BAD MOVIE PAGE – ELVES (1989)

 ELVES (1989) – Category: Enjoyably bad movie but not fun- bad enough for my highest rating          Last Christmas season I reviewed the underappreciated Yuletide turkeys The Christmas Martian and Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. (see my Bad Movie page for those reviews) This year I’ll address the horror film Elves, which will have you laughing like crazy but unlike a film like Santa’s Slay, it’s not MEANT as a comedy.

Where to begin with this film? We’ve got Dan Haggerty as a washed up ex- store detective and drug addict working as a department store Santa Claus, we’ve got Julie Austin as rebellious teenager Kirsten and our special-effects elf (seen in photo) as our title menace. Yep, right off the bat something to love about this  bad movie is that even though it’s called Elves there is only one elf that is ever seen on- screen. Multiple elves do figure in the plot, however, which goes a little something like this:

Kirsten is a product of selective in- breeding and learns that her “grandfather” is really her father (Insert your own Chinatown style “He’s my father AND my grandfather!” joke here) who oinked and boinked with Kirsten’s hotsy-totsy mother (Deanna Lund herself, listed only as “Kirsten’s Mother” – Yes, like Epstein’s Mother – in the credits) and produced Kirsten and her little brother. (Does his name really matter?) 

But that’s not all. Kirsten’s Grandfather (and yes, that’s how his character is listed in the credits ) is a Nazi mad scientist, now relegated to a wheelchair in his old age. The movie creatively combines the conspiracy theories about Nazi secret weapons with Der Fuehrer and company’s obsession with Norse Mythology, and tells us the whole “Master Race” the Nazis were trying to create was intended to be a hybrid of Nordic Elves and a “biologically perfect human woman”.

It took a few generations of in-breeding but Kirsten’s Grandfather finally created that woman in the form of Kirsten. Kirsten is intended to mate with the monstrous elf depicted above and thereby, like a Queen Bee of Tiny Teutonic Tyrants, spawn a race of elves who will take over the world and launch the Fourth Reich. Hey, it makes as much sense as anything David Eicke has to say. 

Anyway, this mating has to take place at midnight as Christmas Eve becomes Christmas Day, and only our heroic department store Santa Dan Haggerty can save the world from elfin Nazis and Kirsten from really rushed elfin sex. If you were hoping Dan would be listed as “Kirsten’s Hero” in the credits you’ll be disappointed. His character is one of the few that has a name and it’s Mike McGavin. 

That description makes the movie sound more coherent than it really is, however, and the plot only becomes clear to the viewer in dribs and drabs. We open with Kirsten and some of her girlfriends “rebelling” by conducting a pagan ritual which brings the killer elf into the real world. 

That monstrous elf kills anyone who seems to threaten Kirsten (though it takes him forever to finally bump off her hateable mother/ grandmother), he kills horny teenage boys wanting to mount Kirsten because he needs her to be a virgin when Christmas is a comin’ (sorry) and he kills Kirsten’s female friends because … well, because the filmmakers needed more scenes with blood and gore, I guess. Oh, and he eats parts of the bodies of his victims, too, just like the Keebler Elves do (well at least that’s what I’ve always assumed, anyway). 

And there’s no full consensus  on what the results of Kirsten’s mating with the killer elf will be, either. Some of the Nazi colleagues of Kirsten’s Grandfather (who may well have been listed in the credits as “Kirsten’s Grandfather’s Nazi Colleagues” but I didn’t check) say the offspring of that unholy union will be a hybrid Master Race, but Kirsten’s Grandfather is convinced that an Elfin army of saboteurs will result. Still later he and his colleagues seem to instead be saying that Kirsten will give birth to the Anti-Christ if she and the Elf oink and boink. But, hey, you’ll be too busy laughing at the inept acting and the cheap special effects to pay much attention to that. 

SPOILERS: Dan Haggerty’s character gives his life trying to help Kirsten kill the Elf by luring it to the spot where they were intended to mate (there’s a brilliant idea), and even though our in-bred heroine succeeds in sending the elf back to Alfheim before the two can Go Tell It On The Mountain (sorry)  the  filmmakers bizarrely close the movie with a scene showing a baby forming inside Kirsten. WTF?!

So do elves mate by touching someone’s  clothing with their hands? That’s all the elf ever did with Kirsten before she and her little brother sent it back home. Who knows and who cares. There was never any sequel, but Kirsten’s brother was probably included just so any sequel that resulted could have a female elf trying to mate with him. At any rate, Elves will probably top everyone’s list of Killer Nazi Elf movies and that’s as it should be.    

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