Elves

The best thing about writer/director Jeffrey Mandel's trashy late-'80s horror flick Elves is its delightfully bonkers premise: on Christmas Eve, shop-girl Kirsten (Julie Austin) discovers that she has been raised as part of a decades-old plan engineered by the Nazis to selectively breed a hybrid human/elf master race. Can't say that I've ever seen that one done before.

Sadly, despite this wonderfully wacky story-line, which incorporates such exploitative elements as incest, Nazis, cat-drowning, gratuitous nudity, a couple of surprisingly mean-spirited deaths, horny young women in lingerie and, of course, a murderous two-foot tall supernatural creature, the film proves to be about as much fun as a deep root canal, thanks to a dreadful script, amateurish direction, poor acting, and a truly pitiful titular creature—a pathetic plastic creation with fixed facial features and limited articulation in its poorly crafted limbs (which makes it walk like it's got a bad case of diarrhoea, and might explain its permanent 'I think I've just crapped myself' expression).

A chain-smoking Dan Haggerty (of Grizzly Adams fame) plays the reluctant hero—ex-cop-turned-store-Santa Mike McGavin—but gives a performance that is almost as lifeless as the film's crappy elf.

1/10, generously bumped up to 2 for the Santa crotch stabbing, the girl who gets shot in the head, and the gag in which Haggerty glances at a stuffed grizzly bear display piece.