The worst of the worst has become the crème de la crème.
The “Best Worst Movie” documentary will air today at 6 p.m. in the SUB Ballroom.
The documentary traces the origins, motives and stories behind what is considered by some the worst movie of all time, “Troll 2.”
“Most of the people who see ‘Best Worst Movie’ have never seen Troll 2. Within weeks of watching the documentary, they are throwing ‘Troll 2’ parties,” said Michael Paul Stephenson, documentary director and child star of the film.
Panned by critics and audiences universally, the 1990 low-budget horror film stayed in the pop culture spectrum due to midnight movie festivals and late-night cable airings. Stephenson said the film crew’s genuine attempt at greatness is what inspires the cult following.
“Bad movies that are so bad they are good really strive for excellence and fall miserably short,” he said. “It’s not like you go out intentionally to make a bad movie. As soon as you do that, it is cynical. In ‘Troll 2’, we all were striving to make a great movie and we failed miserably. It has that sincerity and that genuine quality. That’s the first step. That’s not something you can plan or bottle or design. It just happens.”
The next step to cult greatness requires a ridiculous plot. “Troll 2” focuses on a group of vegetarian goblins that possess the power to turn humans into trees, at which point they become goblin chow. The title was snagged from “Trolls,” a popular film at the time, even though “Trolls 2” has no trolls.
Add cheap special effects and costumes, bad cinematography and communication barriers between inexperienced American actors and an Italian film crew, the film gallops into the best worst movie spot, Stephenson said.
“It was just one heap of amazing-ness on top of another with ‘Troll 2,’” he said. “All these elements came together in this perfect maelstrom of events.”
At first, Stephenson, a noted film tech and winner of the American Gem Screenplay Award for his screenplay, “,” said he lived in the shadow of the film.
“I really wanted nothing to do with ‘Troll 2,’” he said. “I was embarrassed by the film, and it continued to constantly come up in my life. Even though I continued to work in other parts of the industry, ‘Troll 2’ was always one step behind me. I really wanted nothing to do with it.”
However, about four years ago he started receiving calls and e-mails from fans of the movie who wanted to talk to him about the film and his part in it.
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“They kept coming,” he said. “And I remember thinking that this thing was never going to go away. I really didn’t think too much of it at first. I just remember thinking, ‘Why? This is crazy.’ I had this feeling that something was happening with this movie. People were genuinely seeking out, finding this movie and watching it on their own. I thought, ‘That’s really kind of special.’ A few mornings after that I woke up and just said to myself, ‘I am the star of the worst movie ever made. There’s a great story here.’”
Stephenson said his documentary is more than an examination of a bad film and focuses on questions like how the director of the film, Claudio Fragasso, deals with his movie being famous because of how bad it was. It also explores why and how the movie failed in the first place.
“I didn’t want to make it as a DVD extra,” he said. “The story is rooted in its human element and those people who made what has been considered the worst movie ever made and what’s that like. And you know what it is like to fail miserably in one sense and strangely succeed in another sense, so it is an examination of tragedy and triumph, which really encompasses ‘Troll 2.’”
Student Special Events is sponsoring the screening. A question-and-answer session will follow with the director and the stars of the documentary and the movie. It will be followed by a screening of “Troll 2.”
Paul Spella, executive director of Student Special Events, said the documentary and the film are hilarious, and students should come enjoy them.
“We just had a bunch of our friends get together and watch both movies,” Spella said. “It was just an awesome time, so we thought it’d be really cool to bring it to campus. We’re getting all these people into the cult aspect of this really bad movie and they are responding very well.”
Spella, who has seen the film many times, said the film’s appeal comes from the unintentional faux pas committed during the filming.
“It’s all about nostalgia,” he said. “We look back at things done 10 or 20 years ago and these were things that were popular, things that were in, and they were things taken seriously, and now we look back at them and all we can do is laugh because everything has changed so much. It’s just awesome to look back at that time, laugh at the ridiculousness and at the bad dialogue and see how far we have come.”
Stephenson said after a year of the film festival circuit and touring college campuses, the film’s shadow over him has been lifted.
“The documentary and going through this whole process — it was almost therapy,” he said “It’s made me see ‘Troll 2’ in a completely different light. Honestly, this whole thing has messed me up so bad I can’t even call ‘Troll 2’ a bad movie anymore. I think it’s an amazing movie. If you have 400 people laughing their heads off in a theater, how can you say that’s a bad thing? In a day when you have huge budgets and stars and movies are just meant to make money, you lose that sense of feeling like somebody really cared about making that movie. With ‘Troll 2’ it fails in every cinematic principle … but it doesn’t fail to entertain. It’s just an amazing thing.”
*Best Worst Movie
Sub Ballroom B
Jan. 27
6 p.m.
Free *
