Best Worst Movie/Troll 2

The moment when small-town Alabama dentist George Hardy recognizes that his 15 minutes of fame have become uncomfortably distended occurs off-camera in the documentary Best Worst Movie—which must be something of a relief, since nearly all of this affable man's most humiliating moments are uncommonly well documented. In 1990, Hardy realized his ambitions of becoming an actor—let's agree to use this term loosely—when he played the luckless father in Troll 2, a kiddie monster picture whose unique dreadfulness is often substantiated by noting that it contains no trolls. Two decades later, Hardy has embraced the camp celebrity of his single role, and that's how he finds himself at a London horror convention trying to make conversation with director Neil Marshall. They don't hit it off. "He must have a lot on his mind," Hardy says. "Of course, I have a lot on my mind, too." For example, the dentist notes, there's "tons of gingivitis" at a horror convention. It's an atypically nasty observation from a kindly man but, like he says, he's under some stress. It can't be easy, knowing that everyone who recognizes you has already mocked you.

It so happens that Best Worst Movie, Troll 2 and Marshall's latest film Centurion are all opening in Portland on the same weekend. (See Centurion review on page 55.) That this is possible—and that Troll 2 is screening in a 35 mm print, no less—is a result of the phenomenon of celebrating cinematic stillbirths, a trend that in this town threatens to overtake brunch in popularity. (See Wiseau, Tommy.) The Saturday-night double feature is more worthy of attention than most of these camp-outs. For one thing, Troll 2 is bad in an unusually zesty and nearly unfathomable way: Besides its wooden performances and howlingly bad dialogue ("You can't piss on hospitality!" bellows Hardy), it boasts vaguely Norwegian goblin masks designed by sexploitation actress Laura Gemser, and vegetarian villains who turn people into plants before eating them. Best Worst Movie makes the giggles stick in your throat; directed by the child star of Troll 2, Michael Stevenson, it explores the psychological fallout of being forever derided as junk. (Troll 2's director, a bellicose Italian named Claudio Fragasso who looks and behaves almost exactly like Melik Malkasian in James Westby's The Auteur, is especially perplexed and hurt.) Lining up to laugh at bad movies has turned into the revenge of the mediocre on artists—at its best, Best Worst Movie is a stab back. It's certainly scarier than the trolls.

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plays at noon Friday, Sept. 10, at the Hollywood Theatre.

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is rated PG-13 and screens at 9:30 pm Saturday, Sept. 11, at the Hollywood Theatre.

WWeek 2015