Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. I'm Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be
Speaker 3: talking about the ultimate classic of modern B movies, Troll two.
Speaker 3: This has got to be the one, right, Like, even
Speaker 3: if you rarely watch B movies, you might have seen
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is one of the titans of bad film,
Speaker 2: of B films, and it's one where on one hand,
Speaker 2: some listeners might say, Hey, this is only the second
Speaker 2: episode of Weird House Cinema. I can't believe you're doing
Speaker 2: Troll two already, But really the reality is we had
Speaker 2: to go ahead and do Troll too. Otherwise listeners would
Speaker 2: be asking for it, they would be demanding it, and
Speaker 2: we had You know, this is just the hospitable thing
Speaker 2: to do, and we don't piss on hospitality on this show.
Speaker 2: I do want to add a quick note some of
Speaker 2: if you were probably listening to this and you're like,
Speaker 2: what is Weird House Cinema. What is going on? This
Speaker 2: is a science and culture podcast. Why are you talking
Speaker 2: about beef, be movies and weird films? Well, this is
Speaker 2: something we're trying. This is something we just kicked off.
Speaker 2: Joe and I have been talking about doing a weird
Speaker 2: movie standalone podcast for a while. We were looking at
Speaker 2: other options, and it was decided, partially by us, partially
Speaker 2: by powers on High, that we would do this as
Speaker 2: a little extra episode that airs on Fridays. I don't
Speaker 2: think they're going to let us publish it at midnight,
Speaker 2: because I don't think that would be good business. But
Speaker 2: you can think of it as the midnight offering from
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: Right, the principalities and powers to create it must come
Speaker 3: out in the daytime, but you can still enjoy it
Speaker 3: in the daytime. Watch the movie at night and then
Speaker 3: listen in the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or you can skip it. If weird films aren't
Speaker 2: your thing, just skip it and you can watch our
Speaker 2: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, which are
Speaker 2: still going to come out Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I think it's good to get into try too early
Speaker 3: in the lifetime of this series because Troll two is
Speaker 3: a nuclear weapon of thematic theft. It brings all of
Speaker 3: the themes mainly meat and vegetables are the themes of
Speaker 3: Troll two. In fact, just before we started recording, we
Speaker 3: were talking about that obnoxious mid twenty tens bacon craze
Speaker 3: where suddenly there was just ironic bacon on everything. You know,
Speaker 3: there would be like a there's a website called the
Speaker 3: Art of the Mustache that has a logo with a
Speaker 3: guy in a top hat in a monocle, and they
Speaker 3: sell bacon flavored whiskey. And I don't know where all
Speaker 3: that came from, but I strongly suspect the pork industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And one place that it did not take root though,
Speaker 2: is definitely the town of nil Bog. Nil Bog is
Speaker 2: the setting for the movie Troll two, and this is
Speaker 2: where the goblins live Nilbog. Of course his goblins spelled backwards.
Speaker 2: This is a strange town of some we're in America.
Speaker 2: We get kind of a Utah feel from this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's here that we find an American family on
Speaker 2: vacation running a foul of goblins and an ancient witch
Speaker 2: who uses stone hinge magic in order to turn people
Speaker 2: into like vegetable goo so that vegetarian goblins can eat them.
Speaker 3: Yes, I would say that is the plot in a nutshell,
Speaker 3: it's that there are vegetarian goblins who eat people, but
Speaker 3: they have to turn them from meat into vegetarian green
Speaker 3: jello before they can eat them, and they worship Stonehenge.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, let's just go ahead and listen to
Speaker 2: a little bit of the audio from the original trailer.
Speaker 4: Good lad, I'm sorry we had a small miss out.
Speaker 2: Here are the Keyes here.
Speaker 4: A nice stay in Millmond.
Speaker 1: You in our city.
Speaker 2: You're telling the same story, Josh. Goddles don't exist, Gossins
Speaker 2: don't exist.
Speaker 3: And remember thereating good boy, didn't we kids us to
Speaker 3: like your first love?
Speaker 4: Ice cream? Delicious?
Speaker 2: And so this is you know, we're talking about what
Speaker 2: makes a good weird film or a good bad film,
Speaker 2: et cetera, the kind of film we want to talk
Speaker 2: about on the show. And really this does have everything.
Speaker 2: It has a weird plot, it has weird performances, it
Speaker 2: has it has like just weird choices in how they're
Speaker 2: going to try and tell this story. It just it
Speaker 2: just brings it all. And at the same time, it's
Speaker 2: an exceedingly watchable film, Like there's never a dull moment
Speaker 2: in Troll Too.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to be bored while watching Troll two. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is the kind of movie that also it's not
Speaker 3: just entertaining. It sucks people in. It's like a magnet
Speaker 3: if you put it on in a house and people
Speaker 3: are doing things in other rooms that people will come
Speaker 3: from the other rooms to the troll too. They come
Speaker 3: from all over to kneel at the foot of stone Hinge.
Speaker 3: And it's It's also got a kind of cultural sensibility
Speaker 3: that exists basically nowhere else because it's part very much
Speaker 3: italianissimo bad horror. You know, it's very Italian, but it's
Speaker 3: also very utah and so we were calling it last
Speaker 3: night Utalian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's that's a good way of looking yeh.
Speaker 2: Because the filmmakers themselves, most of the crew were Italian.
Speaker 2: Then the actors are all American and a lot of
Speaker 2: them are just very local, non actor American. Now, this
Speaker 2: film came out in nineteen ninety, so I want to
Speaker 2: set the stage a little bit here. You don't really
Speaker 2: need to understand what was going on politically or culturally
Speaker 2: in the world for the most part to understand Troll two.
Speaker 2: But Troll two is definitely what I refer to as
Speaker 2: a Gromlin film. Okay, so it's one of the many,
Speaker 2: many films about small, mischievous monsters to come out in
Speaker 2: the wake of nineteen eighty four's Grimlins. So I think
Speaker 2: if you've ever walked, if you ever walked around a
Speaker 2: video rental store, you know what I'm talking about. Because
Speaker 2: we didn't just have Grimlins and then eventually Grimlins too.
Speaker 2: You had Goolies, you had critters, you had hobgoblins, you
Speaker 2: had Munchies, and you had these troll films.
Speaker 3: I didn't know about Munchies. I had to look it up.
Speaker 3: It looks gross, it looks yeah, nasty.
Speaker 2: So Troll two is marketed as a sequel to the
Speaker 2: Gromlin film Troll, which came out in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: which has nothing to do with Troll too. Troll was
Speaker 2: a Charles Band production, and of course Charles Band is
Speaker 2: a notable maker of weird films. I think we'll definitely
Speaker 2: come back to Charles Band on these episodes in the future.
Speaker 3: I think he made the puppet Master movies, didn't he.
Speaker 2: He did one thing with Charles Band to keep in mind,
Speaker 2: without small creatures. He does like small creatures, but he
Speaker 2: was more serious early on in his career, and I
Speaker 2: think he kind of found a niche later on is
Speaker 2: making sort of intentionally bad films to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: you know, certainly once you get into like Evil Bong
Speaker 2: and the Gingerbread film. What it was a Ginger Dead
Speaker 2: I'm not I can't remember.
Speaker 4: Off hand the ginger dead man that was him.
Speaker 2: He did some sort of gingerbread man evil creature thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But before that was Puppet Masters, and then before even
Speaker 2: that were some films that I hope we'll get back
Speaker 2: to on this show. But Patrol from nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: was definitely an attempt to cash in on the Grimlin craze.
Speaker 2: It starred the wonderful Michael Moriarty is Harry Potter senior, Yes,
Speaker 2: firmly establishing Harry Potter as a fictional character prior to
Speaker 2: the Harry Potter books. Atreyu himself, Noah Hathaway was Harry
Speaker 2: Potter Junior in that film. And you also had Julia,
Speaker 2: Luis Dreyfus and Sonny Bono showing up as various in
Speaker 2: various roles. But it was not there's no connection here
Speaker 2: between Troll one and Troll two. Troll two is an
Speaker 2: Italian production from shock Master Joe Diamatto. That's the producer.
Speaker 3: And this is actually something that was pretty common for
Speaker 3: Italian films at the times, like a lot of Italian
Speaker 3: horror movies would be marketed as a sequel to an
Speaker 3: existing movie, even though they had nothing to do with
Speaker 3: it whatsoever. So, for example, the Italian movie Zombie was
Speaker 3: marketed as a sequel to Dona the Dead even though
Speaker 3: it was not made by George Romero, had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with Dona the Dead, it just wasn't related. And
Speaker 3: there are other movies by Claudio Fergosso, the director of
Speaker 3: Troll two, that were marketed as movies in an existing franchise.
Speaker 3: So example, they were marketed as like a movie in
Speaker 3: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, even though they weren't.
Speaker 2: Right, and in that case the film in question being
Speaker 2: night Killer, it was so Texas Chainsaw Masaker had a
Speaker 2: different title in Italy and then it's the sequel to that.
Speaker 2: So it's not instantly recognizable to a lot of Western
Speaker 2: film fans that this would be marketed as a sequel
Speaker 2: to Texas Chainsaw Masaker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in Italy, Texas Chainsaw was non a pre or
Speaker 3: I don't know how to pronounce it, non a prete
Speaker 3: de la puerta, I think, which means like, do not
Speaker 3: open that door.
Speaker 2: Ah, well, that's great. I love a good don't film.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk about some of the people
Speaker 2: of note here. So really one of one of the
Speaker 2: main two people to focus on is the director himself,
Speaker 2: Claudio Fergasso born in nineteen fifty one, still very much
Speaker 2: alive as of this recording and still making films, I believe.
Speaker 2: While Troll two is probably his most well known film
Speaker 2: in the US, he's had quite a long career in
Speaker 2: the Italian film world, with some of his pictures shooting
Speaker 2: in the United States. He has thirty director credits forty
Speaker 2: screenwriting credits, including such notable entries as Monster Dog starring
Speaker 2: Alice Cooper and then Shocking Dark, which was a Bruno
Speaker 2: Mattei directed knockoff of Aliens and Terminator, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of infamous in its own right for being just a
Speaker 2: blatant knockoff.
Speaker 3: Well mainly from what I'm understand, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 3: The box art is just the cover of Terminator. I
Speaker 3: mean it's just, yeah, straight out James Cameron's Terminator, A
Speaker 3: slight like a traced version of it.
Speaker 4: Pretty much.
Speaker 3: But the movie is more a ripoff of Aliens, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, Like I was watching some clips from it,
Speaker 2: and it's clearly like, let's go make Aliens, guys, let's
Speaker 2: do it, but with a much cheaper budget.
Speaker 3: Obviously, Aliens was a prolifically ripped off filmy. Like Aliens
Speaker 3: has more copycats than maybe any other movie I can
Speaker 3: think of. It really spawned the space marine genre, which
Speaker 3: was everywhere in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's been ripped off at every level too.
Speaker 2: It's been ripped off at the shocking dark level. But
Speaker 2: also just so many films would not exist, Like they're clearly,
Speaker 2: you know, feeding on that same energy, they're tapping into
Speaker 2: that same vein.
Speaker 3: But now so a lot of the directors, writer directors,
Speaker 3: AU tours who create horror movies, you might be, I
Speaker 3: don't know, you might be tempted to kind of just
Speaker 3: call them hacks, like they're just phoning in some work.
Speaker 3: They're pointing the camera at things, they're telling the actors
Speaker 3: what to say, and then they get on with it.
Speaker 3: I get the feeling from at least Troll two that
Speaker 3: Fragaso very much sees himself as an artist, and he
Speaker 3: is in there in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, absolutely. So for instance, two of the names
Speaker 2: already mentioned Joe Diamatto and Bruno Mattei. So Joe Diamatto,
Speaker 2: I really have enjoyed some of his films, but he
Speaker 2: was very much a in the business of titillation, like
Speaker 2: what can I do violently or erotically on the screen
Speaker 2: that will we'll bring viewers in. And then Bruno and
Speaker 2: Fragoso points this out as well in interviews, like Bruno
Speaker 2: was very much like, let's make some money, let's get
Speaker 2: let's make some money. Let's go do a predator movie.
Speaker 2: I'm doing. Let's I'm gonna make aliens, write me a
Speaker 2: script for aliens. We'll call it shocking Dark, you know,
Speaker 2: Like that was very much the vibe. But for Gaso,
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that's fascinating about him
Speaker 2: is that he, yeah, he did seem to think of
Speaker 2: himself as as this like legitimate autour. You know, that
Speaker 2: he had had something to say in these films, and
Speaker 2: that can be vital to having like a really successful
Speaker 2: weird film or just a really amusing B film because
Speaker 2: somebody cares. I think we've said We've pointed out this
Speaker 2: out before. To really enjoy a well, any film, but
Speaker 2: especially a B movie, somebody has to be serious about it.
Speaker 2: There's got to be an actor in there, or an
Speaker 2: FX person, a cinematographer. Somebody's got to be serious about
Speaker 2: saying something with this film.
Speaker 3: With Troll two, you really get the feeling that for Gosso,
Speaker 3: this is not just a plot device. He really means
Speaker 3: it when he says that evil can only be defeated
Speaker 3: by the power of goodness and by processed meat, like
Speaker 3: he really thinks that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we do have to drive home that just
Speaker 2: because you have ideas and just because you have something
Speaker 2: you want to say, it doesn't mean you're capable of
Speaker 2: creating interesting cinema. It doesn't mean you're capable of actually
Speaker 2: pushing those ideas through to the finished product. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that those ideas are going to survive the budgetary
Speaker 2: constraints or the you know or you know, your your
Speaker 2: limited ability to you know, to cast professional actors in
Speaker 2: the role, et cetera. But still you can often see
Speaker 2: that the effort is there in the finished product, like
Speaker 2: at some point somebody cared and I should point out
Speaker 2: that Fragasso seems he seems pretty open about this in
Speaker 2: recent interviews I've seen with him, where he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I really you know, I I I really thought I was,
Speaker 2: you know, as a serious filmmaker when I was making
Speaker 2: a Control Too or or or night Killer or whatever
Speaker 2: the case may be. And I think he's kind of
Speaker 2: like sees like, oh, yeah, maybe I maybe I should
Speaker 2: have listened a little more to Bruno when he was
Speaker 2: telling me, No, you're making a horror movie, you're making
Speaker 2: a slasher movie, you're making a monster movie. Just go
Speaker 2: out and make it. But you know, he wanted to
Speaker 2: inject this this art or in this and or this
Speaker 2: commentary on what he was doing.
Speaker 3: You get a sense of art artistic ego also in
Speaker 3: his work, in the very best classical sense, like a
Speaker 3: John Milton kind of ego, the person who believes that
Speaker 3: his message is very important and he's the only one
Speaker 3: who can say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, of course these are not these films are
Speaker 2: not just Fragaso's voice. Also there's the voice of his
Speaker 2: co screenwriter and I believe partner, Rosella Drudi. Now. Drudi
Speaker 2: was born in nineteen sixty three. Frequent collaborator with her
Speaker 2: husband and seemed to share his ambition for exploring social
Speaker 2: commentary and psychology in their films. As John O'Brien pointed
Speaker 2: out in a recent piece for sci Fi Wire, she
Speaker 2: described Troll two as a quote ferocious analysis of today's society.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's definitely about today's society where where you
Speaker 3: can't get any eggs at the store because the guy
Speaker 3: there says black and he only gives you unrefrigerated milk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just sitting there on the shelf, that nil bog milk.
Speaker 3: It's definitely about today's society where when you move into
Speaker 3: a new neighborhood, they bring you a cheesecake, but it's
Speaker 3: made with wild nettles that turn your body into green jello. Definitely,
Speaker 3: it points out how in society today you can take
Speaker 3: a month off of work by just calling your boss
Speaker 3: the night before and saying, Hey, I'm going to be
Speaker 3: gone for a month. Can you take care of that
Speaker 3: business for me?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So basically Troll two is just wall to wall wonderful
Speaker 2: little dialogue exchanges between characters who are supposed to be human, or,
Speaker 2: at least in the case of the nil Boggians, they're
Speaker 2: supposed to be goblins pretending to be humans. But everybody
Speaker 2: says things that no human has ever said, that no
Speaker 2: human would ever say, things that just don't sound like
Speaker 2: authentic human dialogue. Like it seems as if the entire
Speaker 2: movie is actually populated by goblins trying to pass themselves
Speaker 2: off as human beings.
Speaker 3: I want to come back to this point about the
Speaker 3: lack of verisimilitude later on, because I think that is
Speaker 3: the defining esthetic feature of the movie, and we should
Speaker 3: explore that in a bit.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's go ahead and go through the rest of
Speaker 2: the cast. For what it's worth here, we have to
Speaker 2: mention Michael Paul Stevenson, who plays the boy Joshua Waits, notably,
Speaker 2: but mostly in terms of troll Too, for making the
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine documentary Best Worst Movie, which is
Speaker 2: an exploration of what this film is and where it
Speaker 2: came from. But he's also directed other things. He directed
Speaker 2: the twenty seventeen Bob Odenkirk movie Girlfriend's Day.
Speaker 3: I saw a Best Worst Movie at a screening here
Speaker 3: in Atlanta at a local theater, and George Hardy, the
Speaker 3: actor who plays the father and the family in trol Too,
Speaker 3: was there to answer questions at the screening. It was
Speaker 3: really special.
Speaker 2: The dentist with the linebacker's job that plays the dad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, well I think so. Here's another thing about
Speaker 3: Troll two, and we should describe the plot in more
Speaker 3: detail in a minute here, But so it is about
Speaker 3: a family who goes to this goblin infested town. The family,
Speaker 3: I think is clearly supposed to be modeled on the
Speaker 3: family from Poltergeist, because we just recently watched Poltergeist, and
Speaker 3: I would be shocked if in casting George Hardy they
Speaker 3: weren't trying to go for Craig T.
Speaker 4: Nelson.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He is kind of like a you know, bottom
Speaker 2: basement Craig T. Nelson. Yeah, yeah, and definitely he's great
Speaker 2: in it as well. But a couple of the real
Speaker 2: standout performances for me are from, you know, from other characters.
Speaker 2: For instance, there's an actor by the name of Deborah
Speaker 2: Reid who plays the witch Credence leonor Gilgod in this
Speaker 2: particular movie, and this is this is pretty much her
Speaker 2: only acting role, but she just acts her heart and
Speaker 2: face off in every scene. Like you get the impression
Speaker 2: that Fragaso was just saying, like, I like what you're doing.
Speaker 2: But go ahead and do it like fifty times what
Speaker 2: you're doing now, just more, Just give me more of that.
Speaker 4: He's like, it's just like.
Speaker 3: George Lucas, a faster, louder, more intense.
Speaker 4: Yes. But she, but she takes it to heart.
Speaker 3: Credence slays in this movie. She is so good she is.
Speaker 3: It's it's a very melodramatic community theater type performance. But
Speaker 3: she's the kind of actor who you would see in
Speaker 3: an amateur community theater production. But she would be the
Speaker 3: standout actor, head and shoulders above everybody else in that Like,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't be able to stop talking about her after
Speaker 3: it was over.
Speaker 2: I would say that it is perhaps one of the
Speaker 2: most memorable overacting jobs of all time. Yeah, it's and
Speaker 2: it's almost not overacting because it fits in this film perfectly,
Speaker 2: Like it's it's not like everybody else is doing like
Speaker 2: a real refined and professional time and she's just hamming
Speaker 2: it up. No, I mean, this is the perfect place
Speaker 2: for this level of hamminess.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, Now what about I know you wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about the guy who runs the general store in Nilbog,
Speaker 3: who the guy who's like, we don't have any bacon
Speaker 3: her eggs here, that's oh in the coffee. No coffee,
Speaker 3: it's the devil's drink. But we do have shelves and
Speaker 3: shelves of unrefrigerated milk and what looks like jars of
Speaker 3: pink teeth is all I could say.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what that's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they didn't get to that one. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: a cutscene, but but no. This guy playing the drug
Speaker 2: store owner is Don Packard. This is his only screen
Speaker 2: role outside of you know, showing up in the documentary.
Speaker 2: But man, he comes off as a legitimately creepy and
Speaker 2: intense character in a way that really makes me think
Speaker 2: this guy missed his calling as a B movie heavy
Speaker 2: because he has this kind of like carved from granite face.
Speaker 2: He looks like he should be like just an old
Speaker 2: cowboy sitting in the back of a gunsmoke episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he could have been a Michael Ironside of his generation,
Speaker 3: but not quite.
Speaker 2: Oh it's said he's his generation's Don Packard. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's a memorable performance. A lot of the other actors
Speaker 2: in the film were, of course, just straight up locals,
Speaker 2: and many of them didn't work beyond this picture. But
Speaker 2: there is an interesting bit of one interesting person from
Speaker 2: the crew, Laura Gimser, an actor who starred in numerous
Speaker 2: Immanuel movies, which were erotic pictures of the day. Sometimes
Speaker 2: she was credited as Emmanuel, or she'd be playing the
Speaker 2: Emmanuel character. She was the costume designer on troll Too,
Speaker 2: and reportedly she was the only crew member who spoke
Speaker 2: both Italian and English well enough to communicate with the actors,
Speaker 2: So she was the communicative bridge between the filmmakers and
Speaker 2: the crew and the cast.
Speaker 3: She was the human babblefish that made this artistic production possible. Yes, well,
Speaker 3: that makes sense because a lot of the dialogue in
Speaker 3: this movie feels like when you take a sentence and
Speaker 3: you run it through Google Translate several times to different languages.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, apparently. Fragaso was very It was very firm
Speaker 2: on the idea that the script should be used verbatim.
Speaker 2: So there was gonna be no ad libbing, no taking
Speaker 2: the dialogue and putting it in a form that would
Speaker 2: come out naturally through your mouth. No, it needed to
Speaker 2: stay in the original form. And therefore you have these
Speaker 2: just strangely structured sentences and sometimes just strangely expressed thoughts.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe we should run through the plot a little bit,
Speaker 3: just to say what happens in the film point by point. Okay,
Speaker 3: so the So the movie starts with an apparent fairy
Speaker 3: tale scene. You've got a guy who looks like Jack
Speaker 3: in the beanstalk. He's got on the elf hat, and
Speaker 3: he's wandering through the forest and he comes across a
Speaker 3: girl who offers him some green goo. I guess it
Speaker 3: looks like toothpaste, kind of like aim brand or whatever
Speaker 3: it is that has that really verdant green.
Speaker 2: It's so green that it looks like virtually nothing you
Speaker 2: would consume. It's like too green to be bad. Absinthe,
Speaker 2: toothpaste or candy.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, she offers this to him. And then we
Speaker 3: realized that this is a story being told to a
Speaker 3: child by an old man, and the old man is
Speaker 3: Grandpa Seth, and the child is Joshua, the main kid
Speaker 3: in the movie. And as Grandpa Seth narrates the story,
Speaker 3: I would love to see what book he was reading
Speaker 3: out of, because he talks about like when this girl
Speaker 3: kneels down to feed Jack the goo, he says that
Speaker 3: she was a lovely girl with huge eyes. The color
Speaker 3: of the sea, which brought to mind like Homeric scholarship
Speaker 3: questions about like what color is the sea? What does
Speaker 3: the wine dark sea mean? I'm not sure what that
Speaker 3: was supposed to be there, But she has lots of
Speaker 3: freckles drawn onto her face with a sharpie. They just
Speaker 3: took a marker and dotted her cheeks. And then she
Speaker 3: feeds him the stuff and he starts bleeding green all
Speaker 3: over the place, and then the the goblins eat him,
Speaker 3: and then the end of Grandpa's story is just like, yes,
Speaker 3: they ate him. That's just what happened, and that's there's
Speaker 3: no happiness or redemption at all. It's just a fairy
Speaker 3: tale where the guy gets eaten and that's it.
Speaker 2: But it's pretty great because we've introduced the magic. We've
Speaker 2: introduced the monsters and introduced the rules for how they function.
Speaker 2: You know, they don't eat meat, they eat vegetables, but
Speaker 2: they use magic to turn people into vegetables so that
Speaker 2: they can eat them.
Speaker 3: Right, I think that's all pretty well established early on.
Speaker 3: But I just have to say a couple of other
Speaker 3: things about this opening scene. So one thing we find
Speaker 3: out is that Grandpa Seth, who's telling the story, to
Speaker 3: Joshua he's a ghost, and he vanishes as soon as
Speaker 3: the mom appears in the room. And it becomes clear
Speaker 3: that Joshua has been repeatedly hallucinating his dead grandfather and
Speaker 3: he's not supposed to be hallucinating him anymore.
Speaker 4: The parents are like, you've.
Speaker 3: Got to stop, and she says to him, I think
Speaker 3: the line is, Grandpa Seth is in all our hearts,
Speaker 3: but you must banish him from your mind, like send
Speaker 3: him to the realm of dust and ghosts.
Speaker 2: I love this because this is a case where someone
Speaker 2: could have made a firm case to Forgaso and said, look,
Speaker 2: you got two movies here, why don't you do the
Speaker 2: dead Grandpa ghost movie and maybe they can fight, you know,
Speaker 2: killer REDNECKX or something. But then you've got this supernatural
Speaker 2: troll thing that's another movie. But for Gaso's like, no,
Speaker 2: this is one movie. We're going to do both of
Speaker 2: these crazy elements in one film.
Speaker 3: One of the things I love. I mean, the movie
Speaker 3: fails at verisimilitude at essentially every level, but I love
Speaker 3: Joshua's Bedroom because I noticed for the first time watching
Speaker 3: it this time. Actually, I can't remember if I've said
Speaker 3: this already, but this is a movie I watched probably
Speaker 3: fifty times when I was in college and then didn't
Speaker 3: watch for about a decade, and so coming back to
Speaker 3: it was like one of those dreams where you wander
Speaker 3: through your childhood home, going from room to room and
Speaker 3: it's been a long time, but it's very familiar, but
Speaker 3: you also notice things anew. And one of the things
Speaker 3: I noticed this time was in Joshua's bedroom, he has
Speaker 3: merch from essentially every baseball team. I'm not a real
Speaker 3: sports fan, but I thought usually you would have your
Speaker 3: team or your couple of teams, and they're the ones
Speaker 3: you're fans of, and you've got their kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But Joshua apparently has like flags and merch for his
Speaker 3: seventeen top baseball teams.
Speaker 2: This one kind of feels like a case where you
Speaker 2: have you have filmmakers who know what it's like to
Speaker 2: be a movie fan, maybe don't know what it's like
Speaker 2: to be, especially an American sports fan, and you just
Speaker 2: kind of roughly translate one into the other, you know,
Speaker 2: like if I were trying to figure out as a teenager,
Speaker 2: like what it's like to be a fan of sports,
Speaker 2: so it'd be like oh, I guess you do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just get a bunch of posters like and everywhere
Speaker 2: in my room that I have a music or a
Speaker 2: movie poster. I would just replace that with some sort
Speaker 2: of sport poster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's possible. I'm just wrong about this. Sports fans,
Speaker 3: let us know. I mean, do you have merch for
Speaker 3: your twentieth favorite baseball team?
Speaker 4: I'd be curious.
Speaker 3: But what we find out is the family is about
Speaker 3: to go on vacation for a month to this town
Speaker 3: called Nilbog to trade houses with some people from the town.
Speaker 3: They're going to come stay in their house, and they're
Speaker 3: just telling everybody the night before they leave that they're
Speaker 3: going to be gone for a month. So the dad
Speaker 3: appears to be on the phone with his boss or
Speaker 3: his workplace or something's like, yeah, we'll be gone for
Speaker 3: a month. Yeah, it's called Nilbog. Can you take care
Speaker 3: of that for me. The daughter Holly is telling her
Speaker 3: boyfriend that night that she's about to be gone for
Speaker 3: a month, and it's like, one of the many ways
Speaker 3: in which there's very lack of verisimilitude in this movie
Speaker 3: is that the characters are as if they just started
Speaker 3: existing when the movie began, and there's no attempt to
Speaker 3: create a through line that they had lives before the
Speaker 3: camera started rolling.
Speaker 2: I will say that the basic plot here, the whole
Speaker 2: switching houses for a month, than it almost makes more
Speaker 2: sense in twenty twenty than it could have possibly made
Speaker 2: sense in nineteen ninety. You know, like if you already
Speaker 2: had a coworker today and they're gonna be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be switching houses with some friends for
Speaker 2: a month. Yeah, you know, so you know, just there'll
Speaker 2: be a different background on my zoom call. You'd be like,
Speaker 2: all right, that makes sense. That makes us much sense
Speaker 2: as anything this year.
Speaker 3: Right, right, Yeah, if you're a digital worker. I don't
Speaker 3: think George Hardy in this movie is supposed to be
Speaker 3: a digital worker. I mean, for all I know, he's
Speaker 3: supposed to be a dentist like the actor actually was.
Speaker 3: But yeah, So they travel to this country, and again
Speaker 3: the family is very much the family.
Speaker 4: From Poltergeist Craig T. Nelson.
Speaker 3: The kids are kind of fighting, They drive ten miles
Speaker 3: per hour on the freeway. That's pretty fun, and Joshua
Speaker 3: keeps hallucinating encounters with Grandpa Seth, who's warning them not
Speaker 3: to go to Nilbag because he says it's a kingdom
Speaker 3: of evil where the goblins rule.
Speaker 2: One of the great things about Grandpa throughout this film
Speaker 2: is that he has and I have difficulty figuring out
Speaker 2: at times whether this was intentional. There's almost a Grandpa
Speaker 2: Simpson level of clumsiness to his ghostly presence, you know.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, very Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, there's one part where he's trying to appear in
Speaker 3: a mirror like Bloody Mary to contact Joshua, but he
Speaker 3: gets the wrong room in the house and he accidentally
Speaker 3: appears in Holly's mirror and she screams and freaks out.
Speaker 3: Like five minutes of the film are devoted to this
Speaker 3: mix up. They're really kind of padding it out there.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if that's an inept choice or
Speaker 2: really a genius choice. I don't know. It works within
Speaker 2: the context control too, it absolutely works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they get to the town. Also arriving at
Speaker 3: the town because I guess you've got to fill out
Speaker 3: the cast. This is a thing that often happens in
Speaker 3: horror movies. You'll notice that, you know, somewhere toward the
Speaker 3: middle of the first act, it starts getting populated with
Speaker 3: seemingly unimportant characters, and you're like, why are all these
Speaker 3: people suddenly appearing in the movie. It's because, well, this
Speaker 3: is a horror film, and you just randos to get
Speaker 3: murdered as the film progresses, like you've got to fill
Speaker 3: out the kill list basically, And so that is mainly
Speaker 3: done in this movie by having Holly's boyfriend Elliott and
Speaker 3: his three weird friends show up in a camper van
Speaker 3: or an RV I guess, and they're just hanging out
Speaker 3: in the town too, and so you know what's going
Speaker 3: to happen to these buddies here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just pure fodder.
Speaker 3: But in all of the scenes where the goblins attack
Speaker 3: the humans, they all pretty much have the same progression,
Speaker 3: which is the human is given something to eat or drink,
Speaker 3: and then they eat or drink it and that turns
Speaker 3: them into the green goop or turns them into a
Speaker 3: plant somehow, and then the goblins eat or otherwise attack them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the main threat becomes this, and this is
Speaker 2: something that joshua Is is woken up to before the
Speaker 2: rest of the family. You will be tricked into eating
Speaker 2: something at some point that will transform your entire family
Speaker 2: into vegetables and then the trolls will eat them.
Speaker 3: Right, and probably famously this is dealt with it a
Speaker 3: scene where the family arrives at the house where they're
Speaker 3: going to be staying for a month, and out on
Speaker 3: the table has laid a bountiful feast of disgusting looking
Speaker 3: plato food that looks like it was made out of
Speaker 3: like mud and sticks by a child, and sometimes with
Speaker 3: toothpaste and green paint. And they're like, delicious, look what
Speaker 3: they've prepared for us. And they all sit down to eat,
Speaker 3: and so Grandpa Seth says, Joshua has to find a
Speaker 3: way to stop them from eating. And this is I
Speaker 3: would say this is one of the most famous scenes
Speaker 3: in the movie. He says, you know, since I am Chronos,
Speaker 3: the Wizard of Time, I'm just gonna stop time for
Speaker 3: thirty seconds to give you time to figure that out.
Speaker 3: But if Grandpa Seth has the power to stop time,
Speaker 3: you'd think that would be useful throughout the movie. Instead,
Speaker 3: he only does it once.
Speaker 2: What I kind of love about this is that it
Speaker 2: makes the audience think it's kind of like a werewolf
Speaker 2: break right, where yes, the director is saying, all right, audience,
Speaker 2: how would you stop your family from eating the tainted food.
Speaker 4: Right, what would you do?
Speaker 2: And of course he does the most ridiculous thing possible,
Speaker 2: but in a way. But this is like, again the
Speaker 2: brilliance of this film, because only Fragaso would choose to
Speaker 2: have the child use this moment to jump up on
Speaker 2: the table and pee urinate on all of the food,
Speaker 2: thus tainting it further and preventing the family from eating it.
Speaker 3: We're thankfully spared seeing that actually happen. There's a cutaway
Speaker 3: and then you see them scraping the food out and
Speaker 3: the father it's a tasteful movie, has quite tasteful, and
Speaker 3: the father is chewing Joshua out. He says like, you
Speaker 3: can't piss on hospitality. I won't allow it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and he shames them. He is he like
Speaker 2: he's messing with his belt after he takes him up,
Speaker 2: but he's like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm
Speaker 2: tightening my bel to notch because of the coming hunger paints.
Speaker 3: So one thing about this is I was like, I
Speaker 3: know there has got to be a good monster science
Speaker 3: tie in, and I found one. Are you ready for
Speaker 3: some monster science?
Speaker 2: Let's do it?
Speaker 3: Okay, So surely there is evidence of some kind of
Speaker 3: animal joshua that pees on food in order to get
Speaker 3: people not to eat it. And you know what, I
Speaker 3: didn't find exactly that, but I found something pretty close.
Speaker 3: I found a paper from the Canadian Journal of Zoology
Speaker 3: by Fred H. Harrington called Urine marking at food and
Speaker 3: Caches and Captive Coyotes. So the study was done in
Speaker 3: captive coyotes Canus latrans. And as always, it's worth noting
Speaker 3: that animals sometimes behave differently in captivity than they do
Speaker 3: under natural condition, so it's possible the behaviors described here
Speaker 3: wouldn't be as common in the wild. But either way,
Speaker 3: Harrington notes that often when captive coyotes are observed during feeding,
Speaker 3: they will just sometimes urinate on food. They'll just pee
Speaker 3: on food piles or on quote, individual food items that
Speaker 3: had been carried and dropped some distance from the pile.
Speaker 3: And also sometimes when a food item was stolen from
Speaker 3: one coyote taken by another, sometimes the animal would pee
Speaker 3: on it. So why would you pee on food piles
Speaker 3: and food items?
Speaker 4: You might be assuming something.
Speaker 3: You might guess, well, okay, these are canines basically sort
Speaker 3: of dogs, so you might assume they are making a
Speaker 3: claim of possession. Right, this food is mine. Now I'm
Speaker 3: going to pee on it, so that you understand. But
Speaker 3: this does not appear to be the case, Harrington writes,
Speaker 3: quote marking of food did not reserve it for the
Speaker 3: marking animal. Others usually ignored the urine mark and ate
Speaker 3: the item, which is kind of gross but okay, So
Speaker 3: in that case, what purpose does it serve?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: One observation was that this behavior of peeing on a
Speaker 3: food item specifically increased a lot during the breeding season,
Speaker 3: so it's possible it played some role in quote the
Speaker 3: expression of dominance in intrast sexual rivalries, So like, if
Speaker 3: there are rivalries between the males or between the females,
Speaker 3: they might be expressing dominance by peeing on their food.
Speaker 3: That sounds kind of weird, like if you were doing
Speaker 3: some kind of office politics thing and you just like pede
Speaker 3: on your TV dinner in front of the person you're
Speaker 3: trying to impress. But you know, canines are different. But
Speaker 3: there's another kind of food peeing, and specifically, this was
Speaker 3: the peeing that occurred at food caches, so places where
Speaker 3: food was hidden or stored.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: Urin marking never occurred when food was cashed and rarely
Speaker 3: occurred while the cash still contained food. However, once the
Speaker 3: cash was emptied, urin marking usually occurred. Thus, at caches,
Speaker 3: urin marking evidently serves as a book keeping role, indicating
Speaker 3: that the caches are no longer worth investigating, although food
Speaker 3: odors might still linger, which I thought was really interesting. So,
Speaker 3: like you pee on a food storage site, apparently as
Speaker 3: a note to self and possibly as a note to
Speaker 3: others as well.
Speaker 4: Nothing to eat here, move along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't expend the energy of getting in here, because
Speaker 2: it's all the food has been to.
Speaker 3: Right, And the same patterns of your in marking at
Speaker 3: cash is have been observed in wolves and red foxes
Speaker 3: as well, and it's been documented in previous studies that
Speaker 3: this actually increases foraging efficiency. The dogs and other canines
Speaker 3: waste less time foraging for food when they mark emptied caches.
Speaker 3: It prevents you from wasting time trying to dig up
Speaker 3: food places where food had.
Speaker 4: Been buried before, but isn't there anymore.
Speaker 3: So anyway, there's a kind of canine Joshua thing going
Speaker 3: on here, right, So if they had been coyotes, maybe
Speaker 3: he would have peed all over the table and then
Speaker 3: the family just would have been like, huh, I guess
Speaker 3: there's no food here, got to move on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And of course there was apparently no other food
Speaker 2: in the house, because this is what you do when
Speaker 2: you go to like an airbnb, right, you bring no
Speaker 2: food of your own, and you immediately start eating whatever
Speaker 2: food was in the refrigerator when you'd got there, or
Speaker 2: on the table in the case of this film.
Speaker 3: But it's all just chunky milk that's in the fridge
Speaker 3: like everywhere in town.
Speaker 2: You know. As long as we're talking monster science here,
Speaker 2: let's talk a bit about the monsters in this film,
Speaker 2: the goblins themselves. Okay, so these are clearly little people
Speaker 2: actors in a horrific mix of costumes. Some of the
Speaker 2: costumes are really almost kind of convincing, except maybe in
Speaker 2: the eyes. Others look a little more hastily thrown together.
Speaker 2: But all in all, I find that they are like
Speaker 2: equal parts terrifying, like legitimately terrifying, because you're seeing people
Speaker 2: in strange like fur costumes running at you with spears,
Speaker 2: and then at the same time they're just completely goofy,
Speaker 2: like they're just completely like it looks like someone left
Speaker 2: an ewot costume out in the rain for a month.
Speaker 3: Yes, I would say that the monster costumes in this
Speaker 3: film are cheap and bad, but they're actually scary because
Speaker 3: they're so cheap and bad. They don't code as monsters.
Speaker 3: They code as like people in deranged costume coming at you.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, and I think it works. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it works in the same the way that the
Speaker 2: filmmakers intended, but there are plenty of scenes where they're
Speaker 2: like running down the hallways or you know, running through
Speaker 2: the woods. They're standing menacingly in the woods, and it works.
Speaker 2: Now again, the most notable thing about the monsters here
Speaker 2: is that they must transform their animal prey into vegetation
Speaker 2: in order to consume them, and of course they do
Speaker 2: this via potions and magic. Now, to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: this makes perfect sense because in our food chain, there
Speaker 2: are plants that gain energy from the sun, and then
Speaker 2: animals that consume the converted energy in those plants, and
Speaker 2: then there are predators that consume those herbivores. So it's
Speaker 2: kind of an inverted treatment of how this works that
Speaker 2: we see in the town of Nilbog, for example. Just
Speaker 2: one example to sort of put all this in context,
Speaker 2: consider what leaf cutter ants do they harvest leaf clippings,
Speaker 2: but they don't eat the leaf clippings. They use the
Speaker 2: leaf clipping to grow a specific ant, domesticated fungus that
Speaker 2: they use as their primary food source. It's not a
Speaker 2: magical transformation from one biological kingdom to another, but it
Speaker 2: is an energy transformation. So in a way, that's what
Speaker 2: we're seeing happen here with the goblins. You know, they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: we don't eat the people. We turn the people into
Speaker 2: something we can eat. And that's a lot like what
Speaker 2: we see with the leaf cutter ants, just without the magic.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, in a way, you're relying on the digestion
Speaker 3: and energy storage faculties of a different species to do
Speaker 3: some of your digesting externally for you when you're a
Speaker 3: leaf cutter ant like that, Like if you were to
Speaker 3: just eat the plant matter directly, you wouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to get as much energy out of it as you
Speaker 3: can get by growing some fungus.
Speaker 2: Now, I can't remember. Do we find out how they're
Speaker 2: making the tainted food and the millbog milk, Like is
Speaker 2: that goblin milk from goblin teats or is that some
Speaker 2: sort of are they getting the goblin drippings from the
Speaker 2: people that have been turned into green mush.
Speaker 3: This is the real nil bogology question, and I don't
Speaker 3: know the answer. I don't think they ever show that
Speaker 3: in the movie. I mean sense that it's all magic.
Speaker 3: And there's one thing that's cool about this movie that
Speaker 3: it has in common with Halloween three Season of the Witch. Yes,
Speaker 3: both movies rely on the magic of the Stone Hinge
Speaker 3: magic Stone. So in Halloween three Season of the Witch,
Speaker 3: Dan O'Herlihy, the old man from RoboCop, steals one of
Speaker 3: the rocks, one of the bluestones from Stonehinge, and then
Speaker 3: turns that into magic microchips that turn your head into crickets.
Speaker 3: In this movie, Credence. Credence has part of Stone Hinge
Speaker 3: in her house and there's light and fog that comes.
Speaker 4: Out of it.
Speaker 3: It's never explained how she got this. Part of Stone
Speaker 3: Hinge was just there, and that seems to be the
Speaker 3: source of her power from what I can tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, maybe you use the stone. She traveled
Speaker 2: through the Stone through time, and there's an actual link
Speaker 2: between the world of the Outlander books and the world
Speaker 2: of troll too. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to explore
Speaker 2: that on my own time, I think, but I think
Speaker 2: there might be a connection.
Speaker 4: Kilt Lifter four returned to Nilbog.
Speaker 2: This movie, like we said, you know, it seems to
Speaker 2: have a message. It had some sort of intent anyway,
Speaker 2: and going by what the film makers have to say
Speaker 2: about it, a certain amount of the deep thinking here
Speaker 2: seems to have revolved around the idea of vegetarianism as
Speaker 2: something that, if not in itself bad, is, is thrust
Speaker 2: upon us that it poses a danger or a threat
Speaker 2: to people because we find ourselves thrust into a story
Speaker 2: where the monsters are all vegetarians, and then the weird
Speaker 2: people in the weird town, you know, are all also
Speaker 2: very much opposed to the consumption of dairy or meat
Speaker 2: and coffee for some reason.
Speaker 3: Well, regarding the coffee, I think there is some pretty
Speaker 3: strong Latter Day Saint influence on this film, or at
Speaker 3: least presence within the film in the cast. But I
Speaker 3: would say, maybe you're selling short the critique of vegetarianism here.
Speaker 3: I think this presents vegetarianism as a satanic cult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I mean there are scenes in the
Speaker 2: film where it's it's a little more vague as as
Speaker 2: to how we're supposed to take it, But there are
Speaker 2: plenty of scenes where Troll two is pushing vegetarianism as
Speaker 2: being this like violent transformation into plant matter, that there's
Speaker 2: this communal coltish pressure to drink nil bog milk to
Speaker 2: you know, change become one of us. So you know
Speaker 2: that in these places the film certainly reeks of an
Speaker 2: entirely hyperbolic reaction to vegetarianism and veganism that I think
Speaker 2: most of us are somewhat familiar with. You know, the
Speaker 2: sort of fear that your uncle might spout about how
Speaker 2: the liberals are going to force everyone to become vegans
Speaker 2: and the government is going to take your stake night
Speaker 2: away from you, to take away that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: They'll they'll take your hamburgers, they'll and and specifically, I
Speaker 3: would say that to the extent this movie has a message,
Speaker 3: it's trying to take away the implied moral authority of
Speaker 3: vegetarianism or veganism. It assumes that someone who just eats
Speaker 3: plants thinks that they're better than you and is show it,
Speaker 3: and the movie is showing you that no, actually they're
Speaker 3: the real murderers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like eating plants is murder. Let me show
Speaker 2: you how it works. It involves magic in months now,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think we have time to really
Speaker 2: go into depth on this particular topic, but there are
Speaker 2: some very solid health and environmental arguments for at least
Speaker 2: cutting back on the consumption of meat and dairy without
Speaker 2: even getting into moral arguments. At the same time, one
Speaker 2: does have to realize that vegetarian and vegan food products
Speaker 2: are not necessarily flawless choices. For example, just as far
Speaker 2: as milk substitutes go, you have to take into account
Speaker 2: the water usage and the crop location. As such, they
Speaker 2: are strong arguments for say, oat milk as being a
Speaker 2: better choice than say, almond milk, and a lot of
Speaker 2: that has to do with how much water is consumed.
Speaker 2: You also have to take into account like deforestation, habitat
Speaker 2: loss whenever you're talking about crops being grown. But this
Speaker 2: is of course also the case with dairy cows. For
Speaker 2: cow milk, you have to take into account the land, juice,
Speaker 2: the water use, and methane emissions from the cows themselves.
Speaker 2: It takes roughly four square kilometers of land to produce
Speaker 2: just one glass of cow's milk, and that again that
Speaker 2: land use means potential deforestation and habitat loss. And on
Speaker 2: top of that, the cows are probably eating soy or
Speaker 2: oats as well, which puts an additional land strain on
Speaker 2: their milk. Less land use is required meanwhile, to produce
Speaker 2: milk from the same soy and oats. For a plant
Speaker 2: based milk, each glass of dairy milk contributes half a
Speaker 2: kilogram of greenhouse gas emissions, and that's compared to point
Speaker 2: one two point two kilograms with plant based milks. Now,
Speaker 2: I was looking over all these stats and then I
Speaker 2: started thinking, well, what about nilbog milk. We have no
Speaker 2: idea how to crunch the numbers on how environmentally sound
Speaker 2: nilbog milk is.
Speaker 4: There are scientists on both sides.
Speaker 2: But anyway, back to the idea of this film basically
Speaker 2: being about hating on vegetarians or vegans, I decided to
Speaker 2: look into it just a little bit and I found
Speaker 2: a wonderful article on The Conversation from twenty eighteen by
Speaker 2: Kate Stewart and Matthew Cole titled Vegans Why they Inspire
Speaker 2: fear and loathing among meat eaters. And this is an
Speaker 2: informative read I recommend it to everybody. But here's just
Speaker 2: some of the highlights. So first they point out that
Speaker 2: has been going on for a while, but that a
Speaker 2: lot of the old stereotypes about vegans are not applicable
Speaker 2: anymore because it's simply more or widespread. So all of
Speaker 2: these quote angry, militant, self denying, sentimental, fatty or joyless
Speaker 2: unquote stereotypes, they don't really zing like they used to.
Speaker 2: And I feel like you get a sense of that
Speaker 2: when you watch older television. If you find like a
Speaker 2: nice vegan or vegetarian jab on saying an old episode
Speaker 2: of The Simpsons or even Futurama, you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: that that doesn't really feel as authentic today as maybe
Speaker 2: it arguably was. You know, twenty years ago, was.
Speaker 4: The Simpsons jabbing at vegetarians. I remembered Lisa becoming one.
Speaker 2: She did, But well, I guess I mainly there's a
Speaker 2: Futurama episode where there's an annoying vegan character that shows up,
Speaker 2: and he's the one I mostly think of because it
Speaker 2: is like just an outrageous stereotype of like an angry
Speaker 2: vegeta vegan who wants to you know who wants to
Speaker 2: convert everyone around him, and of course they have him
Speaker 2: eaten by a lion at the end, like there's some
Speaker 2: sort of perverse joy in seeing the vegan consumed by
Speaker 2: the animal.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, I mean a vegan vegetarian can be annoyed,
Speaker 3: just like anybody can be annoying.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, you know, yeah, everybody.
Speaker 3: Should be eaten by lions. That's what I'm really saying.
Speaker 3: But I think it's a pretty common feature of human
Speaker 3: psychology that people who abstain from what's perceived as hedonic
Speaker 3: activity are often vilified and disdained by the people who
Speaker 3: engage in that same activity. And this is true for
Speaker 3: not just meat. It's true for like everything that's perceived
Speaker 3: as like some kind of pleasurable consumption or activity, like drugs, alcohol, sex,
Speaker 3: unhealthy food, trashy TV, with any of that stuff, if
Speaker 3: you encounter somebody who says none for me, thanks, it
Speaker 3: can kind of trigger a discomfort and defensiveness in the
Speaker 3: people who are having some of whatever it is. Because
Speaker 3: like if you think of the scene at a party,
Speaker 3: you know, whether it's an episode of Mad Men, or
Speaker 3: you know, kids at college or whatever. If somebody tries
Speaker 3: to refuse a drink that's not usually people don't usually
Speaker 3: react to that in just a neutral way, like if
Speaker 3: they had turned down a glass of water, you react like, oh,
Speaker 3: come on, have one, or you say like, oh, now
Speaker 3: the vibe is off.
Speaker 4: You made it weird.
Speaker 3: Like there's a discomfort people have when when others in
Speaker 3: their social circle are not engaging in all of the
Speaker 3: same hedonic activities that they are, And naturally, I think
Speaker 3: this comes from a place of insecurity, like the presence
Speaker 3: of a person who abstains from something is a natural
Speaker 3: social signal that makes you wonder if maybe you should
Speaker 3: be abstaining as well, And then it kind of makes
Speaker 3: you feel bad and makes you feel like, well, now
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about consuming this more than I wanted to
Speaker 3: be thinking about it in this moment. And so the
Speaker 3: reaction is hostility and sometimes attempts at ostracism, like oh,
Speaker 3: you think you're just so perfect, don't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I guess a lot of this is unavoidable
Speaker 2: just by the you know, the fact that we are
Speaker 2: social animals and we pick up all these cues. And
Speaker 2: this paper backs up most of what you just said. Here,
Speaker 2: for instance, they point out quote the exchange is arguably
Speaker 2: emblematic of the contemporary plague of entitled anger that toxifies
Speaker 2: public discourse whenever entitlement is challenged. However politely so. Some
Speaker 2: of the other key points they make. They say, part
Speaker 2: of this does seem to be unresolved. Guilt as vegan
Speaker 2: lifestyles may be seen as implying a failure to act
Speaker 2: on a moral issue. Again, Oh you think you're so
Speaker 2: great what you're turning down meat? You're saying I should
Speaker 2: turn it down too, That I should feel guilty about
Speaker 2: eating this meat, etc. On top of that, it can
Speaker 2: be interpreted as an affront to freedom of choice for
Speaker 2: some weird reason, even though they are actually engaging in choice.
Speaker 2: It's not a choice if everybody has to eat steak, right.
Speaker 2: And then, on top of that quote, food practices are
Speaker 2: socially powerful markers of social and cultural identity, making actual
Speaker 2: or implied criticism of them personally and hurtfully felt. For instance,
Speaker 2: they give the example that meat often this is less
Speaker 2: most more social than cultural, I guess, but about how
Speaker 2: meat eating is often linked to masculine identity, and therefore
Speaker 2: it could be seen as a threat to one's masculinity
Speaker 2: or some other you know, way of some other like
Speaker 2: cultural critique. They're turning down meat. Meat is important to me,
Speaker 2: therefore they are turning down me.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's weird that I know exactly what you're
Speaker 3: saying here, and I agree that there can be this
Speaker 3: feeling that your freedom is being challenged even when somebody
Speaker 3: has not told you not to do something and not
Speaker 3: I mean, let alone that they don't have any power
Speaker 3: to prevent you from doing it, but haven't even told
Speaker 3: you not to do it or suggested you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 3: And I think it's because sometimes when you do something
Speaker 3: without thinking about doing it, even being asked to think
Speaker 3: about the fact that you're doing it is perceived as
Speaker 3: a challenge to your freedom to do it. And I
Speaker 3: think I think that's where the abstinence of someone else
Speaker 3: comes in. Like, even if someone else abstains from whatever
Speaker 3: it is, meat or alcohol or whatever, even if they're
Speaker 3: not commenting on your behavior, the fact that you notice
Speaker 3: them abstaining makes you think about what you're doing when
Speaker 3: you weren't thinking about it before. And it doesn't feel
Speaker 3: good to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, oh, I'm meeting me, Okay, I guess
Speaker 2: I'm a monster. I guess I'm a literal monster that
Speaker 2: catches tourists and eats them with magic. And so you
Speaker 2: want to turn that on its head and you want
Speaker 2: to create a scenario in which the opposite is true. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, you're the monster. You're the one who's turning people
Speaker 3: into jello.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's one of those things where with Troll two,
Speaker 2: it is on one hand, it's ridiculous, this seems like
Speaker 2: just a ridiculous, hyperbolic thrust of your artistic expression. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, like this is clearly like this
Speaker 2: is a real cultural energy, Like this is a thing
Speaker 2: that people feel, even if they're not like truly rationalizing
Speaker 2: the thought. Maybe it's more subconscious in many cases, but
Speaker 2: you know this, this is a true human reaction. So
Speaker 2: in a way, they've kind of pushed through that, and
Speaker 2: they've dared to make the film that that makes these accusations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we should say in the end, the
Speaker 3: way that they defeat the Witch and the Goblins is
Speaker 3: by eating a double decker baloney sandwich while putting a
Speaker 3: hand on the stonehinge magic stone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which which is within the context of the film
Speaker 2: perfect just a perfect narrative choice. But it also just
Speaker 2: again reeks of this whole, like, oh, eating steak is bad.
Speaker 2: Watch me eat some steak. Oh I'm going to eat
Speaker 2: steaks so hard.
Speaker 3: It's like the sword and the Stone, but with instead
Speaker 3: of a sword, it's like, you know, a mulsified meat product.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it would be the ultimate you know,
Speaker 2: just straight up baloney.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is funny that baloney is sort of used
Speaker 3: as the ultimate meat. It's it's not just any meat.
Speaker 3: It's like the mediest meat you could have. And I
Speaker 3: think maybe that's because it is the most processed form
Speaker 3: of meat, Like it is ground to a finer consistency
Speaker 3: than any other meat on Earth, and thus it's the
Speaker 3: most meaty. Like it's inherently identifying the consumption of meat
Speaker 3: with industrial processes for production of food.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like the the the ultimate like anti
Speaker 2: druidic food product. It's like the perfect thing to overturn stonehenge.
Speaker 3: Wey to hell with nature. Food should not look like
Speaker 3: the shape it originally in habits. But so, there's one
Speaker 3: last thing I wanted to talk about before we wrap
Speaker 3: up our discussion of Troll two, which is the idea
Speaker 3: of verisimilitude in film. This has come up a couple
Speaker 3: of times already. But one of the things everybody notices
Speaker 3: about troll Too, probably its most salient aesthetic feature, is
Speaker 3: the overwhelming anti verisimilitude in the dialogue. Almost every time
Speaker 3: a character says a line, your brain just raises a
Speaker 3: flag that says, uh uh not how people talk. And
Speaker 3: so I'm trying to think of the best examples. One
Speaker 3: is when Joshua says to his dad while they're standing
Speaker 3: there being observed by a bunch of the creepy people.
Speaker 4: In the town.
Speaker 3: Joshua says, there are goblins, monstrous beings. There's, of course
Speaker 3: the line about Grandpa Seth is in all our hearts,
Speaker 3: but you must banish him from your mind. You know,
Speaker 3: the will be gone for a month. Can you take
Speaker 3: care of that business for me? And this made me
Speaker 3: think about a couple of things. I'm sure both of
Speaker 3: these questions will come up again and again in Weird
Speaker 3: House cinema, because anti vera similitude is one of the
Speaker 3: most common and interesting and enjoyable features in bad movies.
Speaker 3: But first of all, why is it? Why is what
Speaker 3: we call vera similitude a desirable characteristic in fiction? To
Speaker 3: begin with, so vera similitude is, of course, you know,
Speaker 3: the feeling of realism, the feeling of life likeness in
Speaker 3: a book or in a movie. You know it seems
Speaker 3: true to life. Why is that desirable to begin with?
Speaker 3: And then the second thing is what actually causes the
Speaker 3: feeling of verisimilitude in a film? As to why it's
Speaker 3: a desirable characteristic, I mean, there are a couple of answers,
Speaker 3: first of which is verisimilitude is a mental lubricant, right
Speaker 3: like it helps you stay immersed in the story and
Speaker 3: avoid unnecessary metacognition where you start remembering that you're sitting
Speaker 3: there watching a movie and thinking about it as a
Speaker 3: created piece of media. Anti verisimilitude automatically and immediately causes
Speaker 3: that metacognition. Every time there's a line that thuds as unreal,
Speaker 3: like that you can't be in the story anymore because
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, wait a minute, I'm watching a movie.
Speaker 2: One of the weird things about this, though I don't
Speaker 2: know if you've had this experience, is that, in a way,
Speaker 2: the experience of watching a film like this, like Troll two,
Speaker 2: is akin to watching a production of a William Shakespeare play.
Speaker 2: You know, because nobody in our immediate world speaks like
Speaker 2: a Shakespeare play. For that matter, you can point to
Speaker 2: other examples where this still holds up from contemporary authors,
Speaker 2: like nobody actually speaks like a David Mammott play. You know,
Speaker 2: but but but we're drawn into it. But on the
Speaker 2: on the on the on the other hand, it can
Speaker 2: throw you out of it at times if you stop
Speaker 2: to realize, oh, nobody talks like this. I don't talk
Speaker 2: like this. People around me don't talk like this. I
Speaker 2: don't eavesdrop conversations of this nature.
Speaker 3: Well, this actually cuts ahead to the other question I
Speaker 3: wanted to answer, what causes something to feel realistic? Because
Speaker 3: I agree with you, and I'd actually go farther than
Speaker 3: you just did. It's not just Shakespeare or David Mammott,
Speaker 3: I would say flatly. Almost no movies have what could
Speaker 3: actually be called realistic dialogue, if you're going to be
Speaker 3: technical about it, because almost no movie has dialogue that
Speaker 3: sounds the way people really talk in life. And usually
Speaker 3: you wouldn't want a movie to sound that way because
Speaker 3: it would be boring, It would be really teed and
Speaker 3: hard to understand, and narratively inefficient. It would not move
Speaker 3: the plot along. And yet when we listen to characters
Speaker 3: in a movie talk to each other, there is a
Speaker 3: quality that we automatically look out for, and we intuitively
Speaker 3: think of this quality as realism or vera similitude. But
Speaker 3: that's not exactly what it is, right, So what is
Speaker 3: that quality and what is that quality that when it's
Speaker 3: violated we feel like, oh, people.
Speaker 4: Don't talk like this.
Speaker 3: I don't know the full answer to that question, but
Speaker 3: I think part of it has to do with a
Speaker 3: kind of flowing narrative logic, where one idea or statement
Speaker 3: feels like it logically proceeds into the next one, even
Speaker 3: though that's not how people would actually have a conversation
Speaker 3: in real life. Usually, a lot of the dialogue in
Speaker 3: the movies that causes this feeling of anti verisimilitude or
Speaker 3: feels very unreal has this quality of constantly stopping, or
Speaker 3: where the conversation is just ring and you are you
Speaker 3: are repeatedly feeling this thud of an inappropriate maneuver in
Speaker 3: the conversation.
Speaker 4: Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it makes sense. You know that. It also
Speaker 2: drives home I think why sometimes the most memorable moment
Speaker 2: in a movie is when another character is telling a story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: two examples come to mind from kind of related but
Speaker 2: ultimately very different films. One, of course is quint and Jaws,
Speaker 2: but the other is Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith
Speaker 2: is a scene where he tells a story to Anakin,
Speaker 2: And both of those are tremendous scenes.
Speaker 3: Best scene in the prequels in my view.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are both like terrific scenes that have their
Speaker 2: own kind of inner reality. You know, you could you
Speaker 2: could take either one outside of the rest of the
Speaker 2: film and it would still make sense. It would still
Speaker 2: be entirely self contained, and it is entirely narrative and
Speaker 2: structured in a way that we just letely consume it.
Speaker 3: Can I learn to have this power not from a vegetarian?
Speaker 2: And of course Quinn is eaten by a shark, so
Speaker 2: it's perfect as well.
Speaker 3: This is also something we could come back to in
Speaker 3: future Weird House episodes.
Speaker 4: But I was thinking about.
Speaker 3: The comparison between how verisimilitude is used in analyzing fiction
Speaker 3: versus verisimilitude in science, where the term has played an
Speaker 3: important role in the history of science and philosophy of science,
Speaker 3: and like trying to come up with ideas about what
Speaker 3: makes a scientific theory a good one. The basic problem is,
Speaker 3: you know, we generally presume that the dominant theories in
Speaker 3: the sciences tend over time to advance toward increasing truthiness
Speaker 3: or verisimilitude. You know, they get a better and better
Speaker 3: description of life in the world as it really is.
Speaker 3: But and this was a point discussed by the philosopher
Speaker 3: of science Carl Popper, all scientific theories are, in the
Speaker 3: strictest understanding falls they're never perfect explanations of reality. The
Speaker 3: understanding is that their attempts to get closer and closer
Speaker 3: to accurately explaining and predicting the world. But you could
Speaker 3: ask questions like what criteria would actually decide whether a
Speaker 3: theory is more truth like or has more verisimilitude than another?
Speaker 3: For example, does it matter how much a theory explains
Speaker 3: or does it matter more how accurately it explains what
Speaker 3: it does? You know, if a theory is like ninety
Speaker 3: percent accurate but explains a lot of things, is that
Speaker 3: better or worse than a theory that's ninety five percent
Speaker 3: accurate but explains a lot less.
Speaker 2: Hm, that's a good point. I mean, I guess it
Speaker 2: to compare it to dialogue in a film, like as
Speaker 2: a viewer, you want that dialogue to tell you what's
Speaker 2: happening and what will happen. That's kind of what the
Speaker 2: dialogue's doing. Right, here's a dialogue scene. It's about establishing
Speaker 2: the threat of the goblins or whatever. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, you don't want it to be so blatantly explanatory.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a careful balance you have to you
Speaker 2: have to strike.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean that's actually one of the one
Speaker 3: of my favorite types of bad dialogue in movies is
Speaker 3: the kind that is just obviously to fill the audience
Speaker 3: in about something, and this is something the characters would
Speaker 3: never need to say to each other.
Speaker 2: Oh. There's a tremendous scene of this to a certain
Speaker 2: extent intro too, where the woman is transforming into the
Speaker 2: plant who has been transformed by the witch's potion. The
Speaker 2: goblins are eating her, and then you have the kid
Speaker 2: down there who's staring up and he says they're eating her,
Speaker 2: and then they're going to eat me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh, oh my god.
Speaker 2: And there's a fly in his head the whole time.
Speaker 2: It's also so weird and authentically twenty twenty. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just it's like, of course you're going to be
Speaker 2: eating next, that's implied, but he says it too. And
Speaker 2: that's one of the wonderful things this film.
Speaker 3: I imagine this must have been a really buggy set
Speaker 3: because people get covered in green goop, and I imagine
Speaker 3: that goop was very sweet and sticky whatever it was. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there must have been flies all over the place.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's another great piece of dialogue like that in the
Speaker 3: very first scene where the mother sits down on Joshua's
Speaker 3: bed to explain to him that he must banish Grandpa
Speaker 3: Seth from his mind. She says, I think, she says,
Speaker 3: Grandpa Seth meant a lot to us. He meant a
Speaker 3: lot to you, to your sister, to your father, and
Speaker 3: to me his daughter.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great.
Speaker 4: Should we wrap up there?
Speaker 2: I guess we should. Yeah, let's say. What else to
Speaker 2: point out here? I will say that I mentioned Night Killer,
Speaker 2: which also came out in nineteen ninety. It's a slazier film. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I gotta say sexualized Slasherville.
Speaker 3: I tried to watch that one, and the scenes the
Speaker 3: good scene are really funny, even like on the troll
Speaker 3: two level, Like there's a scene of a dance choreography
Speaker 3: rehearsal at the beginning. That's just exquisite. But also that
Speaker 3: movie is gross. I would not recommend it at all.
Speaker 2: So it's it's a deeper cut, not for everybody. It's
Speaker 2: not near as fun as Troll too. Troll two is
Speaker 2: for the children, and I mean, well, don't take me
Speaker 2: to the bank on that, but it's I feel like
Speaker 2: it's more.
Speaker 4: Creative before you show it to your children. But yeah,
Speaker 4: certainly more than Night Killer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, night Killer is not for most people, but it's
Speaker 2: out there as well. And you know that Fragatso has
Speaker 2: an entire filmography that's worth exploring as well. We mentioned
Speaker 2: Best Worst Movie as a documentary worth checking out about
Speaker 2: the making of Troll two and sort of the the
Speaker 2: culture of its acceptance by cult film fans. I also
Speaker 2: want to point out that there's an excellent episode of
Speaker 2: CBC's Ideas, which is a radio show podcast. They did
Speaker 2: an episode on cult films titled the Cult Movie Cannon,
Speaker 2: and they discuss like what makes a cult film? Why
Speaker 2: do we keep coming back to them? And they mentioned
Speaker 2: several films, but there is a segment on Troll two
Speaker 2: that is notable.
Speaker 3: Oh cool, You've sent me that to check out before,
Speaker 3: and I apologize that I never got around to it.
Speaker 3: Now I feel bad. Well, I have to go back
Speaker 3: and listen to that now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They talk about Repo Man, they talk about The
Speaker 2: Last Dragon. It's a fun, fun listen. They also interview
Speaker 2: some experts on bad movies and cult films.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, there's one more I have to mention before
Speaker 3: we quit, because it's one that's not really worth watching
Speaker 3: in full because it's pretty boring on its own, but
Speaker 3: it's a good one to sort of put on and
Speaker 3: catch a snip of here and there. And it's called
Speaker 3: Robo War. This was not directed by Claudio for Grosso.
Speaker 3: I think it was written by him.
Speaker 2: And they're directed by Bruno.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Yeah, And this one is a just blatant
Speaker 3: ripoff of Predator. Came out a year or two after Predator,
Speaker 3: and it has the guy who plays blast Hard Cheese
Speaker 3: in Space Mutiny Red Brown. Yes, he's playing the Arnold
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger role, and the Predator in it is this cyborg.
Speaker 3: So if you watch the movie with the Google auto
Speaker 3: generated subtitles on it's on YouTube, and you get it
Speaker 3: to come up with the subtitles. The robot is sort
Speaker 3: of mumbling in all of its scenes where it's stalking people,
Speaker 3: and it keeps saying what YouTube thinks is greasy target
Speaker 3: center And that phrase is in my head forever.
Speaker 2: The target center. That should have been the title.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's it from me.
Speaker 2: All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this
Speaker 2: episode of Weird House Cinema. But in the meantime, we'd
Speaker 2: love to hear from everybody. Do you think this is
Speaker 2: a wise use of our time? Do you have problems
Speaker 2: with all of this? Let us know about that. But
Speaker 2: even more of the point, what other weird films should
Speaker 2: we consider for the future, not only bad films, you know,
Speaker 2: not only be movies, but just films that have some
Speaker 2: element of weirdness to them. What would you like to
Speaker 2: hear us discuss on the show. Let us know. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, if you want to listen to episodes of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, which again come out every
Speaker 2: Tuesday and Thursday, and maybe you want to listen to
Speaker 2: the occasional episode of Weird House Cinema on Fridays, well
Speaker 2: you can find Stuff to Blow your Mind wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcast. That is the show. That is the feed.
Speaker 2: That is the podcast feed in which you find this show.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to get in touch with
Speaker 3: us with feedback on this episode or any other, to
Speaker 3: suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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