In 1989, when Michael Stephenson was 10, he was cast in a low-budget indie film called “Goblins.” He hoped it would become another “Gremlins,” but that hope didn’t last long.
“These goblins prepare a meal for my family that would turn them into plants so the goblins could eat them,” recalls Stephenson. “The script says that I act possessed to distract my parents from eating the food. Well, [the Italian director] says, ‘Possessed — boring bulls – – t! You stand on the chair and you piss on the table. That’s how you’ll save your family.’ And I remember thinking, ‘What? I have to pee on the food?’”
Eventually released as “Troll 2,” the film was quickly regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. With a dentist in the lead role, “trolls” played by actors in burlap sacks with gloves taped to them, and a script translated by its Italian screenwriter using an American dictionary, the result eventually reached No. 1 on IMDb’s “Bottom 100.”
So Stephenson was caught off guard when, in 2006, he started getting e-mails about “Troll 2” parties, where fans watched the film dressed as goblins and held “Trollympics” sporting events. By then an aspiring filmmaker, Stephenson began filming these parties, and tracked down the cast and crew for a documentary about the phenomenon.
“Best Worst Movie,” out Friday, introduces characters like Dr. George Hardy, the Alabama dentist who played Stephenson’s father and who revels in his new cult status, and Claudio Fragasso, the director who, to this day, fails to comprehend the irony of the film’s newfound popularity.
Calling “Troll 2” a “parable,” Fragasso tells Stephenson how it “examines serious, important issues,” and that it’s “an important film about the union of family.” When cast members refer to the film disparagingly at a festival Q&A, he calls them “these actor dogs.”
But after meeting hundreds of die-hard “Troll 2” fans, Stephenson himself now sees the film in a somewhat different light.
“There is a lack of cynicism and irony in the making of the film itself. It’s a genuine failure,” he says. “As horrible as the film is, you can see the heart.”