Troll Reviews

Those folks at Empire Pictures don't waste anything, so they took the title "ghoulies" from 1985's horror epic and made them trolls and goblins in 1986. Harry Potter (Michael Moriarty) and wife, Anne (Shelley Hack), move their family to a new apartment in San Francisco, where youngster Wendy (Jenny Beck) becomes possessed by an ugly little troll. When Wendy behaves strangely by gobbling her food and basically acting like a wild animal, Mom and Dad attribute their daughter's bizarre behavior to the "big move," but Wendy's big brother, Harry, Jr. (Noah Hathaway), become concerned when little Sis throws him across the room. As the Wendy-troll transforms other apartment residents into goblins and their apartments into fairy kingdoms, Harry, Jr., turns to neighbor Eunice (June Lockhart), a strange old lady who happens to be a witch who's been doing battle with this troll for centuries. Incredibly dull, TROLL is bit easier to take than an Amtrak ride through Oklahoma, but not by much. Except for another quirky performance from Moriarty--whose solo dance number to Blue Cheer's heavy-metal rendition of Eddie Cochran's classic "Summertime Blues" is almost worth the price of admission--and two likable performances from the children, the acting borders on the pathetic. The special effects, supervised by director John Buechler, who was the effects man on GHOULIES, are pretty poor, essentially slimy rubber creatures with a limited amount of movement and the seams from their molds clearly visible.