Review of the movie, TROLL, 1986

Above Noah Hathaway (left) as we know him from the Never Ending Story. Below Noah Hathaway after getting thrown into the wall. (Now thats good wall hitting acting!!)

I watched the movie, "Troll" from 1986 today. One of the worst movies i have ever seen, yet pretty good. It stars Noah Hathaway, (Atreyu from Never Ending Story), June Lockhart, (mom from Lassie), Sonny Bonno, (married to Cher for a while), and Julia-Louis Dreyfus, (Seinfeld). Its all about a family who moves into a new apartment in San Francisco. Its funny that the people wanted the movie to take place in such a distinguishable place because it was really filmed in Italy and you could tell. Haha, although they did put the golden gate bridge up in the background of one of the shots, it was horribly fake looking but still a nice try. The father's name is Harry Potter, which i just thought was hilarious, Noah's name is Harry Potter Jr. Not very original for the writers but could they sue the author of the Harry Potter books??? Odd that this movie is about wizards and magic and stuff like that, makes you think.....
So in the first two minutes of the film the little sister goes into the basement of their building to chase after a ball, she soon gets attacked by the troll who for some reason lives there. Being able to look just like her, he moves in with the family to mess around. At first you think hes just causing some mischief but later discover hes there to take over the world. (good plot!) There are a lot of zany and wacky characters who live in the small apartment building just perfect for attackings, such as Sonny Bono who plays a sex crazed swinger who hates children and flips out on the dad because he is afraid he wont be able to, "score," as he says. There is also an x marine, Julia-louis Dreyfus, a midget professor and a witch who knows all about the troll and his stuff.
The troll is out to change the tenants of the apartment building into his troll type creature friends. If he manages to change all the people into his troll folk, he will rule the world i guess. They don't give any kind of time frame other than, "soon." He has some stupid ring that changes people into trolls. I looked this movie up on IMD and the plot they have is so wrong i can't believe someone wrote that out.
This movie puts in a lot of swearing where it just doesn't need to go, maybe that was the Italians idea, beats me. Noah puts in an admirable performance even though he was surrounded by talentless wash ups...he is one too so you get the idea of how bad it was. Noah starts to wonder if his sister is messed up when she eats a hamburger like a pig then runs around the building screaming, later she throws him against the wall. He soon learns that June Lockhart is a witch, who used to be a princess, who used to be in love with the troll, who used to be a prince elf, who both used to live thousands of years ago. Also she owns a mushroom that used to be a wizard. *rolls eyes* A poorly designed puppet i might add, NOT A JIM HENSON thats for sure!
The creatures in this movie were down right freaky as shit. In fact thats Sonny Bono's line when he first sees the troll hiding under his couch, "SHIT!" Now for the 80's, puppets that looked like that were perfectly normal, there were a ton of movies of this genre that had freaky monsters like that but by todays standards it was a 10.0 on the erie meter. The story line was less that solid and the acting was just down right bad, keep in mind i have seen a lot worse, A LOT worse! Also it was more than obvious that the guy in the troll suit was the midget, he played duel roles, i mean hey, why pay two 3 feet people when you can pay one right?
This was the only other movie i have ever seen that had Noah Hathaway in it, when it came on i thought id watch a few seconds of the movie but when i saw his name first in the credits i just had to sit back for the entire thing. This was post never ending story and you could tell, it was definitely Atreyu but his voice had since changed. He also had his hair cut short which was hard for me to get used to.
Some notable scenes in the movie were, well when the troll turned Julia-Louis Dreyfus into some sort of sex elf and she ran around her apartment bare assed to lure her boyfriend into the fantasy world to kill him. When the little girl who was the troll threw her brother into the wall. When the dad turned on some 80's cover of "there ain't no cure for the summer time blues" and then did the worst dancing i have ever seen. When Sonny Bono falls down the stairs and exclaims, "shit." And when the troll goes into the swinger's apartment and as he is killing him and waiting for him to die, picks up a playboy and starts to look at it. ( i don't think he was reading the articles) Also when the witch shoots a troll with her magic staff and says, "that should teach you, you little creep."
I'd like to note that at the end of this movie everyone who got transformed into a troll creature doesn't come back. I really thought everything would be restored to normal but other than the little girl coming back, that was it, everyone else must have stayed dead. There were many holes in this movie like that.
I give the actors in this movie an A just because of Noah. I give the dialog a C. I give the story line a D and the idea a C because it was original but not that well developed. I give the acting a D, and only because i have seen worse, which is hard to believe. I give the special effects a D because the puppets were poorly done, freaky as they were and the computer animated magic stuff was just horrible, i know i know it was 1986, but still. Over all i give this movie a C- it is worth seeing and the more the better because its just one to sit down and laugh at and thats my two cents.