Troll (1986) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 15

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This film trolls audiences hard!

Just what is Troll? Is it a horror film or a fantasy? Also, how much comedy is too much in a genre film? That’s a lot of questions to start with. Don’t worry, there will be more coming soon.

Before Viewing

The trailer for Troll tells of a family moving into an apartment building where a demonic troll is changing the apartments into some kind of fairy land. A little girl is captured/transformed by the monster, as are some of the tenants. There’s a lot of monsters and weirdness, but it’s uncertain how much horror there’ll be. It does contain Sonny Bono and a young Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It’s time to enter the fantastical world of Troll.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

The Potter family moves into a new apartment in the San Francisco area. Their young daughter Wendy-Anne (Jenny Beck) is kidnapped by a troll (Phil Fondacaro) in the building’s laundry room. The creature transforms into the spitting image of Wendy using the magic ring it wears. At dinner that night she seems to be acting weird, but only her brother Harry, Jr (Noah Hathaway) notices. The next morning Wendy enters the upstairs apartment of Peter Dickenson (Sonny Bono), a swinger, to play hide-and-seek. He tries to shoo her away, but she transforms into the troll and pricks him with the magic ring. His apartment transforms into a verdant glen with small mythical creatures.

Harry, Jr goes looking for his sister and meets elderly, but nice, neighbor Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart). Wendy enters the apartment of conservative globetrotter Barry Tabor (Gary Sandy) and transforms him as well. She later wanders into the street and is saved by a dwarf named Malcolm (also Phil Fondacaro), who she mistakes for an elf. Wendy uses her power on Harry, Jr, throwing him against a wall.

Malcolm comes over for dinner, with the parents (Shelly Hack and Michael Moriarty) thinking she had invited another child over. Malcolm, a professor of English, recites part of the epic poem “The Faerie Queene” at Wendy’s request. This appears to cause the mythical creatures in the apartments to get restless. Eunice notices and blows a magical horn which causes all the creatures, including Wendy, to recoil.

Harry, Jr meets with Eunice again and asks if she’s a witch, which she doesn’t deny. He believes his sister is an alien, but Eunice says she’s much worse. Eunice explains that she used to be a princess who was to be married to Torok, a wizard, but he was transformed into a troll when he lost a fairy war with the humans. Wendy continues to replace the humans with fairy counterparts, continuing with Jeanette (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a young actress, who she turns into a nymph.

Next the troll-turned-child visits Malcolm’s apartment. He says he’s dying and Wendy asks if he ever wanted to be an elf. So she turns him into one. Eunice tells Harry, Jr that Torok the troll is turning the apartment building into a single fairy universe that will burst forth when completed. She gives him a magic spear that he must plunge deep into the heart of that universe. After Harry leaves, Eunice transforms into a younger version of herself (Anne Lockhart) and goes to stop Torok.

Eunice is unable to stop the troll and is turned into a talking tree stump. Only Harry’s apartment has been left untouched. Sucked into the universe, Harry finds the real Wendy in a glass coffin. He frees her, but they are chased by a large, winged, bear-like monster. It threatens Wendy, and Torok uses the spear Harry dropped to kill it. Everything resets and the family is safe. Outside later, police officers disperse the onlookers who witnessed weird vines and lights on the building. One enters the building and steps into the laundry room, which is still a fairy world. Torok the troll comes for him with his ring glowing green.

“He΄s transforming sections of this building into different fairy worlds.” – Eunice St. Clair

Troll will probably be the worst film I’ll watch all month. After watching The Thing With Two Heads earlier in the month, that’s saying a lot. I do still have a couple other low-budget films to look at still, but I’m going on record now. The film was produced by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, the company responsible for films like The Dungeonmaster (1984), Ghoulies (1984), Trancers (1984), and the classic Re-Animator (1985). Band also produced the sci-fi exploitation flick Laserblast (1978), as well directing films like Parasite (1982) and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983). While most of the output from Band and his production companies Empire and Full Moon were low budget B-movies, some of them ended up being solid films with several, like Puppet Master or Subspecies, becoming cult hits.

The rating of Troll is a questionable PG-13. That may be due to some scary or intense moments featuring younger children, or possibly some of the transformation specific effects. Compared to other PG-13 horror films of the time like Dreamscape, this film is super mild. It seems as if there may have been some more frightening content  that was originally planned for this film, but for whatever reason it was removed. Band had both this film and his production TerrorVision shot back to back in Italy, releasing them within a month of each other. Both have a bizarre sense of humor about their horror elements, with TerrorVision leaning more into science-fiction territory and Troll being more fantasy.

I had wanted to watch this film in order to be able to compare it against a similar film released seven years later, Leprechaun. Both seemed to feature diminutive fairy-like creatures and were horror films. Unfortunately, Troll might only be scary to young children watching the film (or adults if Sonny Bono as a swinger creeps you out). Yet even in bad films there can always be something that makes them worthwhile. In the case of Troll, it’s a number of the performances. Young Jenny Beck does a fantastic job playing Wendy and the troll who looks like Wendy. Her erratic and possessed nature is terrifically campy, but done completely straight. No one told her that this was a B-movie. She looks like Carol Anne from Poltergeist (her character’s name, Wendy-Anne even references the character), but acts like Regan from The Exorcist.

Audiences also have to adore June Lockhart as the matronly neighbor witch. She too brings an appropriate amount of charm and love to a film where another actress could have brought a more sinister tone to her character. Her real-life daughter Anne plays her character’s younger version and was also inspired casting. They both look similar, and Anne adds more excitement and energy to some otherwise dull scenes. I also have to give credit to Phil Fondacaro for his dual roles as Malcolm and the Troll. His expressive eyes in the troll costume create a great character that, while not really scary, seems mischievous enough. He too seems to take his part seriously enough, especially playing off Beck’s caring demeanor for his human character’s illness.

But perhaps the most surprising thing about Troll, that may make it worth the watch this year is the names of the main characters: Harry Potter. Yup, eleven years before JK Rowling released her first novel, writers John Carl Buechler and Ed Naha named their child lead Harry Potter. A boy who becomes embroiled with witchcraft, trolls, and magic unbeknownst to the other humans. Sound a little too familiar? The creators of this film don’t believe the stories that Rowling just created the character from scratch. But seriously, does she seem like the person that would be watching low-budget “horror” films like this?

Before you think that the sequels to Troll might be scarier, think again. Troll 2 and Troll III (aka The Crawlers), while possibly scary, are both unrelated to this film and appear to be named for marketing purposes only. According to the synopsis, Troll 2 is about goblins–not trolls. There have to be better films to try to fool audiences with. This was definitely not the film it appeared to be in the previews (well, I knew it was going to be low-budget). However, there may be younger teens that are into fantasy where this film might totally be appropriate for them. The parents just might have to explain to them who Sonny Bono is.

Assorted Musings

• Troll was the first film for Julia Louis-Dreyfus who would achieve fame on Seinfeld and Veep in later years. She appears here with her real-life boyfriend Brad Hall, who would marry her the following year.
• Jenny Beck got her start playing young Elizabeth, the alien/human hybrid on the television movie, and series, V.
• Both Anne Lockhart and Noah Hathaway appeared in the 1978 sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica. Hathaway also was known to an entire generation of children as Atreyu in the fantasy The Never Ending Story.