I can’t imagine why the 1989 holiday horror Elves has eluded the DVD market. This comes pretty close to being a great 80s holiday horror. Unfortunately, It falls apart after a cool setup. I plan to totally spoil the hell out of it.
The main girl and her girlfriends are out in the woods doing some sort of magic spell. Something goes wrong and they flee. Little do they know that they worked just enough magic to unleash a demonic elf from the ground. Yes. Singular. Elves only features one Elf.
So main girl has a grumpy grandpa in a wheelchair. She has a bitchy mom. She has a pervy brother who spies on her in the shower, as all little boys did in 80s movies. He almost gets taught a lesson for being naughty; the elf tries to kidnap him! But he doesn’t succeed and the mom blames the boy’s cat for the scratch he received. Mom soon after drowns the fricking cat in a toilet bowl.
Meanwhile, main girl and her friends work at the mall. One of the mall Santa’s is Dan Haggerty, known to 70s children as Grizzly Adams (and the reason kids in ninth grade used to call me grizzly since I was the only one with a beard). There’s another young Santa, who happens to be a naughty perv and is immediately killed by the elf.
It appears this is going to be Chopping Mall with a killer elf. That would have been awesome. Instead, the elf is the result of some crazy Nazi experiment and now the modern day Nazis are after the person who released it. So they come to the mall and shoot all main girl’s friends within a matter of minutes. Grizzly, who she calls Santa, helps her survive. The movie is about to get terrible.
Main girl and Grizzly Santa are fired by the mall manager. Grizzly Santa goes to her grandpa and tells him what happened. Main girl learns that grandpa is actually her father. Then we see mom get naked to take a bath, at which point the elf uses the old radio in the tub trick to make her boobs dance.
Then we find out grandpa is not only main girl’s father, but was also a Nazi. Typical. Little brother says, “Are we going to be all right?” and main girl responds, “No. Grandpa’s a Nazi.” Amazing. Nazis come in and shoot grandpa and take down Grizzly Santa, leaving main girl and her little brother to send the elf back to his hole in the woods.
So bad. I really wish Elves would be tossed onto one of those cheap 8-movie horror packs.
