[REVIEW] Best Worst Movie

Move over Plan 9 From Outer Space… you’ve been replaced. Or have you?

As much as audiences love a fantastic movie, there comes a point when something is so bad that it becomes celebrated. It becomes ‘genius’ to the masses. Ed Wood’s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space was widely recognized as the worst film ever made, but that changed in 1990 with the release of Troll 2 – for the record, this film has no relation whatsoever to the 1986 film Troll; for all intents and purposes, Troll 2 is a sequel without a prequel.

If you haven’t seen Troll 2, you really owe it to yourself to hunt a copy down and invite your friends over. I guess you could say the film has a plot – a typical American family head off on a road-trip to the small town of Nilbog (read that backwards…). Once there the family is terrorized by – get this – vegetarian goblins that turn people into plants and eat them. Note that there are no actual trolls in the film. The film is so laughably bad that it becomes good again on a totally unintentional level. You’ve no doubt seen a clip or two in one of the many “worst movie scenes” youtube videos that make their way around the office.

Troll 2 is not what this review is about though. Twenty years after the making of Troll 2, the film’s own child-star, Michael Paul Stephenson, made Best Worst Movie, a documentary examining the phenomenon surrounding Troll 2 as a cult-classic as well as catching up with the cast of the worst movie ever made. In an almost poetic display of redemption, Stephenson has created a wonderfully entertaining documentary that is legitimately and entirely hilarious.

Best Worst Movie is different because at no point does it treat its subject or its participants with disrespect. Sure there are times when a former cast member says something so out of left field that your jaw drops, but its never exploited. Unlike so many documentaries before it, Best Worst Movie celebrates the positives of its materials and pays respects to a retrospective train-wreck. In other words, Stephenson took the high-road and what we have is a positive experience and a damn fine documentary.

The film starts out with our main subject, Dr. George Hardy, a dentist living and working in Alabama who also played the role of the father in Troll 2. The proof is in the celluloid that George is a hell of a nice guy and his town loves him. Then he learns of the cult status that Troll 2, the one film he acted in twenty years ago, has achieved. Cast members reunite, and the film is screened in several major cities, all to sold out audiences and standing ovations. From there we get a glimpse into what the cast (and crew, I’ll get to that) have been up to, and a look at the chaos behind making the worst film ever made.

You couldn’t have picked an ensemble like this for an actual scripted movie; it’s a blessing in disguise that the stars aligned and these cats all came together to not only make a legend of a wretched film, but to serve as fodder for Best Worst Movie. A few of the cast, in particular the guy who played the owner of the Nilbog General Store, are living cartoon characters; again Stephenson doesn’t pick on these people with his documentary, but by God does he capture some truly jaw-dropping moments with some of the wackiest people you will ever meet. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any wilder, Stephenson catches up with the director of Troll 2, Italian film-maker Claudio Fragasso. Folks, this has to be seen to be believed; if there’s ever been a person so far out from reality it’s Fragasso. Either he’s in total denial of the horrid-masterpiece he created, or he’s so entirely dedicated to the film. All the tension and embarrassment-induced squirming comes to a marvelous dove-tail when Fragasso loses his cool at a screening of Troll 2 followed by a Q&A with the cast in which they tell water-cooler stories about how awful the making of the film really was. The scene is a beautiful car-wreck with Fragasso walking out of the venue and cursing the “actor dogs”. I suspect Stephenson knew how lucky he was to be catching this on film while it happened. Remarkable.

The film reaches this hectic crescendo and you can tell that everyone involved has had a blast. Stephenson has effectively gone and taken a cringe-worthy, wince-inducing notch on his resume, and turned it into a point of pride and a glowing source of recognition. Stephenson has more than made up for his performance in Troll 2.

I used to think that American Movie, the 1999 documentary of Mark Borchardt, a Wisconson-based independent horror film-maker, was truly the funniest documentary ever made, but now I’m not sure. If you haven’t seen American Movie, I urge you to take that in immediately as well. While American Movie is tonally similar and equally as funny, it doesn’t make you feel as good as Best Worst Movie does. Both films capture a living photograph of Americana and entertain us, but Best Worst Movie truly made me feel good. It teaches us to celebrate something if it is ultimately a source of people’s enjoyment. It teaches us to not take things so seriously. It teaches us that we can certainly overcome the moments in life that embarrass us, and to that we must thank Michael Paul Stephenson.

Best Worst Movie is currently making the rounds on various film festivals; if you can’t make it out to see it (which you really should), you must take it in once it hits home video.