Editorials
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark: 10 Things You Might Not Know!
From that fateful audition for a role as a horror hostess on a local Los Angeles television station in 1981, Cassandra Peterson’s alter ego quickly rose to become an international pop-culture phenomenon synonymous with Halloween and the double entendre. For over three decades the Elvira brand has been responsible for numerous films, TV appearances, commercials, specials, and endless merchandising, including yearly live shows at Knott’s Scary Farm since 1982. Last year saw Elvira’s appearance at the seasonal Halloween event take a final bow, though it by no means signals that Elvira’s hanging up her wig. With an autobiography and animated series in the works, Elvira won’t be retiring anytime soon, even though Peterson promises she will every few years or so.
Not that we’d want her to. The character of Elvira is the perfect contradiction that only someone of Peterson’s wit and grace could accomplish; the sexy vixen with the valley girl’s cadence and buxom curves that belies a strong, independent woman beneath. She never conforms to expectations and isn’t afraid to be herself. Between that fearlessness and her love of horror, it’s easy to see why she’s become an idol of many. In celebration of her enduring and fascinating career, here are 10 things you might not have known about the Mistress of the Dark:
House on Haunted Hill started her horror obsession
When Cassandra Peterson was in the second grade, her cousin took her to see House on Haunted Hill. It gave her nightmares for weeks, much to the dismay of her parents, but it also spurned a lifelong love for the genre. Vincent Price became her hero, so she started going through his catalog of films before moving on to Hammer horror and reading Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. The film and its famous star would have such a lasting mark on Peterson that it’d influence much of her work; Elvira’s Haunted Hills was not only dedicated to Vincent Price, but it spoofed many of his films. On a larger scale, she considers Elvira to be a cross between Price and actress Mae West.
A horrific childhood accident helped create her trademark humor
When she was two years old, Peterson was playing in the kitchen and accidentally tipped over a pot of boiling water full of Easter eggs. It resulted in severe, third-degree burns that covered about 35% of her body and left her with visible scarring. That visible scarring, and her horror obsession, made her a target for bullying among children during her school years, some even creating songs about her being a monster. She developed her razor-sharp sense of humor as a coping mechanism, giving her the last laugh against her harassers considering how integral humor is to her career.
The accident is partially responsible for Elvira’s trademark dress
Elvira’s dress is so iconic that it remains an all-time best-selling costume during the costume season. The slinky black dress with a plunging neckline, cinched tight at the waist with a belt, and slit high on the thighs fits her sexy persona, but its design was far more practical than it would appear. With scarring covering 35% of her skin, that slinky dress covers just about every bit of skin sporting scar tissue from that childhood accident.
The irony behind Maila Nurmi’s lawsuit against Peterson’s Elvira
Maila Nurmi, the actress behind horror host Vampira, famously filed a lawsuit against Peterson, claiming that Peterson had stolen Vampira’s likeness in creation of the Elvira personality. That both borrow from Morticia Addams of The Addams Family also isn’t lost on many. What’s not so well known, though, is that Elvira’s final look wasn’t what Peterson really wanted, at least not in the first place. Peterson originally intended for Elvira to resemble Sharon Tate’s character from Fearless Vampire Killers; extremely pale and red-haired. The producers shot it down and insisted she go with an all-black look.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark was conceived as a hopeful back-door pilot for a sitcom on NBC
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark was funded by NBC and to be distributed by a company called New World. Peterson wrote the script with John Paragon, fellow alum of improv group The Groundlings and more recognizably Jambi the Genie from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Being funded by NBC meant a lot of fighting for her vision, like whether or not to include teenagers in a film aimed at teenagers. When it came time for the film’s release, though, New World was in the middle of filing for bankruptcy so Elvira, Mistress of the Dark only made its way into 150 theaters. The sitcom on NBC never happened.
Her sitcom dream did happen in 1993. Almost.
When approached by a CBS TV executive, who wanted her to develop a weekly sitcom around Elvira, she quickly re-teamed with Paragon to create and write the sitcom. Veteran TV writer Anne Beatts came aboard the project, which likely gave CBS the impression they’d be getting a light-hearted comedy to appeal to a younger audience based on Beatts’ previous works. Clearly, they weren’t as familiar with Elvira as they thought who of course showcased her trademark boob jokes. The pilot was shot in front of a studio audience, and then it was presented to the studio execs. They hated it, freaking out over the amount of cleavage alone. The first full season order was canceled, and the pilot never aired.
She had a reality show
In 2007, Fox’s Reality channel on cable premiered The Search for the Next Elvira, a reality competition series where Peterson and two male Elvira impersonators judged auditions in the style of American Idol. The contestants competed in challenges where they would employ double entendres or sell Elvira products until it came down to an audience vote on the “unlucky 13” winner. April Wahlin was crowned the winner, a title that was meant to have brought the extra Halloween gigs that Peterson herself wasn’t able to fit into her schedule, but fans were unresponsive to the concept once in practice.
She’s not a fan of slasher movies, at all
Despite being a life-long horror fan and having hosted over 272 episodes of Movie Macabre, there’s one sub-genre of horror that Peterson can’t stand; the slasher. It’s not the blood and gore, as she’s a fan of gruesome horror. It’s that she prefers her horror to maintain a level of fantasy, stating that she feels having to employ the use of your imagination makes it all the more frightening. The film she finds the scariest is The Exorcist, because of the fantasy element. But as for slashers and home invasion movies? She considers that more in line with the nightly news, not horror.
We can thank Elvis Presley for Elvira
At the age of 17, Peterson was performing in Vegas as a showgirl, where she met Elvis. She went to his hotel room where they sat down together and sang while he played the piano. Enjoying her voice, he told her she didn’t belong in Vegas, that she should stop performing as a showgirl and pursue singing. Had it come from anyone else, Peterson might have balked. Instead, she heeded his advice and went to Europe to pursue a singing career. After landing acting gigs in Europe, she eventually returned to stateside to continue acting in Hollywood.
Vincent Price taught her how to cook fish in her dishwasher
Peterson eventually met and became friends with her childhood idol in the years before he passed. Price was almost as well known for his culinary legacy as he was his distinctive acting career, and imparted a recipe to Peterson for wrapping fish in aluminum and putting it in the dishwasher while the machine washed your dishes. When the cycle is done, the fish is perfectly steamed, at least according to Peterson. It’s the type of story that conveys an endearing friendship between two horror icons, both sporting a quick-witted humor.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
‘Terrifier 3’: Filming Has Wrapped on Damien Leone’s Christmas Slasher Sequel!
‘Halloween: Illustrated’ Review: Original Novelization of John Carpenter’s Classic Gets an Upgrade
You must be logged in to post a comment.