Where to start with such a delicate topic. I guess from the beginning makes the most sense although I’m uncertain of exactly when and where that is. In my teen “just discovering bad horror movies” years, I recall seeing at least bits and pieces of Troll 2 either on late night TV or from a friend renting it. Vague memories of confusion, hilarity, and lots of vile looking green food are there, but without much in the way of context.

Fast forward to early this year, living in Toronto, and being over at my friend Jason’s house for our weekly Blood Bowl/boardgaming nights and he decided to put Troll 2 on for some background entertainment. Needless to say, more attention was paid to this brilliant piece of Italian (yup, Italian filmed in the US) cinema than to the carnage on the fantasy football pitch. We were hooked, or at least I was. We discussed this movie quite a lot over the coming months and at some point, it was mentioned that the childhood star of the movie, Michael Stephenson aka Joshua, was making a documentary about his experience with the movie. It sounded amazing, so I did some googling and discovered that it was playing in Columbus, Ohio, my old stomping ground, so I told a lot of my friends to go check it out. To my knowledge, none of them did.

Fast forward to summer time, Jason’s birthday party, which was backyard barbecue in which it was decided to drag their 52″ flat screen television and PS3 out into the backyard, pull out some blankets, popcorn, beer, soda and cupcakes, and watch Troll 2 right there at night. It was a magical sort of night, most of us coupled up with our partners, sharing snacks and a ton of laughs at this film. As it turns out, one of the women there, Karly works for an agency handling the promotion of the aforementioned documentary on Troll 2 here in Canada! Small world, right?

Jana enjoyed Troll 2 very much, and we quickly learned that there’s a Riff Trax for it, which we immediately got our hands on. Watching it MST3K style only made the movie even more enjoyable! So, by this point in time, I’ve watched it at least four times this year, which is saying quite a lot for a movie that at the time was number 1 on the bottom 100 movies of all time!

About a week ago, Jason informed me that the documentary about Troll 2, called The Best Worst Movie is playing a double feature with it’s inspiration here in Toronto! Of course we had to go, and thanks to Jason’s friend Karly, we were able to get tickets, and despite almost not getting to see it due to it being sold out, we got in and were actually all able to sit together. The documentary was so genuinely shot and put together that it’s difficult not to love the subject matter that much more. Following the documentary, there was a Q&A with the director Michael Stephenson as well as Papa Waits himself, Dr Greg Hardy. They were super cool and answered all of the questions with great flare and humour. I am seriously impressed with how good this documentary is and with how much effort went into making it. I would talk about it more, but I don’t want to ruin any of it for those of you wishing to see it.

That said, thanks to Karly for the hookup, Jason for the invite, to our friends who joined us for such a fun night, and finally to the documentary crew for making such a wonderful film!