Written by Old Bluffer 12th Jul 2007

Troll is based around the imaginative, though ridiculous premise of a war between faeries and trolls, that started "before there were countries... before there were presidents".

Back in these enchanted times Torok the Wizard was due to marry Princess Eunice, whom he presumably loved, but their relationship soured when he tried to take over the world and was transformed into a troll as a result.

Now the above may sound like standard children's fairy story fare, but we don't actually learn about this plot until midway during the film. Instead, the film starts with a "typical" American family moving into an apartment complex, inhabited by various misfit residents (including a sleazy lothario played by Sonny Bono).

[The family's name is "Potter" and both father and son are called Harry. This led to our great hope that one of them would die so we could add "Harry Potter" to the front page of this site as our most recent death, but sadly I have to report that they both survive.]

The young daughter, Wendy-Anne, soon ventures into the basement laundry room, and is immediately attacked by Torok - a three foot high troll who looks fairly similar to Hoggle from Labyrinth. What Torok is doing lurking down there is unclear, but from the state of him it's unlikely he's been doing any laundry. The young girl doesn't stand a chance against the magical creature, and he quickly takes posession of her body using his magic ring. This is a shrewd budget-saving move, as it means large sections of the film featuring Torok can simply use the child actress instead.

Torok doesn't do a bad job of pretending to be Wendy-Anne, but makes a few rookie errors by rudely shouting at strangers, eating like a monster and hurling her older brother across the room with super-human strength. Then again, she is American, and her brother looks like a total weed, so maybe it's not surprising nobody notices anything is wrong.

Now free to roam the building, Torok begins to enact his master plan to take over the universe, which consists of infiltrating each room in the building, and transforming them into different magical Fairy Worlds. Naturally the rooms tend to be occupied, so Torok transforms the residents into giant vegetative pods, whereupon they are reborn as dozens of miniature trolls. These animatronic hobgoblins are actually quite cute and varied, although they all seem to have copious amounts of snot.

Now Torok might seem at this point to be a typical Evil Monster, but it's not quite as simple as that. For a start, not everybody gets the snotgoblin treatment.

For example, the foxy girl from Seinfeld (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) lives in one of the rooms, and instead of being killed, gets transformed into nymph, naked apart from several strategically placed fronds of leaves. Needless to say, this is a highly enjoyable scene.

Another resident (and the subject of this entry in the MDDB) is Malcolm Mallory - a highly likeable dwarf whom Torok (in his guise as Wendy-Anne) takes an immediate shine to (at first he mistakes the little fellow for an elf). Now it transpires that Malcolm is terminally ill with cancer, which upsets the immortal Torok, so he/she asks the dwarf if he ever wanted to be an elf when he was a child.

What follows is a surprisingly moving scene, where Malcolm recounts how the doctors told his parents he had "recessive genes" and he'd never grow like normal children, so he wished it was because he was somehow special. Phil Fondacaro is an excellent actor, and one would imagine this monologue had a particular pathos with him.

The momentary seriousness doesn't last long though, as Torok utilises his magical ring, and Malcolm is reborn as a latex muppet. Now only about twelve inches high, Malcolm looks happy enough to live eternally in a fairy realm.

[Editor Note: The animators did a great job of making the Fondacaro muppet by the way, the face is a pretty good likeness, which I'll show here once the screengrabs are ready!]

There isn't too much more to say about Malcolm, except to note that Phil Fondacaro also gets into a troll costume to play Torok, so has the unusual distinction of reincarnating himself.

There aren't any other notable deaths in this film (Sonny Bono and a few others get turned into pods) so I'll explain the rest of the film for your enjoyment.

As the residents of the building gradually disappear, and Wendy-Anne grows ever more demonic, Harry Potter Jr. becomes suspicious, and somehow identifies the strange old woman on the floor above as being a witch. This proves to be a eureka moment, as she helpfully gives us the entire backstory of the fairy/troll war, and also reveals that she was the original Princess Eunice that Torok fell in love with. She also explains that the entire universe is at risk if Torok's scheme is successful, but that there is a somewhat arbitrary timelimit of 72 hours in which to do it.

Eunice's room is stacked full of magical weapons, but for some reason she doesn't really try and do anything with them until the end of the film, where she completely fails and is turned into a comical animatronic tree stump.

This leaves young Harry Potter to be the only hope of rescuing his sister, and saving the known universe. He (somewhat wetly) picks up a magical spear, and tromps off into one of the fairy realms to apprehend Torok, but is quickly disarmed and subdued by a large Balrog-type thing. He does locate Wendy-Anne though, whom the Balrog tries to eat. Torok can't let this happen, so ends up scuppering all his plans by throwing the spear at the Balrog himself. I told you he wasn't all bad, bless his little trolly heart!

I have to say I fully expected everyone to come back to life at this point, but pleasingly they don't. It's unclear what happened to Malcolm, but I'd like to think he's frolicking around in some fairy woods, hopefully with the bird from Seinfeld.

The Inevitable Sequel:

Quite why the above events haven't happened before is unknown, as at the end of the film we are shown a reprise of the opening, where a policeman ventures down into the laundry room, and the same thing happens again. One has to wonder whether the universe is in danger every time one of the residents of this building needs a clean pair of pants...

Final Thoughts:

This is a very quirky film indeed, and doesn't fit neatly into the Creature Feature genre. There are plenty of cringe-inducing moments, and lots of the intentional humour doesn't work, yet it has an undeniable charm and is well worth a watch (which is more than can be said of at least the last half-dozen Creature Horrors we've seen recently).

Notable Moments:

Eunice alluding that the events of Hiroshima are somehow related to the faerie war(!)

The fantastic mullet hairstyles seen at various points of this 80s film.

Eunice's muppet mushroom pet, who is actually her teacher, the wizard Galwyn. Someone should make a version as a desk toy.

The "pod person from the planet Mars" quotes from the black and white film Harry is watching [does anyone know what the name of that film is? - Old Bluffer]

The hilarious "Troll Chorus" where all the little muppets start singing. [someone *please* send me the lyrics! - Old Bluffer]


Cast trivia:

Harry Potter Junior is probably most famous as Atreyu in the Never Ending Story.

Phil Fondacaro played the only ewok in Return of the Jedi to be shown dying.