A Troll in Central Park (2022)

Don Bluth was a Disney animator through the 1970s. He worked on projects such as Robin Hood, The Rescuers, and Pete’s Dragon. There was a falling out between Bluth and the Disney company during the making of The Fox and the Hound, which led Bluth to resign from his high-ranking animation position. He would soon form his own animation company, one that would rival Disney through the 1980s and 1990s.

Some of the earlier productions that Bluth’s new company made were quite successful. The Secret of NIMH was their first feature-length film and set the stage for future flicks like The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and An American Tail. Bluth’s production company was successful through the 1980s thanks to this string of films but would fall on harder times during the 1990s. Disney was on the upswing with their renaissance-era films, while Bluth’s movies seemed to regress and have less emotional and story impact. Disney was pulling away in the animation landscape, leaving Bluth to flounder.

One of the movies to come out of that early 90s era of Bluth productions was A Troll in Central Park. Stanley (Dom DeLuise) was a troll who was banished from his home for liking plants. He was flung into Central Park, where two children, Gus (Phillip Glasser) and Rosie (Tawny Sunshine Glover), stumbled upon him. When the troll queen, Gnorga (Cloris Leachman), found out that Stanley was thriving in Central Park, she showed up to get rid of him forever with the threat of turning him to stone.

A Troll in Central Park was the epitome of why Don Bluth’s movies no longer had the staying power of his older movies. There just wasn’t a whole lot to it. You can see from the story that there wasn’t too much depth. A troll got banished, then the queen who banished him came to essentially kill him. That was it. There wasn’t a major journey. It was a banishment followed by a battle and that was the whole thing.

You could compare that to Disney’s major animated release from the same year, The Lion King, and see just how shallow it was. The Lion King had a character banished from the home he was born and raised in. He had to learn and grow during his ostracization so that he could come back and relieve his kingdom of the evil ruler atop it. There was a character arc. A Troll in Central Park didn’t feature an arc. Stanley was a rather passive protagonist, letting things happen to him instead of pushing the story forward. He didn’t grow and fight back against the evil Gnorga. The most change that happened was when Rosie was in danger and Stanley decided he should help her.

The passive nature of Stanley was the most off-putting part of A Troll in Central Park. After being banished from his home, he just hung around in some cave under a bridge in Central Park. He made plants with his green thumb and slept. He had no drive to do anything beyond that. Even when he met Gus and Rosie, he just sang a song about his plants and then they all took a nap. When Gnorga showed up, it was Gus and Rosie that battled her. He slept through most of the conflict, only waking up after everyone had already fought and were on the brink of being defeated by Gnorga. He finally did something at that point, but it was an hour and somewhat into the movie. For over an hour, the titular troll had no forward momentum. He was as standstill as a character could be.

The other main characters, Gus and Rosie had a little bit more to do, but that’s only because they were the ones first in danger when Gnorga arrived at Central Park. Gus wanted to play with his remote-control boat. When his dad had to go to work, he snuck out of the house with his sister to play with the boat in Central Park. As they were leaving, Gnorga attacked. Gus led the charge to take down Gnorga. He wasn’t necessarily a great character. He was that whiny kid who complained and acted out when things didn’t go his way. What gave Gus some urgency and made him a better character than Stanley was that he actually did active things. He went to the park. He fled from Gnorga. He fought Gnorga when she kidnapped Rosie. Gus wasn’t just letting life happen around him. He was actively doing things to change the situations he was in.

Rosie, on the other hand, was only a little active. Her curiosity was what brought Stanley into their lives. While at the park, she crawled into the cave that Stanley now lived in. Yeah, the loss of her troll stuffy had something to do with it, but she still took the initiative to go into the cave. Rosie was the quintessential child character for a Bluth production. Earlier movies like The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven had featured Judith Barsi in that role, before her tragic death. Tawny Sunshine Glover voiced Rosie. She was eight years old when A Troll in Central Park was released. That meant she was another young child portraying a young child. She did the same thing in Thumbelina, released only a few months prior. Don Bluth really liked to have children portraying children through realistic voice performances in his movies. The characters weren’t about being the smart, quirky children. They were kids who acted and sounded like real kids.

The active characters couldn’t make up for how passive Stanley was when he was one of the focal points of the movie. It was his story being told. It was his conflict. But everything happened because of the actions of other characters. It caused the story to be a simple, yet messy experience. A Troll in Central Park wasn’t the worst animated movie I’ve seen. But it wasn’t good. It was outshined by the other Don Bluth movie that year, Thumbelina, and both were no match for Disney’s animated flick, The Lion King. It made sense why Disney ended the 90s as a successful animated studio while Bluth’s company disappeared.

Don Bluth had a major influence over animation through the 1980s and 1990s. His company was the main competition for Disney, striking in an era where Disney was having trouble. His success came during their down time. But as Disney recovered and began releasing successful films once again, Bluth’s movies didn’t grow. They regressed into more simplified, basic stories. The Bluth productions couldn’t keep up and went away by the turn of the century. Those early films, though… They’ll always have a special place in animated films. They will always be remembered.

Now let’s throw some notes in here:

• Don Bluth also directed Thumbelina (week 286) with his partner Gary Goldman.
• A Troll in Central Park was the third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Dom DeLuise, who also appeared in Baby Geniuses (week 50) and Sextette (week 141).
• Another three timer was Cloris Leachman, who was in The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (week 39) and Foodfight! (week 143) as well as A Troll in Central Park.
• Finishing off the three timers was Neil Ross. He was in A Troll in Central Park, Son of the Mask (week 207) and Thumbelina (week 286).
• Three actors were in both A Troll in Central Park and Thumbelina (week 286). They were Tawny Sunshine Glover, Pat Musick, and Will Ryan.
• Finally, Bill Fagerbakke was in Space Buddies (week 270) and A Troll in Central Park.
• Have you seen A Troll in Central Park? What did you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can also get a hold of me on Twitter if you want to suggest a movie for me to watch. The comments are a good place for suggestions, too.
• Be sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram.
• I’ll be getting away from animated movies next week. That was a nice one week adventure, but I’ve got something a little crazier ready to go. I’m going to be checking out a movie called Clownado, from the mind of Todd Sheets. I hope you’ll join me for that one. See you next week.

Blades (1989)

When people bring up the most influential movies of all time, one of the movies they continuously return to is Jaws. It is widely considered the start of blockbuster movies. It kicked off Steven Spielberg’s career. It also led to a wide variety of rip-offs featuring sharks, bears, orcas, and other assorted animals. Jaws paved the way for many movies that followed. It paved the way for the movie industry that followed.

I want to go back to the rip-offs for this post. Particularly one of them. It might not be considered a rip-off in the traditional sense. It was more of a parody. You’ll see what I mean as I get deeper into it. Blades came out in 1989. It took the story of Jaws and transplanted it into a new setting with a new villain. It wasn’t like Piranha in the sense that it was an attack movie that came in the wake of Jaws. This one was different. It wasn’t even one of those movies that took footage from Jaws and its sequels to put together as a new movie. Blades was practically the entire Jaws story, reshot in a different context.

What was Blades, exactly? Roy Kent (Robert North) was a golf pro hired to work at a New Jersey golf course. The course’s owner, Norman Osgood (William Towner), scheduled a golf tournament for that weekend and Roy was set to participate. There was only one problem. Mangled bodies were being found around the course grounds. As more people were killed, the employees of the golf course discovered the culprit was a possessed lawnmower, out for blood. They had to hunt it down and destroy it before it killed more people.

As you can see, the story of Blades was similar to that of Jaws. There was some sort of bloodthirsty creature, in this case a lawnmower, killing people while a big event was looming. Someone had to hunt down that bloodthirsty creature and get rid of it before there was a catastrophe. You might not realize just how similar the two stories were, and why this might be considered more of a parody than a rip-off. I’m going to get into more detail right now.

Let’s start with the opening scene of Blades. It very much played out like the beginning of Jaws, only maybe a little more violent. Jaws opened with a couple heading into the ocean to fool around. The young woman dove into the water. The guy passed out in the sand. She would be attacked by a shark and he wouldn’t. The attack would kick off the events of the movie. Blades changed things up a bit because it wasn’t set in an ocean town. A young couple wanted to fool around. They looked for a quiet place on the golf course, finding a nice patch of rough. A lawnmower came around and attacked them, mangling their bodies. The discovery of the bodies kickstarted the events of the movie.

The biggest difference between the openings of the two movies were the level of violence. The attacks happened off screen, so it wasn’t like there was a whole lot of blood flying around. But there was an added death in Blades that wasn’t in Jaws. The couple was killed instead of just the gal. Yes, I used the word “gal.” This was one more death than the movie that inspired it. That added death made sense. Blades was a Troma release. Troma was a continuation of the grindhouse aesthetic after the rise of blockbuster cinema. It only made sense that their parody of Jaws would have slightly more death because of its grindhouse background. This added violence could also be seen through the added blood and gore during other attacks in Blades. I’ll get to some of those later. I should introduce the characters first.

Blades had four main characters who were based on four of the central Jaws characters. The first, and most obvious, was Roy. He was based on Chief Brody. He was the new golf pro for the golf course, much like Brody was the fairly new police chief in Amity. Chief Brody was played by Roy Scheider, hence the main character of Blades being named Roy. And, much like his Jaws counterpart, Roy had a somewhat debilitating trait when it came to doing his job properly. Roy was an alcoholic whose game was falling off. He was afraid he would never regain his skill and had become accustomed to his own mediocrity. It was similar to Chief Brody being afraid of the water. Roy had to overcome his golfer’s block to take down the lawnmower, like Chief Brody had to overcome his fear of water to hunt and kill the shark. They essentially had the same emotional arcs.

The second character in Blades was Kelly Lange (Victoria Scott). She was the Hooper of Blades, though not the scientist that Hooper was in Jaws. Kelly was Roy’s assistant golf pro. At first, she was against Roy. She thought he had taken the golf pro position from her grasp. However, she soon came to be on Roy’s side as more people were attacked by the lawnmower. They became the team that Brody and Hooper were in Jaws. Kelly even shared a similarity in character arc. She proved herself as capable as the men who looked down on her through the entire movie, in the same vein as Hooper proving that he wasn’t just a spoiled rich kid, but actually a capable boater while hunting the shark.

Moving onto character number three, Norman Osgood was the owner of the golf course. He was clearly a substitute for the mayor of Amity. If you know anything about Jaws, you know that the mayor was as much a villain as the shark, maybe even more so. The shark was doing what came natural to it. The mayor was knowingly putting people in harm’s way to make a few dollars. Well, that was the same with Norman Osgood. There was a big golf tournament coming up at his golf course and nothing was going to stop that tournament from happening. As the attacks stacked up, he kept bringing in the police chief to sweep them under the rug. Tragedy struck during the tournament, though.

Finally, there was the Quint substitute, Deke Slade (Jeremy Whelan). Deke’s family were the former groundskeepers of the golf course. When the attacks began, he knew what was up. He knew what had to be done. Nobody believed him at first. He was the kooky guy who had always been there, but nobody took what he said seriously. They soon would, though, as the wrong lawnmower was captured. He told them it was the wrong lawnmower. Nobody believed him until another attack happened. Then they turned to Deke for help capturing and getting rid of the lawnmower.

All the pieces were in place when it came to the main characters. The story simply had to bring them through to the same conclusion as Jaws. Along the way, there were many familiar scenes. There were many familiar details. They had been changed to fit the new setting and new “animal” that was attacking, but they were the same details that drove Jaws forward. Blades did a good job reimagining them while staying true to what made Jaws work.

Now, before I get into the story details, I must admit that I haven’t seen Jaws in a few years. I think I saw it at the drive-in either a year or two or maybe even three ago. I think that was the last time I saw it. I’ve seen it a few other times, so I’m confident enough in my knowledge of the story. But I might get a few smaller details wrong as I compare elements of Jaws with Blades. For the most part, though, this should be fine.

In Jaws, one of the most important deaths was that of Alex Kintner. He was a young boy who was killed by the shark when the mayor ordered the beaches to stay open. The shark attacked him in front of hundreds of people who were relaxing on the beach. It was in that moment the mayor could no longer deny that shark attacks were happening. The same sort of scene was in Blades. Kelly was teaching a golf class with a young boy on the green collecting the balls she hit. The kid went into the long grass to get one of the balls and never came out. Blood erupted from the grass, scaring the bejeebers out of the entire class and causing an uproar on the course. Same scene, new context. Much like most of Blades.

I’m going to quickly summarize the next bit. The attack in each film led to a bunch of people going out on the course or water to hunt down the creature attacking people. Someone captured a lawnmower or tiger shark. The course owner or mayor declared the course or beach safe once again. The main characters had their doubts. They thought the wrong lawnmower or shark was captured. They cut open the lawnmower’s bag or shark’s stomach and discovered there were no human remains. It was the proof they needed to know the attacks weren’t going to stop.

That was when I knew I loved Blades. I already liked the idea of watching a Jaws parody set on a golf course. That was funny enough. But to be so tied to its source that it would include a dissection scene, changing the shark’s stomach to the bag of a lawnmower… That was a stroke of genius. It made sure that Blades was going to be one of the “bad” movies that I went back to time and time again.

Moving on, Roy and Kelly went on a search of the grounds at night so see if they could find anything else that was suspicious. They stumbled upon an abandoned golf cart in a ditch. While investigating the golf cart, they were frightened by the sound of a lawnmower nearby. They got back into their own cart and fled. If this doesn’t seem too important to you, maybe think back to Jaws for a moment. When Brody and Hooper realized that the tiger shark wasn’t the shark attacking people, they investigated the waters. They came upon a half-sunken vessel. They found a large tooth, but dropped it when they were scared by a corpse. It was the same scene used to show that the real culprit was still out there.

Now for another quick summary. Okay, so the owner or mayor decided to reopen the golf course or beaches because they wanted to believe that the lawnmower or shark had been taken care of. The tournament or fourth of July celebrations were underway. During the height of the tournament or fourth of July celebrations, the real lawnmower or shark showed up and attacked again. The owner or mayor had been wrong. They paid the price for it.

That makes it sound a little like the bad guy was killed in the attack. He wasn’t. In Blades, the attack happened at the final hole in a match between Kelly and some guy who was cheating. When I say he was cheating, I mean that he noticed that nobody was looking and moved his ball illegally. It counted, and he beat Kelly. In a nice karmic beat, however, the lawnmower showed up and killed the cheater. It tried to kill a child, but Roy saved the kid. He couldn’t save the cheater in time.

This scene was a perfect example of the Troma grindhouse sensibilities getting into Blades. Jaws avoided showing the shark unless it was completely necessary. Any blood was mixed with water in a way that made it less jarring to see. The shark was rarely shown before the final third and the severed limbs of victims were never shown. If I’m remembering right, there was maybe one shot of the shark basically swallowing someone. That was it, though. Blades went further. Yeah, it didn’t show the actual attack of the couple. It didn’t show the child being mangled in the tall grass. The old man who died in between those two attacks wasn’t shown either. This one, however, was shown almost in full. We didn’t see the final death of the character. What we did see was his legs being mowed. The bloody stumps thrashing back and forth as he screamed. The lawnmower dragging him away in agony by the bloody stumps. It was showing more than Jaws ever did. Well, more than Jaws did before the final human death, which I’ll bring up in a bit.

I’m just going to stick with Blades for a bit. After the big attack at the tournament, Roy and Kelly convinced Norman Osgood that he should hire Deke to take down the lawnmower. Roy, Kelly, and Deke teamed up and hit the course in Deke’s van. This was their equivalent of going out in the Orca in Jaws. Now, in something completely unrelated to Jaws, there was one scene in Blades that truly highlighted the parody. When Kelly and Roy approached Deke to ask for his help, Deke’s coworker was dressed like Jason Voorhees. The coworker was even named Jason. For some reason, in the middle of a faithful reinterpretation of Jaws, there was a Friday the 13^th joke.

Roy, Kelly, and Deke went out in the van. From this point on, Blades followed Jaws very accurately. They had bails of hay with balloons on them to track where the lawnmower was. Deke shared a story about what happened to his father, which was very much a substitution for the USS Indianapolis story. Deke was eaten by the lawnmower in a very bloody fashion while trying to climb his way back into the van. The lawnmower knocked over and destroyed the van. The kicker was how Roy defeated the lawnmower. He threw an old explosive onto it and knocked a golf ball into the explosive, causing the machine to blow up. All it was missing was a “smile, you son of a bitch.”

That entire end section of Blades with the hunt for the lawnmower was largely the same as the hunt for the shark in Jaws. Things were simply changed to fit the golf course setting instead of the oceanside setting. That was kind of the thing for the whole movie. It was a retelling of Jaws at a golf course. There were the same characters, the same story beats, and the same concept. It was a simple setting swap with some comedy thrown in. It was a parody in the truest sense, taking what people loved about the original and poking fun at it through a slightly different lens.

It is said that parody is the sincerest form of flattery. You must truly love something to be able to parody it well. Blades parodied Jaws well. The people behind Blades surely loved Jaws, especially because of how faithful they were to the story. They followed the story, inserting some heightened gore and some jokes. It didn’t take the modern parody approach of referencing as many pop culture things as possible, only really going for that in the Jason scene. It stuck to the story of Jaws and just played around with it.

How close they stuck to the story was impressive because of the way home media worked at the time. Yes, there were releases of Jaws on VHS and Laserdisc through the 1980s, but they were still quite expensive. Maybe the people got a hold of one and rewatched it. Maybe they saw it a bunch in theaters. Maybe they caught it a few times on television. Whatever the case, they saw Jaws enough that they could write Blades to tell the same story in a different setting.

When Jaws came out in 1975, it changed the way people saw movies. It was the first true blockbuster. A lot of studios and independent filmmakers wanted to cash in on its success. Most of that was done in the first five or ten years following Jaws’s release. Different animals attacked different places. Few went as close as Blades to capturing the magic of Jaws. Because Jaws was a magical film. It was something special that will always hold a place in film history. And, I guess, will always inspire people to make more movies. That’s all you can ask of a movie.

Now let’s get some notes in here:

• The only actor from Blades who was previously featured in Sunday “Bad” Movies was Richard Gross, who was in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (week 350).
• I covered Jaws 3-D (week 240) and Jaws: The Revenge (week 240) for Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Have you seen Blades? What did you think of it? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments section.
• If there’s a movie you think would make a good fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know. You can find me on Twitter. You can also leave a comment suggesting the movie.
• Make sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram, too.
• Next week, I’m hopping off the horror train and onto the kids animation train. I’ll be visiting the mid-90s for an almost forgotten kids movie that is really only remembered because it’s not good. I’ll be checking out A Troll in Central Park and you can be sure I’ll have words about it. See you next week for that one!