An old friend of mine used to utilize lines from this movie as a part of his routine wisecrack response, whether saying, "If I wanted your opinion, I'd beat it out of you!" or responding to "What should I call you?". "Tonight". Cassandra Peterson, with a bawdy sense of humor and a self-deprecating way of keeping herself in check, makes every moment count. It is obvious that this was a film made for the audiences, not the critics, and it's just the type of popcorn movie that audiences flocked to before society began to take itself way too seriously. Usually, in horror spoofs like this, mere mortals end up in an old dark house, unsure of how to handle the spooky people who live there, but here, the all too goody goody Massachusetts town has the horror brought to them, or at least in ghoulish form. Inheriting part of her great aunt's estate, Elvira heads back to her mother's home town where she finds the prejudices mighty high upon her arrival, especially from the manipulative, Gladys Kravitz like Chastity Pariah (a delightful Edie McClurg) who has absolutely no sense of fun other than tasting everything in bulk at the boring socials that the town throws on special occasions.Immediately noticing that the young people are quite repressed, Elvira sets out right off the bat to change all that, inciting the wrath of nasty waitress Susan Kellerman who is upset that Elvira has enticed her supposed boyfriend, the hunky Daniel Greene. This leads to a bit of mean-spirited revenge that spoofs "Flashdance" but ends up with Elvira soaked with something other than gold glittered water. Elvira, through the help of a mysterious cookbook that her nefarious uncle (W. Morgan Sheppard) wants to get his hands on. In disguise as a supposed respectful townsperson, Sheppard has some nefarious plans up his sleeve, which literally sets the town (and Elvira) on fire. But between Elvira's chesty muscles, her street smarts and a magical dog, Sheppard is going to have his work cut out for him. It's the dark arts vs. the white arts, because it is made very clear that even though she dresses in witch's black and looks like Barbara Steele in "Black Sunday", Elvira ain't into all that Satanic garbage.A great supporting cast helps this become an entertaining mixture of slob comedy, horror spoof and cult classic, with McClurg delightfully stuffy, especially in her description of Elvira past the initial statement of "a woman of easy virtue". Character actor favorites William Duell and Pat Crawford Brown steal their moments as a married couple who own the local motor inn, with Duell much easier going than his judgmental wife, and getting a great last line in on Ms. Brown. Sheppard becomes one of the great campy movie villains, much like Christopher Lloyd in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". There's also some great music here, including "Shout!" where the teens all willingly help Elvira fix up her house and a campy Vegas number which was Elvira's goal from the start to get away from the syndicated TV station where her only asset for the new station owner was located just below her neck. How she deals with the perverted pig is deliciously funny, as is the repercussions it presents for a stuffy news reporter, a gag later repeated with Kellerman's vindictive waitress.

I came into this film with just the barest of knowledge on who Elvira was. I knew she was a horror host in the 80s and some of the 90s and she took off a lot more than any others did (unless you count MST3K) and...that probably would've been it. So, rather curiously and in a way that I can't really explain why, I decided to watch this to get a firm foundation for her character and maybe her show. In the end, it was quite an enjoyable little film.Okay so the plot will probably sound familiar in one way or another - A horror show host named Elvira quits her job as a horror host at a local TV station after finding out its being bought by a pervert who wants to take sexual advantage of her and wants to start up a show in Vegas but to achieve that, she has to come up with $50 000 and, by coincidence, her Great Aunt has just died and the reading of her will is in a few days in a town thats...conservative, to say the least. She is mostly treated badly from everyone there with the exceptions being the teenagers of the town and the local film theater manager, whose the love interest. And it turns out her inheritance is the house from The Munsters (no joke, its the same house!), a punk rock dog and a recipe book which her only other relative (her Great Uncle) wants to get his hands on, on the grounds that its a spell recipe book and wants to use it to become the "Master of the Dark".Okay, whats good here? Well a lot of the jokes do hit the nail in the head, most of the time, in getting a laugh however corny they may be, its a surprisingly creative way to make a film about a horror host, all the actors do well for their parts and its great to just see the film play out. What do I mean by that? A lot of the time Elvira has a "conspiracy" planned against her by the head of the town, Chastity Pariah. Maybe its different for some people but the amount of times the supposed "moral figure" of the town proves just how insane she is and how Elvira the "harlot" is probably one of the few voices of reason in the entire film is just funny to me. My favourite scene is just as Elvira discovers she's a witch and she can do all this, the townsfolk that have all wronged her have a "morality" picnic, as a celebration of the fact that they've kept their morals and values in check. She puts in a potion she brewed up which...turns it into an orgy (well as much of an orgy as you can get from an M rating) (also, while I'm doing this, as much as it will be hard to believe, considering Elvira's reputation the whole 'turning the picnic into an orgy was completely by accident!) and the very next scene is of a town meeting where they constantly blame the other person they were with for coming on to them and being "sex crazed deviants". Again, your opinion may vary on how funny that is.Whats bad? I'm not going to act like there isn't anything. Sometimes the fantasy sequences are a bit tedious, some of the jokes didn't quite make it with a few leaving me groaning but the worst thing, for me at least, was that after everything's done, spoiler alert, Elvira achieves her dream of going to Vegas and we see what her act is. Which goes on for 4 minutes and while the film wasn't awful by this stage my reaction was along the lines of "Movie...your over. Why are we focusing on this when its not even funny?"So is it for everyone? No. The best way to describe this film is "imagine if Hocus Pocus (1993) and The Addams Family (1991) had a child that happened to star one of the most successful horror hosts ever". Get that image in your head, add a tonne of cheese to it (yes, even more than either of those two films had combined) and thats this movie. So if your in the right mood, go check it out.

Wonderful movie with an excellent play by Cassandra Peterson, in the main role of seductive Elvira. It's an action horror comedy about an ambitious, goal-driven entrepreneurial- minded entertainer, who appeared in the town of hypocrites. In this town she is experiencing ups and downs, taking risks, ripping off the masks from the goodies and even facing a real danger. The movie is ending up with Elvira's victory and dreams coming true as a result.The key learning message in the movie could be presented by the quote from Bible: "Separate the wheat from the chaff".Thanks for great job!

Well, this movie is about Elvira and her breasts more than anything else. Take the references and jokes and leers and squeezes and ogling out and 60% of the film is gone just like that. The film opens with Elvira on the set of her television show when just as she loses her job for refusing to play horsey to the new station owner, she discovers she has inherited something in Falwell, Mass.(Nice use of Jerry Falwell's name here too by the way!). Well, the town is uber "moral" and Elvira is...Elvira. Eventually she discovers she has spell powers, etc... and battles her uncle for her life and property. In between we get all kinds of silly humour such as a dog with a punk hairstyle, an orgiastic picnic with Edie McClurg(need I say more?), a rather tame and pedestrian romance with some imbecile in town, Elvira quipping one-liners like the sleazy Oscar Wilde of her time, and breasts. more breasts. More cleavage. More suggestive uses for those breasts. We get innuendo by the truckload. Naturally all this makes for a silly and stupid film, but Cassandra Peterson as Elvira is indeed more than two large fleshy orbs - she has other talents. She is funny. She can act - at least for a film like this. She has a great screen persona. Sure, the sophomoric obsession with her bazooms, her bosom, her jugs, her boobs, her mammaries, her ample bounty get a bit tiresome for me(and I assure you I am not only a big fan but a dedicated one with regard to those assets), but they are funny an not really made to be anything other than that. There is absolutely nothing erotic here. Elvira is having fun and likes people to see her - much of her - having fun. There are lots of pretty good verbal and visual gags throughout. My favourite is when a letter from a movie marquee hits Elvira in the head. Bob, the dull romantic lead, says, "How's your head?" To which Elvira says, "I've had no complaints."