Elves (1989) by Jeffrey Mandel

Director: Jeffrey Mandel

Year: 1989

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Creature Feature

Plot:

After performing a ceremony in a graveyard, a group of teenage girls find themselves being stalked by a race of elves summoned by a Nazi scientist looking to create a master race by inbreeding one of them with the elves and must find a way to stop it before their mission is accomplished.

Review:

This here was quite a decent enough effort. One of the better elements of this one is the fact that there's quite a pronounced and distinctive atmosphere present here that runs throughout this one. Starting with how they manage to resurrect the creatures in the first place with the chilling cemetery scene in the opening sequence, there's a strong series of suspenseful stalking scenes throughout the first half showing the elves' point-of-view scurrying along after their potential victims leading to some decent shots of them close to the ground which makes their creation a little more believable.

That leads into the somewhat enjoyable action scenes here with the creature taking out the loner in the break room at the department store, the creature's first attack on the house where it stalks her family members which is written off as a dream, and the more action-film centered attack on the friends at the department store which turns into a fine gunfight within the aisleways which is quite a nice feature which helps to make this one quite action-packed and pleasing.

Likewise, the final half features quite a lot of enjoyable action here with the race to get away from the creatures and the Nazi agents leading into the solid finale in the woods which is a nice blend of surreal imagery and fantasy-based action that makes for a nice overall time to this and ends this on a fine note. The other good part here is the fact that this one did manage some nice effects work on the creature and the various kills here which aren't quite graphic but have a nice look to them. These here make this one quite fun.

There are a few flaws with this one. The film's biggest issue is the fact that it doesn't really know what it really wants to be as this one really seems to feature quite a scattered overall plot line. The notion of the girls' troubled home life works nicely, but it doesn't match up to anything that comes later on, the sudden inclusion of the action-film scenario with the department store shootout is completely odd to randomly throw into the film and the utterly bizarre storyline about the occult Nazi experiments is handled with such ludicrous explanations and reasoning that the whole thing feels underwritten and half-baked.

Forcing him to go running around to the various authority figures on the subject to get the whole story out makes no sense when it could streamline everything by making one person be the expert or at least have the team gathered together at one spot would've made much more sense beyond the sheer lunacy of the whole situation. The other problem with the film stems from the rather lax and stifling pacing that doesn't really have a lot of action throughout here as there are quite a lot of times featuring nothing of any real interest as it lets the mystery play out here which really keeps the action out of the first half for the most part. These here really hold it back.

Overview: **.5/5

A little flawed but acceptable enough as it is, this one does have some pretty big flaws that bring it down over some worthwhile elements it does have. Give it a shot if you're a fan of this type of cheesy genre effort or are curious about it due to its reputation while only those who are turned off by these issues should heed caution.