‘Elvira: Mistress of The Dark’ or — Big Titillations?
It shouldn’t work. It has a shoddy script, under-written plot, bad jokes, old jokes, somewhat lacklustre direction, wonky special effects and tinny music. But ‘Elvira: Mistress of The Dark’ (1988) works because of one particular ingredient — bags of charm.
And two of the biggest bags of charm come in the form of Cassandra Peterson as Elvira herself who knows this character inside out and is a blast to watch on screen. She’s the charismatic bra of the movie holding all the wobbly bits together that, without her support, would just spill out all over the place and striking just the right balance between sultry, kooky, sexy, strong, silly, decent and indecent with a hugely endearing and likeable energy zipping about behind her eyes. I knew Peterson could vamp it up better than anyone but not that she was this good a comedy performer.
I won’t outline the plot because it’s not really important, or terribly well thought out, but it involves the Mistress of Darkness moving to a small, conservative American town where her outrageous, yet honest, behaviour shocks the locals who become determined to drive her out of their neighbourhood. It’s like ‘Footloose’ (1984) but with cleavage rather than dancing. There’s also some business about an inheritance, a long lost uncle, a house and a magic book which is the main focus for the story until it suddenly isn’t. But that’s okay because the focus is Elvira and her cheeky innuendos and on that well-endowed front ‘Elvira’ is nicely stacked.
It’s also surprisingly sweet with Elvira befriending the town’s teenagers in a non-threatening way (she is a rebel against parental authority so is, essentially, a teen herself in spirit), standing up to unwelcome sexual advances, highlighting moral hypocrisy and she is the one who is trying to get the reluctant local hunk into bed as opposed to vice versa. So the movie is playfully coquettish rather than sleazy, not that it isn’t delightfully sexy at times with Peterson looking traffic-stopping stunning throughout and when the movie does have flashes of the truly risqué and filthy (“Is this seat taken?”) it hits just the right tone of naughtiness and transgression.
‘Elvira: Mistress of The Dark’ is way more fun than it really should be especially if you unpack all its constituent parts, but considering we don’t usually watch movies that way this is a very easy film to enjoy. The only shocking aspect of it all is that Cassandra Peterson was nominated for a Razzie for her performance in this movie, proof that any award ceremony can get it fundamentally wrong. For my money she’s better and more entertaining in this than Meryl Streep ever was in ‘Out of Africa’ (1985).
