arrive back at the house moments later to find the mother is in the company of the entire fucking town. Seriously, how the fuck did all these people manage to make it back to the house before the family did? I realize that the RV has been steadily moving further and further from the road, but unless they had to enter some kind of fucking temporal nexus to get to it, this is preposterous. Regardless, the entire town has decided to throw a surprise welcome party, of course bringing a ton of green fucking food and drinks. The fifth Bee Gee is even there, desperately trying to convince them all to eat the food. But Joshua isn’t falling for anything and tries to warn his family that once they eat, they’ll all be killed horribly and hilariously. His warnings fall on deaf ears, however, as his father sends him straight to his room. Still not ready to let them be killed, no matter how much they all deserve it by now, Josh starts yelling into his mirror, begging for Grandpa Seth’s help. But instead of his face, CCR appears in the mirror for a quick moment before crashing through the glass in goblin form. Umm…okay. But just as that goblin is about to attack Josh, Grandpa Seth appears and chops one of its hands off with his Ghost Hatchet of Justice. Shrieking, the goblin flails itself back into the broken mirror, reforming it and coming out the other side, where CCR lands back in her home with a bloody stump where her hand should be. But this is nothing more than a temporary setback, as she shoves the stump into a fissure of the Stonehenge slab and repairs her hand, screaming the entire time.

Seriously, kid, fuck them all. You set the house on fire, I'll make sure that car doesn't catch fire.

Now that they’re alone, Grandpa Seth grins like an idiot for several awkward seconds before revealing to Josh his plan to save the family, which he doesn’t so much describe as simply suggest by pulling out a Molotov cocktail and a fire extinguisher. But just as the two of them go the house and try to ignite their plan, so to speak, the fifth Bee Gee snatches the Molotov cocktail away and banishes Grandpa Seth back to the netherworld using the power of Jesus. But before Seth goes, he throws his hand forward in desperation, the horrible animation of a lightning bolt flashes on screen, and the preacher suddenly erupts in flames. As he stumbles around, fully engulfed in flames and screaming in a horribly dubbed audio track that sounds like someone recorded a PA in the toilet at the tail end of Enchilada Night, Joshua looks around and confirms that Grandpa Seth is gone. I’m just kidding, by the way. There’s no way this movie had PA’s.

Hearing the explosive commotion, which I’m imaging would sound an awful lot like You Should Be Dancing, everyone begins to pile out of the house. The father uses the fire extinguisher to put out what is now the flaming corpse of the fifth Bee Gee, revealing him in his true goblin form. I guess he’s not… Stayin’ Alive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!… ha… ha… cough… right, well this is about when the father demands to know what the hell’s going on. But rather than try to explain anything away or cover their tracks, the villagers instead all get pissed about the death of Barry Gibb’s bastard offspring, declaring it’s now the family’s turn to die. And they back up this incredibly ominous threat by standing perfectly still and doing fucking NOTHING while the family just slowly walks backwards through them all and finally running into the house. Sure, why not?

Once inside, the family presses their faces against the windows like autistic blowfish while the villagers turn on the headlights of their car, as I guess it’s fucking nighttime now for some reason. Sheriff Freak proclaims that they’ve got a bag of sandwiches there that will make things easier on the whole family, throwing the fucking bag at the front door of the house with all the grace of a blind gorilla having a fucking seizure. He explains that if they don’t eat the tasty sandwiches, the villagers will have no choice but to kill them violently. Say what you will, it’s pretty neighborly of them to have made sandwiches at this point, rather than just forcing them to eat fistfuls of green slop. Desperate to find a way out, the family finally decides that the best thing to do would be to hold a séance to summon Grandpa Seth.

Exhibit E: This Final Battle’s Not Bad, But It Could Use More Popcorn Fucking

While all this is going on, the movie stops to remind us that there is one last friend of Elliot’s that we have not seen meet with a grizzly demise. So with that in mind, CCR makes her bold and confusing final move, praying to Xenu for all her power, which basically just cures her of the scorching case of mouth herpes that she had been crippled with. Ready to infect an unsuspecting teenager, she travels into the night in search of some premature ejaculation. Meanwhile back in the RV, Brent is watching TV and likely wondering where the fuck everyone is when the TV starts to fuck up. It begins to clear up seconds later, showing him an image of CCR as she approaches the RV with…a cob of corn. She tells him to come outside and see that she’s real, so he does. Finding her exactly where she should be, he takes her back inside where she offers him the corn by shoving it in his face as they sink down into the makeshift bed. He nods, saying that he likes popcorn. She says that’s no problem, they just have to heat it up. And with that, they start to make out with the cob of corn between their mouths. And while this shit goes down, the sound of popcorn popping is heard while crew members throw handfuls of popcorn at them from out of frame. I don’t even know what to say about this. It confuses me on a logical and sexual level to a point that I can’t possibly describe it. Fuck, I need to take a shower.

Oh baby...my dick feels like corn.

Back at the house, they family is performing the séance while the goblins quite literally just stand around outside doing nothing. But calling forth the dead when you don’t really have any experience or direction how to do it isn’t as easy as you might think, so things aren’t exactly progressing as quickly as planned. To help everyone along, Joshua tells the family to “concentrate harder”. Concentrate on what, you ask? I would personally recommend the cover of Neil Diamond’s seminal album, 20 Diamond Hits. I swear the combination of piercing eyes, chest hair, and giant mane could not only summon apparitions on command, but also open a portal directly into the realm of love. But something must have worked, as seconds later the same piss poor animation of lightning flashes across the screen and suddenly Grandpa Seth begins to talk to them all. He declares that he will disappear forever after they destroy the magic stone which gives the goblins their power. He then tells Joshua to concentrate, who in turn puts his head down on the table and passes out. As the mother leans over to check on his, Josh is instantaneously replaced by a goblin, queuing a flood of other goblines into the house. Assuming that they must have been successful, the family abandons their ritual, fleeing upstairs and battling midgets as they go.

Someone get this chick some Valtrex, for God's sake.

We’ll leave them battling the tragically stumpy and instead follow along with Josh who wakes up leaning against an alter in CCR’s church of Scientology, where he prepares to settle the score once and for all. But before he can accomplish much of anything, he is attacked by, go figure, a goblin. But as that goblin tries to strangle Josh, Grandpa Seth shows up and slaps it away before handing Josh a special package, telling him that he can only take out the contents when he really needs it. I’ll tell you what Gramps, you tell me what the hell it is and I might have some context that would allow me to decide when it’s appropriate to use. Having passed on that powerful mystery item of doom, he leads Josh over to the slab of Stonehenge. They touch it, which somehow does something to start a chain of random events. Back at the RV, Brent wakes up in an ocean of popcorn, which is undoubtedly stuck together like caramel corn with cum being the substitute for caramel, just as CCR steps outside and sees her reflection in the sideview mirror and discovers a new outbreak of her scorching case of the herpes. She screams, and that scream travels all the way back to the farmhouse where the family is about to meet their end at the hands of their goblin attackers when they all simply disappear. And not only did her scream summon her goblins, but it also warped them all back to the church of Scientology where they all arrive just after Grandpa Seth disappears again for what is supposed to be the final time. Finding Josh right away, CCR and her goblin army snatch him away, once again ignoring an opportunity to simply kill him in favor of trying to feed him another bowl of green slop. Seeing as this could kind of be interpreted as a dire situation, Josh decides to deploy his secret weapon, delving into the package to produce, as he describes it, a “double-decker balony sandwich”. Stricken with horror and disbelief, seeing as even supernatural creatures realize that no one who has half a brain would actually eat bologna, the goblin horde offer no resistance while he takes chomp after chomp of the sandwich before running back to the stone wall and putting his hands on it once again. But just when it seems like an armada of monsters is about to be destroyed by a dim witted child alone, the family runs in to help, explaning that Grandpa Seth’s voice brought them there. Once they all put their hands on the stone, more shitty lightning flashes across the screen while Josh yells repeatedly for them to concentrate. And with that, the army of half-men begins to wither. CCR starts throwing up green shit, one of them has their eye burst for no reason, and the rest just fall thrashing on the floor with less enthusiasm than a clinical depressive wallowing in melancholy. But as the ordeal finally seems to come to an end, we are left with one final shot where the whole room appears to be empty of both goblins and the family.

Next thing you know, with absolutely no attempt to bridge of the gap whatsoever, we catch up to the family once again as their van pulls into their driveway. Looking like they were just gang raped by a centaur with penis extension, they sit for a moment in quiet reflection before the father declares that he needs to pass by the office. Because in comparison to the massive heap of garbage that they just experienced, paperwork is a fucking pleasure cruise for the soul. Likewise, Elliot and Holly decide to go to his place for no particular reason, leaving Josh and the mother alone at home. Once inside, the mother starts chomping on an apple before going for a shower while Josh goes to his room for a nap. But once he’s there, he hears ominous whispering that he can’t identify. Going to investigate, he returns downstairs just time for another ball to come bouncing downstairs behind him that says “Yummy! Mom is so good!” So I guess that means that a goblin is about to go down on his mom? Horrified at the thought, Josh runs back upstairs to find the shower filled with green shit before running back downstairs to discover that the apple the mother had been eating was filled with the same green shit that we’ve been staring at for the last 90 minutes. He finally turns a corner to discover what we all know is coming; his mother has turned into a green cake corpse with surprisingly conspicuous breasts which is being feasted upon by a group of goblins. Setting up what could be one of the strangest pornos I’ve ever seen, they ask Josh if he’d like a piece of the action. But before the cheesy 70′s music can kick in, the kid screams and the movie ends.

If her flesh turned to cake, did those implants turned to a jelly filling?

It occurred to me while watching what has to be the shortest list of credits in the history of cinema that we never did find out what happened to any of Elliot’s friends. Sure one of them was turning into a plant and being given a chainsaw makeover the last time we saw him, but the others were simply slapped onto a bed and fucked in a vat of popcorn respectively, neither of which are even close to being fatal. So for the sake of finality, lets just say that they opened an unsuccessful pet store together and spent the next two decades trying to sell kittens to goblins. There we go. Now I feel pretty good about this whole affair.

The Verdict:

Donkey: Troll II has achieved legendary status among those of us that love shitty movies, and with good reason. While I wouldn’t call it the greatest shitty movie of all time, as for the moment I would consider Gymkata to be the rightful owner of that title, this is a strong contender. As little as the plot makes sense, and as awesome as it is that it’s completely unrelated to the first film, probably the best part about it is the acting. It’s nearly impossible to describe and you simply MUST see it for yourself. The best way that I can describe it is by saying that the only way that you could reproduce this level of wooden, apathetic, and incompetent delivery would be to hold a kindergarten class at gunpoint and demand that they read your scripts under threat of setting fire to a box of puppies. It’s my sincere pleasure to give this shitfest five villains that are completely unrelated to trolls out of five popcorn orgies.

What We Learned:

Donkey: All those who have stood on both sides of the argument, claiming that homosexuality is either a choice or genetic trait, are wrong. People go queer after getting nailed in the junk, particularly if they sneak into their girlfriend’s room at night. So apparently I dodged a bullet when I was young and my older brother decided to kick me in the balls as hard as he could to test how much it actually hurt, or my passionate love of Tom Jones music is starting to make a lot more sense.

Don’t forget to check back every Sunday for a new fresh review! Next week shittymovienight.com presents: Big money and big prizes as we take a look at the Governator’s…THE RUNNING MAN.

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