27 March 2010

Best Worst Sequels

United States - 1990
Director - Claudio Fragasso
Epic Home Video, 1992, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 38 minutes

So much has been said about this film that it would be a waste of fine motor control to type anything else. There are so many incredible and insane moments in this film it becomes quickly obvious to fans of Italian exploitation that this has to be a spaghetti disaster. And sure enough the man at the helm is none other than Claudio Fragasso the guy who played second fiddle to Bruno Mattei on numerous trashy classics like Rats and Women's Prison Massacre. These fellows are masters of the smash-n'-grab, ad-hoc moviemaking school, and Troll II is no different. In fact they smashed and grabbed a large part of the plot of The Stuff to make this movie. I of course am personally fond of it because I share Grandpa Seth's name, minus the grandpa part. Suffice to say the documentary Best Worst Movie is not yet available from Netflix so I'm on razors edge here. Damnit, I said I wasn't going to write anything. (in retrospect having seen Best Worst Movie, it is a fine piece of movie nerdery and highly worth viewing. If you have read to this point of this blog and haven't seen it, get going.)



United States - 1988
Director - David Irving
Vestron Video, 1989, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 24 minutes

C.H.U.D. II runs along the same lines; having little to do with the first film, a super cheap budget, bad acting, ridiculous plot. The difference is that C.H.U.D. II clearly is fully aware of all of these faults and goes hog balls out having fun. In fact, such a great time that I didn't really notice it's faults. In fact, I don't think it had any faults.While the humor in Troll II stems primarily from its ad hoc absurdity, this film aims for it and hits. C.H.U.D. II may be a perfect movie.
You can watch and love all of it in segments on YouTube.



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