Sunday, December 7, 2014

The Degrees of Liking Bad Movies and Elves (1989)



Over the course of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, a few movies have stood out as the pinnacle of bad movies.  They are movies that are so bad that they bring complete entertainment through how bad they are.  Many of the earlier movies fit that description.  Since around the week forty mark, these shining lights have come fewer and farther between.  Sure, I still enjoy many of the movies that I watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, but there are few that cross the line from like into love.  This week’s movie is one of those movies.

First, however, I want to go into what I mean by that first paragraph.  I want to elaborate upon the words that I just wrote.  There are a few levels of enjoyment I get out of bad movies.  I’m going to say that there are five.  Let’s start at the bottom.  There are movies that I absolutely hate and never want to see again.  They’re so terrible that the time I spend watching them is entirely filled with self-loathing and agony.  The movies have no redeeming qualities that I can see.  These are very rare, but they do exist.  Example, 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I have nothing positive to say about that movie at all.  The second level are the movies that I dislike, yet can still see some good in there.  Basically, movies like Cruel World.  Cruel World was bad and I don’t want to watch it again, but the core concept of the movie is interesting.  If done in a different way, it would be a great idea for a horror film.  The third level is the middle of the road, forgettable movie.  Usually, this means Lifetime or Hallmark movies.  A Nanny For Christmas or A Crush on You or The Craigslist Killer.  They aren’t terrible, they aren’t great.  They exist and you don’t remember them come a week later.

Now we get onto the more positive side of the scale.  These are the movies I like or love.  These are the movies that stand out among the bad movies as good bad movies.  The ones that I like are movies that I enjoy the whole way through but they don’t go above and beyond being a good bad movie.  They don’t transcend the bad movie description to become something completely insane.  These movies are movies like Hansel and Gretel Get Baked or Ghost Storm.  The movies are wacky, and they have some crazy moments in them.  But they are too restrained and well done to be an amazingly bad, good bad movie.  The movies I love are terribly done but the insane, bad aspects of them are so over the top that you can’t help enjoying the hell out of them.  Movies such as Miami Connection, Winter’s Tale, The Room, and this week’s movie, Elves.

“Elves is incredible.  So many packs of Camel.” -- @Mattsuzaka

Elves was a movie that I had very low expectations for as I went into it.  It looked like it was going to be one of the painful, excruciating movies, with only hints at something good.  I didn’t get the hints at anything good in the movie.  What I got, though, was a movie so bad that it ended up being one of the most entertaining movies I have watched in a while (excluding last week’s rewatch) for the Sunday “Bad” movies.  It hit that sweet spot of being so bad that the bad was unbelievably great.

There are three major moments in the movie Elves that helped to elevate it from a standard bad movie into one that I now love.  Each of these moments involves a line of dialogue that will seem ludicrous when written out of context.  For that reason, I will give the three lines of dialogue and then explain what makes each of those moments in the movie stand out as something so bad that it is great.  Warning: there is some foul language coming up.

“I’m your fucking sister.”
“Yeah, you’ve got big fucking tits and I’m going to tell everybody I saw them!”
This is actual dialogue from Elves.  And it was the moment that completely got me into the movie.  About five minutes into the movie, nothing had really happened.  The main character, Kirsten (Julie Austin) went out with her friends, cut her hand, and went home.  It’s when she hops into the shower that Elves takes its first step into the amazingly bad territory.  Kirsten gets out of the shower and catches her little brother peeking into the washroom while she’s naked.  Why would he do that?  He gets off on seeing his sister’s “big fucking tits,” obviously.  It was at this point that I knew there was something wrong with the movie.  There was some sort of disconnection in what was happening and what should be happening.  This peep show should not have been happening.

“Santa said oral.”
That’s right.  That’s what the dialogue says.  Kirsten works in a department store.  She and her friends decide to go and mess with the store’s Santa.  Kirsten sits on Santa’s lap and he immediately begins to rub his hand up and down her leg.  And then he says the line of dialogue.  For some reason, the leg rubbing didn’t bother Kirsten.  But Santa saying that he wanted oral was crossing boundaries.  Kirsten slaps him.  He is fired and storms off to his changing room.  He is then attacked by the elf, and dies.  The police report that his penis was ripped off.  So… That happened.

“Dad is in the study.”
“Grandfather is in the study.”
“Your father isn’t dead. The man in the study is your grandfather… AND YOUR FATHER!!!”
Yeah, so this one happens later in the movie.  I’d say about two thirds of the way through.  It changes the whole dynamic of the family while not changing much of it.  Kirsten’s grandfather is her father.  That’s a thing.  He had sex with his daughter to help bring about the master race.  Pure blood and all that stuff.  Okay.  Other than that, it really doesn’t change much of anything.  You just know that stuff now.  It wouldn’t make much of a difference to the story if it didn’t exist at all.  And to top it all off, the line readings during this scene are downright terrible.  But they’re terrible in that way where you know that someone thought they were great.  It’s ridiculous, bad, and hilarious all at the same time.


Those three moments helped to make Elves into one of the most enjoyable recent Sunday “Bad” Movie additions.  They can’t be the only reasons though, right?  There’s also the plot.  If I boil the plot of Elves down to its most basic plot points, this is what the movie is.  An elf that isn’t really an elf (more of a tiny troll looking thing) kills people while searching for a virgin to mate with in order to create the master race.  Yes, there are Nazis involved.  No, it doesn’t take place in Nazi Germany.  It takes place somewhere in America in the late 80s.  But that’s the story.  If that story seems dumb but fun, this is the movie for you.

Hell, if anything I’ve written seems fun, this movie is for you.  I had a pretty damn good time watching this movie, and I smile every time I’ve thought about it since seeing it.  It’s honey bunches of hilarity.  If there’s one bad movie I would recommend this Christmas season that isn’t The Christmas Consultant, it would be Elves.  Find it.  Watch it.  Love it.
If you loved that post, you’re going to love my notes:

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