Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark

I’ll be honest, I am not really familiar with Elvira as a character. I live in England and we don’t really have the whole genre of people introducing movies — unless it’s some pretentious reviewer or academic introducing a black and white foreign language film from 1955. So when choosing my list of movies for 31 days of Halloween, I went on a couple of online lists and the genre of film on IMDB and saw that Elvira: Mistress of the Dark was listed as “comedy” and “horror”, so I added it to my list.

Oh boy did I not know what I was getting myself into!

Let’s be upfront, this film is not a horror film, it’s a bawdy slapstick comedy with horror elements that reminded me of films such as Carry of Screaming so my apologies if you think I have copped out with this one for my 31 days of horror challenge — it wasn’t intentional, honest! So with that confession out of the way, let’s get on with the review!

What’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark about?

Elvira is the host of a late night TV show where she introduces old B-Movies and intersperses them with explanations of the plot and sassy commentary. The film mirror’s the “real life” Elvira in that she’s hosting a TV show but it diverges slightly from real life as film opens with the titular (literally and literally) Elvira being hit on by the sleazy new boss of the TV network she works for.

Elvira isn’t a woman to take crap from any man, even if he has the power to sack her and she tells the sleazebag to shove his job as she’s got bigger at better things lined up — a cabaret show in Las Vegas which she thinks will propel her to the big time.

Things aren’t as simple as moving to Vegas and getting the show set up though, her manager tells her they need to part-fund the show to the tune of $50,000 and Elvira doesn’t have that kind of money lying around. As luck would have it, just at that moment, a telegram arrives telling Elvira that her Great Aunt has died and she’s been summoned to the reading of her will. Elvira’s as surprised by the timing as the audience “I didn’t know I had a good Aunt, let alone a great one!”

Elvira heads off to Fallwell, Massachusetts, a small, prudish town that certainly isn’t prepared for the arrival of an extremely busty and fast-mouthed Californian TV host.

The women of the community are shocked at Elvria’s arrival, the men don’t know where to look for fear of catching an unintended glimpse of cleavage, and the town’s teenagers are just happy that there’s a bit of excitement breezing into dull Fallwaell.

At the reading of the will, Elvira finds out that she has an Uncle, Vincent Talbot. He’s not really concerned with getting his hands on Aunt Morgana Talbot’s house, he just wants to get his hands on something inside — a spell book, which Elvira mistakes for a recipe book.

Elvira agrees to sell the book to Vincent for $50, not knowing what it really is, but before Uncle Vincent can make it to the house, Morgana’s pet poodle Algonquin (who Elvira also inherited and nicknamed Gonk), hides the book so Elvira can’t sell it to Vincent.

After finding the book stashed under a sofa cushion, Elvira decides to make Bob, the local cinema owner who’s befriended her, a romantic meal but instead conjures up a creature that attacks them both.

This gives Elvira an idea and she tries to replicate her “stew” and hides it amongst the dishes at the town’s Morality Pot Luck dinner, but instead of the evil creature popping out of the casserole dish as she’d hoped, it just makes anyone who its it lose their inhibitions and get incredibly horny.

Realising that Elvira is to blame, and stirred up by evil Uncle Vincent so he can grab the spell book, Elvira is arrested and then sentenced to be burned at the stake for her witchcraft.

Can Bob and the town’s teens save Elvira before she goes up in smoke? What will Vincent do once he gets his hands on the spell book? And will Elvira ever make it to Vegas to open her cabaret?

Defying Gravity

As I said, I wasn’t familiar with Elvria at all apart from a few pop culture references here and there and what I found was an absolute delight.

For a film from the 1980s, seeing a strong women who is in tune with her sexuality and won’t take crap from a man must have been a breath of fresh air in contrast to the meek and often dowdy women — think secretary who has to take her glasses off to be noticed or damsel in distress needing a man to rescue her as common tropes of the time.

And Elvira’s costume which allows her gravity defying cleavage to be on full display is a wonder to behold. I don’t know how much tit tape they used in the making of this film but it would have been worth buying shares in the company!

The plot is a bit thin on the ground, but there is a plot that has a beginning, middle and end and the film progresses through it in an orderly fashion which is a bit unusual for films of this type that are normally just a series of gags stitched together to fill the run time.

The townsfolk are hilarious as the prudish women don’t want their husbands to be anywhere near Elvira for fear of temptation (and the fact that they might realise how frumpy and unappealing they all are), but it was a bit weird how they seemed to go from zero to 100 when it came to deciding to burn Elvira like the many witches of Massachusetts before her — maybe Uncle Vincent put a spell on them and I was too mesmerised by Elvira’s cleavage to notice?

This is an enjoyable film that is an easy watch and doesn’t require a lot of concentration to follow what’s going on, there’s plenty of humour but I thought that maybe there could have been a few more scares to balance the comedy out a bit more.

Watch this if you’re looking for some witchy content over Halloween but want to get away from old crones or teenagers playing with magic they don’t understand.

Where to Watch:

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