Editorials
Celebrating the Wonderful Weirdness of John Carl Buechler’s ‘Troll’
The horror community is in mourning over the loss of director and special FX wizard John Carl Buechler, who passed away this week at the age of 66. Though he will be best be remembered for his countless contributions to creature and makeup effects – his gooey monsters, splattery kills, and his role as mentor and friend to so many in the industry – Buechler occasionally had the opportunity to direct. His films, while never entirely successful, always showcased something special and unique – they have an energy to them and an enthusiasm for filmmaking that’s infectious.
That pretty well describes Troll, Buechler’s feature-length directing debut from 1986. After designing and executing effects for a number of Empire Pictures productions for producer Charles Band, Buechler was given the chance to sit in the director’s chair for one segment (“Demons of the Dead”) in the 1985 anthology The Dungeonmaster. It was 1986’s Troll, however, that first found Buechler fully calling the shots on a project he had dreamed up years earlier*, though screenwriting duties would eventually fall to Ed Naha.
Originally conceived as a bloody, rated-R horror movie, Troll was softened into a more family-friendly PG-13 fantasy when the project moved over from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures to Empire Pictures, the company that would ultimately produce and release the film. With an impressive cast and a big marketing push, it’s one of Empire’s more ambitious efforts despite retaining some of the studio’s hallmarks – namely, the kinds of little monsters that would help characterize Empire and all but define Band’s next company, Full Moon Features.
Troll wasn’t a big hit when it was released into theaters in early 1986, and wouldn’t really find its audience until home video and cable TV. It’s easy to see why, too: it had (in the great Empire tradition) a cool VHS cover box, and because of its PG-13 rating could be aired on HBO at all hours of the day, meaning kids could be exposed to its what-the-fuck weirdness and return to it over and over again in an attempt to master their own kindertrauma. Scenes like the one in which Sonny Bono (!) bubbles and oozes and ultimately transforms into a green pod are the stuff of childhood nightmares. Troll’s willingness to be strange and sort of scary is a major benefit of hiring a hard-edged horror maker like Buechler to direct – he softens some of the intensity of his usual effects work, but chooses not to dull it completely.
As a narrative, Troll isn’t especially compelling or coherent. That’s not what makes the movie memorable. It’s the margins that make it special, whether it’s the casting of Julie Louis Dreyfus and June Lockhart and the aforementioned Sonny Bono in supporting roles, or a scene of Larry Cohen regular/giant weirdo Michael Moriarty dancing and lip syncing to “Summertime Blues,” or a touching monologue from Phil Fondacaro about being sick and realizing at a young age that he wasn’t going to grow any bigger. Buechler uses the film’s plot as merely a clothesline upon which to hang a bunch of colorful and offbeat stuff, and that’s where his interests lie.
Buechler didn’t direct many movies, but most of his work was characterized by that kind of weirdness. Even his most high-profile effort, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, introduces telekinetic powers into what was otherwise a straightforward slasher franchise. His entry in the Ghoulies series sends the little monsters to a college campus and has them speak for the first time. Buechler’s movies revel in the strange and unusual which, when combined with his penchant for imaginative practical effects, take on a kind of surreal quality. Troll is the same way, growing more bizarre and surreal as it progresses until Buechler unleashes his pièce de résistance: a character is turned into a talking tree stump and an enormous bat monster troll attacks our young heroes. That Troll somehow earns this sequence is a testament to its own insanity. Insanity was one of Beuchler’s great gifts, even when it came to designing makeup effects and gore gags.
Troll would eventually be overshadowed by its sequel, the endlessly watchable and borderline inept Troll 2, one of the most notorious cult films of the last 50 years. It exists these days mostly in the memories of those of us who grew up watching it on cable and video (or as the answer to a trivia question about the “other” Harry Potter movie). In honor of John Carl Buechler’s passing, though, maybe it could be reconsidered as part of a larger body of work – a celebration of practical effects, of imagination, of the endless potential of the strange. Buechler poured his heart into every rubber monster he made, every movie he directed. Even a goofy one like Troll.
*As reported in Empire of the Bs by Dave Jay, Torsten Dewi, and Nathan Shumate.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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