Troll : Behind the Scenes


Interview with Charles Band  

Where did Troll come from?

"I had, and still have, a wonderful relationship with John Buechler and things were going great at Empire. I forget who actually came up with the name of the movie. It doesn't much matter. I wanted to do that kind of a film. John and I were on the set of another film - Ghoulies possibly - and we were talking about it. This is years ago but I certainly do remember the production side because once John and I worked a deal out and he came in with a treatment and then Ed Naha wrote the script, and I gave them some ideas of things I wanted to do and together we created this fantasy world.

“Then it came time to make it. Of course John was busy creating all sorts of weird little puppets and creatures and we really wound up with a completely bizarre and eclectic cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sonny Bono - poor guy has passed away - it was a strange cast. At the time the young kid who was the lead was very hot because he was in The Neverending Story which was a big, big success. It had June Lockhart in it and Phil Fondacaro, who I literally just finished a film with; Phil and I, I don't know how many movies we've done together but I'm sure it's over a dozen. We're making this movie in Italy and I also remember very fondly that my dad was involved in producing the film. He passed away a few years ago; we were very close and he was a great guy.

“It was just wonderful. I look back and it was a moment in time when I had a studio in Italy, we were making big movies. I just wish things had continued because everything changed, business changed, money changed, the dollar got weak against the lira, everything blew in the wrong direction. For a few wonderful years we shot these Empire movies that looked very American but were all shot outside Rome in Italy. I remember them very fondly, whether it was crazy Klaus Kinski in Crawlspace or one of the Trancers shows or Troll or Eliminators, which we shot in Spain. Seven or eight movies that are all part of that and probably Troll is the one that I'm most attached to. It did pretty well and people liked it and now years later people are reminding me of the name of the main character."

It's bizarre, isn't it?  You have a young boy named Harry Potter who discovers that he has magical powers and uses them to fight a troll.

"I've heard that JK Rowling has acknowledged that maybe she saw this low-budget movie and perhaps it inspired her. Who knows what the story is? Life's too short for a fight as far as I'm concerned but, having said that, there are certain scenes in that movie, not to mention the name of the main character, and this of course predates the Harry Potter books by many, many years. So there's that strange connection."