Christmas certainly has a slew of holiday horror films to choose from, even more so than Halloween. You have your better knowns, like the Silent Night, Deadly Night series and Gremlins, some darker and underrated tales like Christmas Evil or something more recent and humorous like Santa’s Slay. But the one nobody ever talks about or even wants to think about is Elves, a movie about a woman who finds out she is part of an evil (as opposed to good) Nazi experiment involving selective breeding and summoned elves in an attempt to create a race of superhumans, so she teams up with some buddies and a renegade department store Santa to take them on! Um… what!? Seriously, that sounds like the type of exploitation flick fans would go crazy over. This has all fixings of what sounds to be the most bat-shit crazy movie ever, so where did they go wrong?

Well in a way, they didn’t. You shouldn’t expect a movie like this to be some sort of horror masterpiece. I mean, the thing is about a Nazi elf. We aren’t exactly making the Schindler’s List of horror films here. Before I go any further, let’s take a closer look at it.

Spilled blood on sacred grounds seems to be the root of all problems, amirite? Teenage Kristen accidentally cuts her hand during an Anti-Christmas pagan ritual with her friends Brooke and Amy. Wouldn’t you know it, the spilled blood awakens what is called on the film’s Wiki page (yes, it actually has one) “an ancient demonic Christmas elf.” With nothing better to do, being an evil elf and all, it begins following Kristen around while she goes about her job waitressing at the local mall. This is where the elf kills the mall Santa so the film can introduce the true hero of the film, Mike McGavin played by Dan Haggerty… you know, Grizzly FREAKIN’ Adams! Mike is a washed up detective turned alcoholic who has recently been evicted from his trailer, so you know this character is ripe with all kinds of cliche goodness. Being homeless now, Dan holes up in the mall during closing time and overhears Kristen and her friends who are waiting for their boyfriends so they can party all night.

Wait a second; a group of girls sneak into a mall at night to party with their boyfriends, unbeknownst to them the evils that await? Sounds an awfully lot like Chopping Mall, yeah? Sorry, no killer robots here. Just a killer elf. Not Elves. Singular.

It’s then that a group of Nazi’s show up and reveal Kristen’s secret and what they plan to do with her, so that the master race may be recreated and take over the world. Kristen teams up with Mike, her oddly perverted brother (who peeps on her while in the shower… let that sink in), and her grandmother, learns the secret to her past and puts a stop to the Nazi’s plan and elf once and for all, with an ending that makes Leprechaun look dull in comparison! It’s the classic, traditional Christmas tale to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside for the holidays. However, I could sit here and nitpick that a movie called Elves features only one elf, but I think there is plenty more to nitpick at here, so let’s go ahead and do that.

After all of that, how could you not want to see this? It’s a film that doesn’t have one of the horror/action movie cliches… no, they try to fit just about all of them in here! It’s like they had too many ideas and tried to cram them all in, but it works. You have evil Nazi’s, an ancient demon being summoned, a drunk-ex cop turned mall Santa and a girl with a secret past to stop it all. Most films would fall apart, but Elves manages to keep it all together. Never at any point does it feel bloated or like too much is going on. I know, surprising, right?

I’ve been talking a lot about this elf, so how does he look? Being a film from 1989, it looks fairly decent… for the first few minutes you see him, then you start to realize how cheap and goofy it looks, you’ll start comparing it to the titular creatures of Hobgoblins. When we aren’t seeing the elf’s arms or whatnot through a POV and you actually see his face, you’ll laugh at his seemingly stuck expression that looks like he is permanently in mid sneeze. It’s a low budget film, so you have to expect some cheese, which the film is ripe with. Everything in this movie is over the top and ridiculous, which I’m sure you gathered from reading this. Performances are just right amount of exaggeration you would expect from a movie like this, as if the actors knew what kind of film they were making and figured, “Eh, may as well go all out!” Kristen is played fairly well, but everyone else seems to be going over the top or phoning it in, like her grandparents playing broad stereotypes. The two girls that play her friends never acted again, which will make sense when you see this. One of my favorites is Kristen’s nonchalantly needlessly and overly cruel mother. The actress plays this role like she is playing a Bond villain and I was expecting her to be part of the evil Nazi’s. The icing on the cake is Dan Haggerty, who plays out just as great as you would expecting Grizzly Adams playing a drunken mall Santa would. He puts everything he has into this role, like he imagined this being his breakthrough performance. His job is to mostly point out the obvious so you can see how stupid it truly is, but it only makes this film that much more enjoyable. As much as I hate this expression, it really is a film that is ‘so bad it’s good’. This is the kind of film that doesn’t even have the film poster up on its IMDB page, like they are ashamed.

There are very few opportunities in life that you will find yourself being able to say, “I saw a movie where Grizzly Adams dresses up like Santa Claus and fights an ancient, evil Nazi elf.” When this opportunity comes along, I urge you to take it. Currently, and sadly, the film is not available on DVD and the VHS goes for about $10, but you can watch the movie in the video below. Merry Christmas, I present to you one of the goofiest and yet most awesome premises a film has to offer ever.

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