Unclean & Unseen! – ELVES (1989)

A film of such incompetence, it gives hope to all fledgling directors and screenwriters.

I started out really pumped to write about ELVES, and then I remembered just how deliciously god-awful it was. Nazi elves. A coked-up Santa getting stabbed in the crotch. The perverted little brother. Grizzly Adams getting pissed on. Possibly the most incompetent shoot-out in film history. Trying on lingerie at the mall. Electrocution. Cat murder. And the special effects…ah yes, how special indeed! There’s no way I can fit the wonder that is ELVES into approximately 500 words, and just the thought of trying to encapsulate it is giving me an anxiety attack. 

With this said, I hope the citizens of Colorado Springs, where this hilarious abomination of a film was lensed, celebrate it every single holiday season. I’m not talking about showing it in a dive bar for five drunks to harangue it MST3K-style, I mean Mardi Gras-level shit here. A week-long party where 100-proof Christmas cocktails flow freely, people don nicotine-stained Dan Haggerty beards, and residents dress up as the titular elf (and yes, there’s only one, not multiples as the title would suggest). I’m telling you, folks, once you see this film, you become part of a Secret Society. We’re very small in number, but we’re the ones who have the best chances of surviving imminent nuclear fallout. 

Okay, indulge me for a minute while I attempt to give you the “plot”, and I use that term loosely. A teenage girl, with possibly the most fucked-up home life you could have without starving, joins her friends in the woods to carry out some wannabe-pagan ritual that (whoops!) awakens a demonic elf. Stick with me here. This elf is the result of Hitler’s tinkering with a planned Fourth Reich–okay, maybe third-and-a-half?–fashioned from a hybrid of humans and elves. (I’m literally laughing as I type this.) Said teenage girl finds out that her grandfather was a Nazi who was, of course, involved in this little elf/Aryan mixmaster experiment back during WWII. With only the help of a down-on-his-luck former cop, said teenager now has to to figure out a way to defeat the elf, as well as not let it impregnate her to carry on this half-assed attempt to realize a Nazi nirvana commanded by the Master Elf Race (patent pending). 

I can’t go on! People, you have no idea how tough it was to cull this plot down into one paragraph. Also, I’ve never chuckled this much writing a blog article. However, I implore you to check out the movie, because ELVES is a prime example of where the devil truly is in the details. All of the supporting characters are so unlikable (bitchy stepmothers, peeping little brothers, Valley-girl teens who live nowhere near the Valley, no-good Santas, incestuous grandfathers, incompetent hit men) you’re praying for some kind of deus ex machina to take all these fuckheads out and turn this feature film into a short subject comedy skit. To make things even richer, the demonic elf itself doesn’t really move, so director Jeffrey Mandel had to figure out, or at least attempt to figure out, ways around this. The results are nothing short of uproarious.

Gentle readers, films like this are why we have the term “guilty pleasure”. Come on, you’ve been good all year. This holiday season, give yourself the gift of ELVES. Just don’t forget to keep the receipt.

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