The Horrors of Being Trolled: 35 Years of Troll 2 and Identifying As a Goblin

In the summer of 1989, my twin brother, Paul Gibbs, and I landed our first roles in a feature film. It was a low budget Italian-made horror flick called Goblins, shooting in Morgan, Utah, and we’d be playing two of the ‘“title characters,” or so we thought. The title changed when the film came to the U.S. on home video a year later, and this week, the infamous Troll 2 celebrates its 35th anniversary at the Salt Lake Film Society.

​Troll 2 tells the story of Joshua (Michael Paul Stephenson), a boy whose family goes on vacation in the rural town of Nilbog, only to discover that the town is inhabited by vegetarian goblins who turn humans into plants so they can eat them. If you’ve never experienced Troll 2, the screening on Thursday, May 29 at 7:00 p.m. at Broadway Center Cinemas is going to be the best possible way to do so. The movie will be followed by a Q&A and meet-and-greet with some members of the cast, including Darren Ewing, Jason Steadman-Eves, Stephen Hatch, Lance Williams, Melissa Bridge Porter and, of course, the Brothers Gibbs.  

If you’re wondering how or why Goblins became Troll 2, despite the lack of any mention of trolls in the movie, it’s rather simple, but it’s important to me. The film was distributed by MGM, which hoped to make a profit by marketing it as a sequel to their 1986 horror film Troll. This is has special significance to me, because I’ll never forget the first day on set, when creature effects and make-up designer Maurizio Trani showed us our goblin masks. I blurted out, “These are so cool, they remind me of the ones in the movie Troll.” Maurizio rounded on me and growled, “These goblin, not troll… ORIGINAL DESIGNS!” Every day for the rest of the shoot, this man made sure at least once a day to hit me with an icy, menacing glare, and I knew that one day he would murder and eat me. Thus, the news of the new title was a major personal vindication. In 2002, I learned that the film had developed a devoted cult following, something that my brother and I foresaw long before anyone else — another fact that’s of personal importance. By week two of shooting, we were voicing the belief that the movie may well turn out to be so bad that it would one day be immortalized. 

Troll 2 fever reached its height when when a Utah filmmaker and now adjunct film professor at Weber State University, Blair Sterrett, undertook the mission of tracking down nearly all of the cast and crew in the mid-to-late 2000s. Out of that, special screenings and events led to the release of Stephenson’s acclaimed documentary Best Worst Movie in 2007. Being featured in the documentary gave me the opportunity to finally be recognized for the role that I had played, having been left off the credits and, to say the least, never acknowledged. The newfound recognition meant suddenly having fans, and I met some truly delightful people in this fandom over the years, and even took one on a casual date. I was rather naive, however, and these were the days when Facebook was first making major breakthroughs in the ways people could connect and hurt each other. 

In my eagerness to be welcoming to fans, I accepted a friend request from a man whom I’m going to call “Freddie,”  because using his real name feels possibly dangerous and like a violation of trust. Freddie was intense. He tended to leave enough truly bizarre comments on my Facebook page that I was frequently getting messages from other friends asking, “Hey, who’s the psychopath?” So I did what any sane person would do and gave Freddie my phone number. The reason that I did this had to do with Freddie’s professed interest in another bizarre, Utah-based cult phenomenon that I’d been a part of, by which I mean the LDS church. While I repeatedly cautioned Freddie not to join a major religion that demands commitment and dedication simply because he liked Troll 2 and wanted to get closer to someone involved in it, he assured me this was not his motivation at all (spoiler alert, it was). Freddie may have been a socially awkward man-child behemoth with little education, but he knew enough about how Mormons are programmed to choose the right angle to worm his way into my life, and he even planned to move from his home state to Utah. “Hey Patrick, when I come out there, can we watch Troll 2 together?” he would ask. “Sure, Freddie,” I would reply, and Freddie would add, “Can we watch it every day?” 

It was only a matter of weeks before it became clear that Freddie’s interest in becoming baptized was simply a tool used by a very troubled person who had developed an all-consuming obsession with me. It ended in an explosion of anger, threats of violence against the missionaries who were talking to him and a series of bizarre and invasive phone calls from Freddie’s mother. I went into therapy to process the whole experience, and followed that up with a breakdown and inpatient hospitalization for anxiety, severe depression and suicidal ideation. This colorful chapter in my story prompted me to seriously reevaluate some major aspects of my life and beliefs, and to run as far away from Nilbog as I could. To my regret, I deleted many photos of my memories of Troll 2 related events, and not only did I go 12 years without watching the film, I couldn’t even hear its name mentioned without feeling uneasy and bitter. 

It’s at this point, of course, that Boba Fett entered the story.  While I was shooting a film with actor Daniel Logan (Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones) and we were on a long car ride — just the two of us — we talked about our experiences with the fandom menace. I shared my story, and Daniel talked about going from an unknown boy from a small Maori community in New Zealand to being cast as little Boba in the biggest franchise in movie history. Daniel had his own experiences with zealous fans, the internet and with trolls, but he shared a thought with me that I’ll never forget. “The movies we did belong to the fans,” Daniel said. “But our memories and experiences in being a part of it all? Those belong to us, and nobody can take them away.” This stuck with me, but even more impactful was the passing of Deborah Reed, who played the role of Creedence Leonore Gielgud the Goblin Queen, and embodied the character for decades, embracing the silliness and the fans until the world finally lost her to a monster worse than trolls and goblins combined: cancer. I never became so jaded about my Troll 2 experience that being referred to by Deborah — who was so supportive about what I went through — as one of her Goblin children was anything less than an honor, and she will always be my Queen.

Now, armed with a world-class pep talk from the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy, I’m returning to Nilbog. I’m doing so to honor the memory of Deborah Reed, to help raise awareness of others fighting cancer, including one of my dearest friends, and also to promote the cause of mental health awareness. As the screening draws nearer, friends who know the full story of my history with Troll 2 have asked me how I felt about the event. My answer, in a nutshell, is that the Salt Lake Film Society, an organization of great importance in the local scene, is extending great hospitality to the film, its cast and most importantly, to the fans who’ve ensured that the movie will live forever. And if there’s one lesson we’ve all learn from Troll 2, it’s that you don’t piss on hospitality.

Read more from SLUG‘s Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Lilo & Stitch
Film Review: Mission: Impossible –The Final Reckoning