Bad to the Bone

The Disaster Artist turned the making of a turkey into award-winning gold. But is The Room really the best worst movie ever made?

- Zach Schonfeld

On april 11, 2006, George Hardy woke up and discovered he was a cult film star. This was odd for a few reasons: Hardy is a dentist living in Alexander City, Alabama; he has no serious acting experience; and he hadn’t appeared in a movie in over a decade. But that film—an outrageously amateurish horror disaster called Troll 2 (1990), which features Hardy in a starring role— had built up a remarkable cult following on the internet.

He learned this when a reporter from Furman University’s school paper called to ask if he’d be attending the Troll 2 cast reunion that week. Cast reunion? Hardy was bewildered. “If you don’t believe me, go to IMDB,” the writer said.

Hardy did, and he found that the event was scheduled for two days from then, on April 13, in Provo, Utah. “I said to myself, ‘I gotta do this.’ Spent $750 on a flight. Jumped on a plane. And it was the first screening ever of Troll 2 on the big screen.”

“Big screen” is misleading. The film was projected on a brick wall in an abandoned building. And yet, says Hardy, “when the lights came on, I got mobbed for autographs. I thought, What in the world is going on?”