Earl Hooter (Lee McLaughlin)
Okay, we admit it: we were fans of Elvira's original Movie Macabre broadcasts way back in the day when we lived in the Bryson on Rampart in L.A., long before it was designated an L.A. Historic Cultural Monument. It was Elvira's cleavage that first drew our attention, but we slowly also became to appreciate the movies she hosted. Sure, most of the versions presented were cut and edited, and the intercut commentary was not always a welcome addition, but many of the movies were actually really good: for every "good" bad flick like Werewolf of Washington (1973 / trailer) or Thing with Two Heads (1972 / trailer) or Beware! The Blob! (1972 / trailer) — three disasterpieces, to say the least — you had something like Silent Night, Bloody Night (1970/72), Blacula (1972 / trailer), Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), The Murder Clinic (1966 / trailer), Horror Express (1972), Peeping Tom (1960 / trailer), Fearless Vampire Killers (1967 / trailer), The Baby (1973 / trailer), Messiah of Evil (1974) and more. Most movies was saw back then, if not all, we subsequently enjoyed more and without commercials when VHS (later DVD) came about, but over the decades we never truly could forget Elvira's cleavage. (Two thumbs up! And definitely more than two handfuls.)
"Whoa. Must have taken too much antacid in the sixties."
Elvira
Trailer to
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark:
In any event, nowadays she is an American icon,* possibly more famous than Vampira (a.k.a Maila Nurmi [11 Dec 1922 – 10 Jan 2008] of The Beat Generation [1959 / full movie], Plan 9 from Outer Space [1958 / trailer], I Passed for White [1960 / full movie], Bert I. Gordon's Magic Sword [1962 / trailer] and more), from whom Elvira took much of her look and shtick. (Much like any given male creature-feature host took his from some other male creature-feature host — hell, Vampira later admitted that she herself was inspired by the then still-nameless Morticia Addams from Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons). Considering Elvira's look, icon status and cleavage, it is a bit odd that it took us 36 years to finally get around to watching her first movie outing, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988). But, hey! Better late than never!
* Is there any bigger proof of being an American icon than getting your own DC comic book? Mohammad Ali only got a one-shot special (Superman vs. Mohammad Ali) in 1978, but she had a full 11 issues of Elvira's House of Mystery (1986-87) at DC followed by 168 issues Elvira Mistress of the Dark at Claypool.
"Listen, sister. If I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you."
Elvira
The basic plot of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark sees Elvira (Cassandra Peterson of The Working Girls [1974 / trailer] and All about Evil [2010 / trailer]) lose her movie-hosting job* when the TV station is sold and the new boss, Earl Hooter (Lee McLaughlin [4 May 1936 – 20 Sept 2007] of Ed Gein [2000], The Car [1977 / trailer] and Up Your Alley [1971, with Haji and the Great Uschi]), goes full Harvey Weinstein over her cleavage. Jobless and dreaming of a show in Las Vegas, for which she needs $50,000 to get off the ground, fortuitous fate suddenly makes our breast-advantaged heroine a beneficiary of the estate of her previously unknown and now dead great-aunt.
* The film she's hosting that day is Roger Corman's five-day-wonder, It Conquered the World (1956 / trailer below, with Dick Miller), which was originally released on a double bill with The She Creature (1956 / trailer). As there is no such thing as flogging a dead horse in Movieland, Texan anti-talent Larry Buchanan (see: The Naked Witch [1964?] and our Dead but (Not) Forgotten look at Dale Berry) remade Corman's It Conquered the World in 1966 as Zontar, the Thing from Venus (trailer).
"I've seen the People's Court. I'm entitled to one phone call and a strip search."
Elvira
Trailer to
It Conquered the World (1956):
And
so across the country she goes, to Falwell, Massachusetts, a
super-conservative town full of the prudish and judgmental kind of
people who nowadays would wear MAGA hats. Her inheritance proves meager,
though: a dilapidated house, a poodle, and a cookbook...
The plot is pretty inconsequential, if you get down to it, and pretty much follows the time and tried template of the typical outsider-vs.-conservative-town movie like, say, Footloose (1984 / trailer) or Harper Valley PTA (1978 / trailer), the latter of which — aside from starring a MILFy Barbara Eden — was supposedly a key influence. Unlike the leads in those two movies, however, the heavenly topped heroine in Elvira is unable to open her mouth without something appropriately inappropriate slipping out.
"Oh well, there's nothing wrong with G-rated movies, as long as there's lots of sex and violence."
Elvira
To ask whether or not Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a good movie pretty much misses the point: it is a well-made, low-budget, and ultra-eighties campy, intentionally "bad" movie about a walking, talking goth Valley Girl who is virtually incapable of speaking in anything but innuendos or malapropisms. The movie is the character and the character is the movie, and the character is built to feel up be a bizarrely sexy Mae West figure. Definitely and intentionally more a comedy than a horror movie, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a bit too episodic in nature and the jokes tend to be more juvenile than intelligent, but the movie maintains a good-natured innocence even when "off color". Whenever the good nature falls away — the scene in which Elvira causes and drives away from a gas station explosion, probably killing the asshole gas station attendant (co-scriptwriter John Paragon [9 Dec 1954 – 3 Apr 2021] of Echo Park [1985 / trailer]), or when she shows up late and like a gangbuster for the reading of the will — Elvira's obliviousness and slinky innocence takes a turn towards the narcissistic and self-obsessed, regardless of the level of self-mockery and camp. The horror elements never become scary, but then they weren't meant to be — in that sense, despite the supernatural trappings floating about, the movie definitely owes more to Footloose in that the true theme is: the freedom to be yourself and to do your thang is worth defending.
"Boy, am I a horn-dog. Is this face taken?"
Chastity Pariah (Edie McClurg)
In that sense, though Elvira might be a goth wet dream of sorts, she offers more than meets the eye. She is an empowered woman who wants and takes control of her life — and has the final say about her looks and sexuality. Even when she's twirling tassels* — the show she puts on in the final scene is amazingly both in-step and out-of-step with the rest of the movie; it even outdoes the classic tassel-twirling performance given in The Graduate (1967 / trailer) by Dick Miller's wife Lainie Miller — she does it for herself and not for chauvinists. Elvira isn't going to let anyone else tell her what to do or dress or how to be; in that sense, she is truly a great role model.
* Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) mastered the art of tassel twirling during her younger days; early in her career she was a topless [if underage] Las Vegas showgirl and stripper.
"If they ever ask about me, tell them I was more than just a great set of boobs [...]"
Elvira
So many jokes (especially of the verbal kind) get tossed around that not all stick, but in general the viewer will find themselves laughing more than groaning — and, to tell the truth, the groaners also mostly work within the story that unfolds onscreen. The sheen of the '80s is found in almost every scene in the clothing and the music and the hair and the jokes (many of which wouldn't make it onscreen in these woke times), and it definitely works like a familiar, much loved added spice.
"It'll be a guaranteed standing ovulation!"
Elvira
Interestingly enough, the evil machinations of the judgmentally moralistic (and mostly two-faced) townspeople and the movie's evil warlock Vincent Talbot (W. Morgan Sheppard [24 Aug 1932 – 6 Jan 2019] of The Devil's Dozen [2013 / trailer], Needful Things [1993 / trailer], Wild at Heart [1990 / trailer] and The Keep [1983 / trailer]) maintain an oddly contemporary feel, if only because of the fanaticism of the current religious right-wingers in the US and their basic inability to see when they are being hoodwinked and by whom. (In truth, it is sad to admit, that is an inability that has since spread to greater America.) But unlike the aftertaste of today's immoral moral majority, the aftertaste left by the film is rather sweet: it is, ultimately, a feel-good movie, and it works as one, laughing all the way.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark was not the biggest of hits when it came out, which is why a follow-up movie took a long time coming. 23 years later, in 2001, Elvira proved that she is ageless by releasing a prequel of sorts titled...
Elvira's Haunted Hills —
trailer:
Asides that have nothing to do with the movie.
Are we the only ones that initially assumed that Elvira's muscular love interest of the movie, Bob Redding, (C-movie action hero Daniel Greene of After the Condor [1990, with Charles Napier], Soldier of Fortune [1990 / German trailer], American Rickshaw [1989 / trailer], Hammerhead [1987 / trailer], Hands of Steel [1986 / trailer], Stitches [1985/ trailer], Pulsebeat [1985 / clip], etc.) would turn out to be a closet gay? (He doesn't.)
And speaking of gay, or at least gay-for-pay, keep your eyes open for gay-for-pay icon — and long ex-boyfriend of Cassandra Peterson — Bill "Circumsized" Cable (2 May 1946 – 7 Mar 1998) doing a quick appearance as a cop, much like he does in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985 / trailer). That's him below to the right modeling underwear with an even bigger gay icon (a reported 9 inches vs. maybe 7), Gordon "Circumsized" Grant (possibly 1956-1993).
Handsome and proudly hirsute, Bill Cable modeled nude and appeared with a whip in Wakefield Poole's arty gay porn classic Bijou (1977 / info / NSFW "trailer"), but never seems to have actually done a gay sex scene; even in the straight porn flicks he took part in, like (among others) future-suicide Carlos Tobalina's Last Tango in Acapulco (1973 / full x-rated film in Spanish) and Jungle Blue (1978 / full x-rated film), he may have shown his muscles and Oscar Meyer, but he tended to use a stunt cock — John Holmes's, for example, in Jungle Blue. That said, if you search hard and one-handed, you might still find him hard online in straight pictorials. He died, paralyzed, as a result of a motorcycle accident. Gordon Grant's demise is more apocryphal, as "the facts" about him are all relatively undocumented and possibly only alternative facts.
Bill "Stoner" Cable as Tarzan
(from Jungle Blue):
Lastly, are we the only ones to have the feeling that there is an interlude in Elvira, Mistress of the Dark that may have mildly influenced John Waters's last movie, A Dirty Shame (2004 / trailer)?
Elvira sings
Two Big Pumpkins:
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