This is a quasi-well known one, it has a certain reputation, but i’m willing to cover it anyway because it’s still one of the strangest fuckin horror film i’ve ever seen, it’s still unique, as in “who the hell comes up with this stuff” kind of unique, sure as shit there’s nothing quite as absurd, even with the plenty batshit delirium that comes with vintage holiday horror films, Christmas related or not.
It’s just not everyday you get a movie about Christmas elves that’s also about Nazis, has a demonic conspiracy to breed the Aryan “Master Race” which involves incest and blood rituals, and just calling it “Elves” it’s a great Trojan-horsing manouver, how the fuck can one expect this level of obscene and absurd with such a simple, direct title?
It’s a deranged mish mash in many ways than you both and would not assume, because you’d expect a creature feature movie following in the vein of Gremlins, like Critters, Ghoulies, Munchies… and to an extend that is correct, as we’ll see later.
Strap in, because we’re in for quite the ride, one that Dan Haggerty (of The Life and Times Of Grizzly Adams’ fame) wasn’t happy to partake in one bit, despite being the protagonist, as sometimes you can almost see his genuine stunned yet unamused, baffled reaction to the dialogues he’s forced to hear coming from the other actors’ mouths.
The plot of Elves is the very definition of no one stopping or talking the writer into “strongly reconsider” NOT making a movie that’s a third Critters, a third a nazixploitation flick minus the nudity, and a third a slasher about teens. And also adding in incest, just in case it wasn’t a nausenous cocktail of garbage already, and make it essential to the lore, which also includes demonic rituals and blood letting for summoning, and are tied to the “Fourth Reich conspiracy”.
And if that sounds gloriously stupid, the logistics are what pushes it to the next level.
The premise sees this teenage girl, Kirsten, accidentally cutting her hand in an anti-Christmas (because it’s a consumeristic holiday) pagan ritual, spilling blood on the ground, and in doing so awakens an ancient demonic Christmas elf.
Unknown to her, the elf is a central figure in a Neo-Nazi plot to bring about Hitler’s dream of a “Master Race” that would conquer the world, but the “Aryans” were actually supposed to be human-elf hybrids, also part of a secret religion the Nazis worshipped.
As to where this valley girl fits into this conspiracy, is that the she lives with her mother and grandfather… which in reality is the girls’ father, a former Nazi, whom used incest to “preserve the purity of the bloodline” in order for the elf-human breeding to be successful or something.
Then there’s Michael Haggardy’s character, Mike, a former cop that’s on the verge of being homeless, and gets a job as a mall Santa, so by coincidence he ends up staying in the mall after closure, helping Kristen escape from the Neo Nazi secret agents that have come to kidnap her and the elf (which has been running in the mall and actually killed the previous Santa working there), and helping her… well, in doing what the viewer is also doing, trying to make sense of this shit, even by forcing themselves in a professor’s private home so he can tell the lore and also mention a ritual to destroy the elf, requiring a specific magical stone too because why the fuck not?
The ending is such a random, mean, and sudden kick in the balls, a downer of an ending if i ever saw one, that i can see Fragasso’s spirit nod in approvation from the heavens, especially as it makes zero sense, almost contradicting everything else prior to that, just for the sake of a “bad end”.
Though, this one has a cult appeal because of its weirdness alone, of its WTF factor, as it’s not a “fun ride”, it’s mean as hell, it’s a convoluted mess of a story, with so much expository dumps that make the thing drag on, not exactly what you’d want with the already slow pacing at which the story goes, having to stop for shit like “drowning the cat in the turlet” or the mall Santa doing cocaine.
Yeah, the whole thing is bizarre as hell, but the whole Nazi elf spiel is never actually shown or executed in a way that makes it engaging in itself, stuff does happen but since most of the plot advancing scenes are done later on in exposition dumps, the pacing suffers a lot, as it would.
But even so, there’s this morbid curiosity (and some untentionally funny lines) that keep you somewhat intrigued, because you have no idea where the fuck things could go.
Sure as shit it’s not because of the characters, even the ancillary ones are throughly unlikeable, then why i’m surprised that Nazi grandpa-dad’s other relatives are either a cat killing bitch of a mother and a pervert brother that spies on Kirsten and literally says to her berating him for – well – being a pervert “ Yeah, you’ve got fucking big tits and I’m going to tell everybody I saw them! “.
I guess that we can expect him to sports an “ahegao hoodie” in the sequel that will never get made.
The only character that’s actually kinda relatable is Haggarty’s, and he’s an alcoholic former detective (and it know this because he start talking about that to no one at a one point, because fuck any elegance to your exposition) reduced to do a mall Santa for any cash, about as incredulous to the stupid Nazi-elf shit lore that at times not sure if he’s in character or not.
And even his performance is ho hum at best, the rest of the acting is often worse.
Actually, the girl is hard to hate, as ditzy teen as she’s written, everyone else in her family is so fuckin mean to her for the hell of it to the point it’s impossible to not feel some simpathy, she didn’t ask to be an incest baby and surely didn’t deserve to be saddled with undoing all the Nazi did.
Shame there’s very little pay off to setting up these horrible characters for the elf to slay…yep, “elf”, singular, guess they couldn’t afford another one of these, i’ve seen worse but we’re just one touch above Hobgoblins, as this thing must had very little moving parts, leaving aside that it looks like more a goblin, in what it’s unfettered gobbo slander, actually par for the course for this film.
This is already stupid enough without considering how often the elf actions (which do fit the Crittes/Gremlins mold of shenanigans, even if here they feel utterly out of place) make little to no sense, but that does apply to the human characters too, and the context often makes it worse. Somehow.
Not that having 2 rubber puppet “elves” (or suits, as in some brief glimpses it looks like a guy in a suit and not a puppet) would have changed much, since the kills are too ridiculous to even entertain the idea of taking them seriously, cheap and silly in execution, but not in a way that’s actually entertaining, somehow making Puppet Master like a slasher masterclass.
I honestly can say that this is one of a kind, because i can’t recall any other horror (or non-horror) movie with this kind of witch’s brew plot, this unhinged unholy mess of Christmas, demons, nazixploitation, creature feature critters slashing/murdering teens, incest and pagan monsterfucking, with the lead being “Grizzly Adams” himself, why not?
Shame as horrendously memorable as it is and how its bound to make for excellent review material, i can’t recommend Elves to anyone else besides the masochist extraordinarie bad movie buffs, because i do wanna make it clear it’s not really a fun “bad movie time”, especially with the horrid pacing, dog food style mash of elements making for a senseless gibberish of a plot, subpar direction, horrendous lighting and unlikeable characters.
Merry (early) Gobbo Christmas, i guess.
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