Cassandra Peterson

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) As much as I liked 1988’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark beyond expectations, I find myself curiously underwhelmed by belated follow-up Elvira’s Haunted Hills. Maybe you can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice, or maybe there’s a limit to how much of Cassandra Peterson’s very specific charm one can absorb. Or maybe it’s an inferior follow-up, choosing to take the very contemporary Elvira to a historical setting, cutting corners and speaking roles in an attempt to deliver on a small budget. (Mistress of the Dark wasn’t an expensive production by Hollywood standard, but at least it had the means to tell the story it wanted to tell—there’s a sense in Haunted Hills that it’s a film that compromises a lot.)  The story is familiar, what with Elvira ending up at a haunted east European castle where her likeness adorns the wall: obviously, this is a take-off on well-worn horror tropes except with the Elvira blend of sassiness and sexiness. It works, but not always—some of the dialogue is forced (even in dubbed French, which usually smoothens out those issues), some of the attitude is overdone and the plot itself can’t sustain scrutiny beyond being a snark-delivering mechanism. It keeps going surprisingly long after it should start wrapping things up. Elvira herself is the reason to watch the film or not, and the point of the story should be to place her in situations where the character can do amusing things. Alas, Haunted Hills only does the bare minimum—it’s amusing without being as likable as the earlier film. Elvira spends so much time spouting anachronistic jokes that she should have been in a contemporary setting. The rest is merely piling up lame jokes over familiar plot points and while it’s entertaining, it’s not quite enough.

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2019) The character of Elvira (as played by Cassandra Peterson) is best known as a pin-up, a naughty icon or a highly successful brand blending gentle horror tropes with curvaceous sex-appeal. Considering that the character was created as a horror-movie hostess, it makes sense that she would have at least one movie to her credit. Actually, there are two once you throw in 2001’s Elvira’s Haunted Hills, but the first 1988 film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is as good a representative sample of the character than we could have wished for. Firmly executed in the 1980s B-movie tradition, the film features Peterson in character as Elvira travelling from Los Angeles to a small town in Massachusetts to claim an inheritance. Naturally, once over there she gets to shock the mundanes, bring city attitudes to the small town and (naturally) fight evil supernatural forces. The film is a bit more cohesive than the string of quick gags that viewers may apprehend after the first few moments of the film—there’s a real script here, even if it’s focused on comedy and misses no opportunity to play off Elvira’s form-fitting cleavage-showcasing outfit, sarcastic personality, and witty one-liners. Peterson isn’t the world’s best actress, but she inhabits the character with self-aware ferociousness even if the film can’t always keep an even tone. Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is unabashedly silly, but crucially it works: it earns its wolf whistles, its laughs and its good humour—not to mention an enduring piece of work to present Elvira to future generations.