Troll (1986)

Genre: Horror/Fantasy             Time: 1h 26mins        Director: John Carl Buechler

Quick Summary: A wicked troll king in search of a mystical ring that will transform him into human form invades a San Francisco apartment complex where a powerful witch lives

The first five minutes are all opening credits. That’s it, just credits for five minutes. I'm not joking.

The plot plays on different generic fairytale tropes and just grounds them into one storyline that is a little unsatisfying. Overall what made me love this film is just how chaotic it was. The little girl in this runs around screaming 'rat burgers' for a solid five minutes. In general, the whole cast is overacting but that just adds to the goofy nature of this film.

The thing that really makes Troll a blast is the special effects. While the story is good, the practical effects and puppetry really stand out giving the movie a creepy realism that is almost on par with Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. It's very imaginative and never takes itself too seriously.

A lot of my love for this film is just plainly watching this silly troll guy running around doing shenanigans. Even though he barely spoke I found him hilarious.

There are a few horror elements to this which are all completely practical to my delight! It's not a gory film at all, but with gross slimy stop-motion transformations, it can really turn your stomach and leave you anxious about what's going to happen.

Some notable scenes  in the movie were to explain just how silly this film is are; when the troll turned Julia-Louis Dreyfus into some sort of sex elf and she ran around her apartment bare assed to lure her boyfriend into the fantasy world to kill him; When the dad turned on some 80's cover of "there ain't no cure for the summertime blues" and then did the worst dancing I have ever seen; And when the troll goes into the swinger's apartment and as he is killing him and waiting for him to die, picks up a playboy and starts to look at it.

I adored this film purely because of how weird it was and the puppetry, others might not enjoy it but I still say give it a watch.

8/10

"Ratburgers!"

"Honey? Did you do a lot of drugs before we were married?"