The Elvira Movies in Order and How Cassandra Peterson’s Horror Hostess Reached the Big Screen
Elvira built her following on television long before she appeared in a feature film. Cassandra Peterson became known for the character as the host of ‘Elvira’s Movie Macabre’ on Los Angeles station KHJ-TV, a weekly presentation of B movies. The popularity of that program led to two films starring Peterson as Elvira, and anyone following the Elvira movies in order will find a short list with two very different entries.
The first is a small town comedy built around an inheritance, while the second is a period parody shot overseas on a much smaller budget. Peterson reprised the role for the second film in 2001, yet the two stories are not directly connected. A third film has also been in development for years, and it is covered after the two releases below.
‘Elvira: Mistress of the Dark’
‘Elvira, Mistress of the Dark’ is a comedy horror film directed by James Signorelli and released on September 30, 1988. Sam Egan, John Paragon and Peterson share the writing credit. Production began after Peterson’s success playing Elvira on television, with filming running from January to March 1988. The film runs 96 minutes and carries a PG-13 rating, and it was made by New World Pictures and NBC Productions.
The story sends Elvira to the small town of Fallwell, Massachusetts to claim an inheritance, where conservative locals greet her with little enthusiasm. Among them is her uncle Vincent, who is secretly an evil warlock. She ends up battling him and townspeople who want her burned at the stake. W. Morgan Sheppard plays Vincent Talbot, Edie McClurg plays Chastity Pariah, and Jeff Conaway appears in the cast, while Peterson also plays Aunt Morgana Talbot. Her father, Dale Peterson, has an uncredited cameo as an insurance representative.
The film opened to $1,660,041 and finished with a domestic gross of $5,596,267. That total fell short of its $7.5 million budget, and the film is described as a box office failure on release. Peterson and her collaborators would wait thirteen years before returning to the character on the big screen.
Critics gave the film mixed reviews, and Peterson received nominations for both a Saturn Award for Best Actress and a Razzie Award for Worst Actress in 1989. It holds a 58 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and 43 out of 100 on Metacritic. One review site described it as a good natured film packed with bimbo jokes, double entendres and bad puns. Rotten Tomatoes critics summed it up as neither the strongest nor the weakest introduction to the character.
‘Elvira’s Haunted Hills’
‘Elvira’s Haunted Hills’ was directed by Sam Irvin and written by Peterson and John Paragon, with Richard O’Brien, Mary Scheer and Scott Atkinson in the cast. Peterson plays both Elvira and Lady Elura Hellsubus, and the film runs 90 minutes. It arrived thirteen years after the first film, with a tiny budget that Peterson largely paid for herself, and filming took place in Transylvania, Romania.
The story begins in 1851, when Elvira and her maid Zou Zou are traveling to a Parisian revue and instead end up at the medieval castle of Lord Vladimere Hellsubus. Elvira closely resembles his long dead wife, learns of the Hellsubus curse and soon finds her life in danger. The film works as a homage to the Roger Corman and Vincent Price adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe from the 1960s, and it leans on slapstick far more than the first film does.
The film premiered on June 23, 2001 at the International Rocky Horror Fan Convention and reached the United States on October 31, 2002, after being promoted at film festivals and horror and science fiction conventions. It won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2002 Provincetown International Film Festival. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 71 percent and its Metacritic score is 48, both higher than the first film’s. A review at Morbidly Beautiful called it an underseen and campy nod to gothic horror that remains appealing.
The film has since received special treatment on home video, with Scream Factory detailing a collector’s edition built on a new 4K restoration, an introduction by Elvira and a commentary track featuring Peterson and Irvin. British label 101 Films later prepared its own Blu-ray with a making of featurette and an interview with O’Brien. Peterson told ComicBook.com that her third film is a direct follow-up to the first, tracing where Elvira went after she ended up in Las Vegas, and she described the second film as taking the character in another direction. Readers who have watched both films in order may have a firm view on whether that third chapter should follow the small town comedy of ‘Elvira, Mistress of the Dark’ or the gothic parody of ‘Elvira’s Haunted Hills’, and the comments are open for that debate.
