Prior to conducting the business that is this blog, I would like to take a moment and thank all of my followers.  I have engaged with many people over the last year on both WordPress and the Twits and I have to tell all of you, I have genuinely enjoyed corresponding with ALL of you.  I hope that you have enjoyed your holiday season and I wish you all a happy new year.  2016 will be ours!

Back to it…

This next one is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.  I have seen it way more than any human being should ever have.  I don’t know why…but I still like this damn cheesy horror/adventure movie.

It starts out simple enough with a family moving into a new apartment downtown.  They meet the grumpy neighbor downstairs, the little person down the hall, the grumpy old lady upstairs, and the nice single lady, all very quickly and briefly at first…but we get to know them all better as the story goes on.

In the family we have the wacky-fun dad, the ditsy mom, the cute little “goldie locks” younger sister, and Atreyu.

Innocently enough, yeah?

Of course the little girl has to lose that damn hypnotic ball down the dark laundry room stairway…

…which leads to her abduction by an apocalypse wielding troll.

“Troll,” as ridiculous as it sounds–is much better than the description I just gave it.  It’s campy, humorous, suspenseful, and…did I mention campy?

My favorite story about this movie comes from a conversation that my mother and her best friend were having over coffee.  My mother’s best friend’s daughter was my best friend…wait what?

Anyways…my best friend and I were playing under feet as my mom and her friend (I called her my adoptive aunt–the best kind) were talking about a strange movie my dad made my mom watch the other day.

Mom: It had Sonny Bono in it.

MBF: Sonny Bono?

Mom: Yes, he’s not in it very long, and he’s terrible…

MBF: Oh! … Is that the one where they turn Sonny Bono into a pickle?

I had to watch this movie after a question like that.

My mother was reluctant…

She let me watch the movie, only after the scene I really wanted to see…she felt it would be too traumatic for me.  Mind you, she didn’t know at this point that I had already watched “Poltergeist.”  I kept that a secret for decades.

So mom wouldn’t let me watch that one crucial scene.  What was I to do?  Who could I turn to?

Yeah, no surprise.  I watched it with Dad one night.  He let me watch the whole thing.  The epic Bono “pickle” scene?   #Unforgettable

After you watch it once and mom finds out about it, she can be mad, but you get to watch it again…you’ve already seen it.

This movie had a ton of the fantasy elements that I was already exposed to in other movies.  Monsters, magic, forests, elves, prophecies, villains, heroes, damsels, and self sacrifice.

Basically, Torok the Troll kidnaps the daughter of the family to use her as his future bride.  He uses magic to take her shape and disguise himself  so that he can terrorize everybody in the apartment by turning them and their environments into his magical minions.

Torok is not the only magical being at the complex.  Eunice St. Clair, Torok’s ex lover is there to stop him and grabs Atreyu as an ally.

Shenanigans ensue, jungles grow, there’s a climactic battle, I think you get the picture.

At the end of the day, it’s a silly little B-Movie with lame special effects, cool costumes, and a very decent score by Richard Band.

I’m really glad my dad let me watch that scene…the movie didn’t make any sense until I saw what sprang from that Bono pickle…wink wink.

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