Greetings, and welcome back to Horror Business. We’ve got one heck of an episode in store for you guys, as we’re talking about 1980’s To All A Good Night and 1989’s Elves.
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We briefly talk what we’ve doing involving horror recently. Liam talks about partaking in the programming on Shudder focusing on classic Christmas ghost stories and we talk about the peculiar Victorian custom of telling ghost stories around Christmastime. Liam talks about catching a screening of Chuck Norris’ Invasion USA and Justin throws a fit about Liam’s apathy towards Steven Siegal. We talk a bit about the HBO series Creature Commandos and the films Smile 2, Never Let Go, The Substance, AfrAId, Replicator, The Becomers, Terrifier 3, and A Different Man.
Up first is To All A Good Night. We talk about this history of Christmas horror and scary Santas, and how this movie doesn’t really feel like it has any right to stand in the same category as Christmas Evil.
Justin talks about the difficulty in seeing early slashers as fun, because the formula for them has been so beat to death. Liam talks about how the film seems to want to be a classically horny slasher, but it hesitates to go all the way in that direction.
We discuss the seemingly cynical nature of the film in that it feels utterly without heart. We briefly discuss some of our favorite kills in the film, despite the relative lack of gore in it, and how despite the movie not being awful, it still lacks the sincerity and earnestness that will sometimes push a mediocre film over the finish line.
Justin brings up how despite the film being technically competent, following a tried-and-true formula for a “good” slasher film, it still falls flat, because it honestly lacks the passion. Liam criticizes the “Scooby Doo” moment in the reveal of the killer.
Up next is Elves. Justin talks about the unexpected Nazi element in the film and we touch upon the absurdity of Dan Haggerty in general in this film. We talk about how despite the title being plural, the singular “elf” is effective enough.
Justin talks about how it’s commendable that the filmmakers decided to inject an element of Nazi occult into a film that could have very easily just leaned in on the “evil elf” element. We reference back to the prior film on this episode in that even though Elves is a mess, it at least takes chances that To All A Good Night didn’t.
As always, thank you for listening and to everyone and anyone who donated on Patreon, checked this episode out, or shared a tweet/shared a post on FB/gave us love by recommending us to someone. We love you forever for listening and donating. Any questions, comments, suggestions for movies and guests, or if you yourself want to join us for a movie viewing or even an episode, can be sent to
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Thanks always to Justin Miller, Jacob Roberts, Paul Sharkey,
