Best Worst Movie will make its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival March 14th. It’s a documentary directed by Michael Paul Stephenson and it chronicles the cult phenomenon that has built up behind a movie that IMDB.com claims is the worst movie ever made. That movie is Troll 2.
Troll 2, was shot in the summer of 1989, in small-town Utah, by Italian director Claudio Fragrasso. The picture employed a bunch of no-name Utah actors and was extremely low-budget. It was about a family who moves to a town called Nilbog (that’s goblin spelled backward). Instead of the normal blood-thirsty monsters that populate horror flicks, Troll 2 is full of vegetarian goblins that turn their prey into plants before devouring them.
BWM picks up two decades later as it visits everyone involved with Troll 2 to show them what kind of cult following now exists for the film. The first person we meet is Dr. George Hardy. He’s an energetic, outgoing dentist from Alabama. But in 1989 George Hardy was Joshua Waits, father of the Waits family who are terrorized by goblins in Troll 2.
Hardy teams up with director Stephenson (who played the youngest Waits son) and they travel around the states from sold-out screening to sold-out screening, watching as thousands of adoring Troll 2 fanatics pack into tiny theaters just to have a chance to watch it with other fans.
The amazing thing about Troll 2 is that the fans of the movie watch it over and over again. Some confess to watching it every weekend religiously. The film has become for many a way to socially interact with other like-minded people. These screenings are not your regular movie-going experience. People in Troll 2 screenings are laughing, yelling, and repeating their favorite lines along with the film.
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