Kirsten (Julie Austin) is a regular teen girl who works at the local mall and has a hateful mother and very odd grandfather and she likes to do made-up occult rituals in the woods with her two best friends. What she doesn’t know is that she is actually the incestuously-created breeder who is supposed to birth a race of Nazi-summoned elves into this world. They are to serve as a Fourth Reich and bring mankind to its knees. You read that right. All Kirsten wants to do is party with her friends overnight in the mall, but a singular elf summoned to protect and mate with her to create this super race of elves attacks her friends. Mall Santa and former cop Mike McGavin (Dan Haggerty) comes to her rescue. It is through his investigations that he discovers the awful and fantastic truth about Kirsten’s past and her supposed destiny. He helps her out, fighting against the elf stalking her and a party of Neo-Nazi’s bent on keeping her corralled for the eventual ritual that will bring about the end of mankind. Mike has his work cut out for him, and together he and Kirsten battle to survive the night.
What a wild ride this one is. First of all, the story itself is outrageous. Grandpa being a Nazi and impregnating his own daughter so they might have a child that will one day birth evil Nazi elves to take over the world? Sign me up, please! In addition to this absurd storyline, there’s the presence of Haggerty, a big, burly, fighting fella who chain-smokes and delivers pithy lines that come across as stream-of-consciousness rambling comments of the actor himself, reacting to the situations he finds himself in. When you hear him mutter “you’ve got to be kidding me,” you have to nod your head in utter agreement. If he isn’t punching a Nazi in the face, he’s puffing on a cigarette and mouthing off some semi-noir line of dialogue. Often, he is doing all three at once. Then you have the elf itself. Despite the promise of the title, there is only one elf creature and it is rather, uh, static, to say the least. It has one frozen expression and, to give the filmmakers credit, when they don’t linger, it can be pretty creepy looking. But oh, do they linger, and do you see the monster stiffly turn around at times, using its whole body to turn and not its neck. It doesn’t take long until you realize this is mostly just a big doll that they’re “animating” the best they can. This is one step above a kid playing with dolls in their backyard, lifting the creature up and setting it down, “hopping” to mimic walking. But, like I said, there are a couple of moments when the elf is fairly creepy, and its leer really does express a certain amount of Peeping Tom, lurid feeling.
Elves is a fantastic film for those who love outrageous movies. You really can’t go wrong with this one as it’s filled with action, horror, a completely unreasonable story that gets more absurd as it carries on, and the wonderful presence of Haggerty, who really makes the film. His character has no reason to exist and hardly affects the story at all, other than being a cipher to tell the audience about what is going on. His two-fisted, cigarette-puffing, big-hearted good-guy character is essential, though, for all the good times you’re going to have when you watch this one. Elves delivers some good Holiday Cheer, in a way only something so bad it’s great can.
★★✮☆
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