October 10: A Horror Film Produced by Debra Dion

Harry Potter (Michael Moriarty) has moved his family — his wife Anne (Shelley Hack), son Harry (Noah Hathaway) and daughter Wendy (Jenny Beck) — into a new place in San Francisco. As they get their stuff unloaded, a troll takes his daughter and begins to show up disguised as her, turning the building into a fairy tale.

Harry starts hanging out with Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart), a witch who once dated Torok, the wizard who led the fairies to take over from humans and was turned into a troll. Torok is doing this all over again, using the apartment building — he’s destroying Sonny Bono — to fight the world once again.

Directed by John Carl Buechler, who also did the creature design, this was shot at the same time as TerrorVision in Italy’s Stabilimenti Cinematografici Pontini studios near Rome. The same team worked on both productions, like Romano Albani (Inferno) as the cinematographer and Richard Band writing the music.

You may have noticed that a character is named Harry Potter.

Producer Charles Band spoke to MJ Simpson and stated, “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.” John Buechler’s partner in a planned remake Peter Davy, which had to deal with legal issues over the name, would also claim: “In John’s opinion, he created the first Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling says the idea just came to her. John doesn’t think so. There are a lot of similarities between the theme of her books and the original Troll. John was shocked when she came out with Harry Potter.”