Everything Action Theater: Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
The once and future Mistress of the Dark, Cassandra Peterson, first brought Elvira to the big screen in 1988 when Elvira: Mistress of the Dark opened. Directed by SNL’s James Signorelli, the movie follows Elvira as she leaves her TV show in Los Angeles with dreams of starring in a show in Las Vegas. Needing $50,000 to kickstart a glitzy Vegas act, Elvira seemingly lucks out when she inherits a mansion in Fallwell, MA, from her great-aunt Morgana. While trying to fix up and sell the mansion to get the cash she needs, Elvira clashes with the conservative town council while befriending the town’s teens and flirting with the hunky theater manager, Bob Redding (Daniel Greene). There’s also the matter of Elvira’s uncle, Vincent Talbot (W. Morgan Sheppard), being a warlock who wants Morgana’s “recipe book,” which is actually a book of powerful spells and incantations. The movie feels similar in tone to Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, which makes perfect sense as Peterson was a member of the Groundlings along with the late Paul Reubens and the late John Paragon, who played Jambi on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, helped co-write the script for Mistress of the Dark. The movie received mixed reviews upon release and was a box office disappointment, but it has since become a cult classic, and Elvira is still an icon of pop culture. You can watch the entire movie below, thanks to YouTube.
