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Elvira's Movie Macabre (or sometimes simply Movie Macabre) is an American comedy television show that airs B-grade horror movies, occasionally interrupted by comments from the hostess, Elvira (played by Cassandra Peterson). In some episodes during intermission, Elvira would get an unexpected phone call from a character called "The Breather" (played by John Paragon) who would only call and tell Elvira weird jokes. The title shown here is the title under which the film was shown on the show; many B-grade horror films were rereleased with different titles.
Contents
Origins
In the late spring of 1981, six years after the death of Larry Vincent (who starred as host Sinister Seymour of a local Los Angeles weekend horror show called Fright Night), show producers began the task of bringing the show back. Deciding to use a female host, producers asked 1950s horror hostess, Maila Nurmi, to revive The Vampira Show. Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but eventually quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. The station continued with the project and sent out a casting call. Peterson auditioned against 200 other horror hostess hopefuls and won the role. Producers left it up to her to create the role's image. Her best friend, Robert Redding, and she came up with the sexy punk/vampire look after producers rejected her original idea to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Since they were unable to continue with the Vampira character, the character Elvira was used instead. What followed was Elvira's Movie Macabre, featuring a quick-witted Valley girl-type character named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, with heavily applied, pancake-horror make-up and a towering black beehive wig to conceal Peterson's flame-red hair.
Shortly before the first taping, producers received a cease and desist letter from Nurmi. Besides the similarities in the format and costumes, Elvira's closing line for each show, wishing her audience "Unpleasant dreams", was notably similar to Vampira's closer: "Bad dreams, darlings..." uttered as she walked off down a misty corridor. The court ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "'likeness' means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi claimed that Vampira's image was based on Morticia Addams, a character in Charles Addams's cartoons that appeared in The New Yorker magazine.
The Elvira character rapidly gained notoriety with her tight-fitting, low-cut black gown which showed ample cleavage. The movies featured on Elvira's Movie Macabre were always B-grade (or lower). Elvira reclined on a red Victorian couch, introducing and often interrupting the movie to lampoon the actors, the script, and the editing. Adopting the flippant tone of a California "Valley girl", she brought a satirical, sarcastic edge to her commentary. She reveled in dropping risqué double entendres and making frequent jokes about her display of cleavage. In an AOL Entertainment News interview, Peterson said, "I figured out that Elvira is me when I was a teenager. She's a spastic girl. I just say what I feel and people seem to enjoy it." Her campy humor, sex appeal, and good-natured self-mockery made her popular with late-night movie viewers, and her popularity soared.
Elvira was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and other talk shows. She also produced a long-running series of Halloween-themed television commercials for Coors Light Beer and Mug Root Beer (her trademark cleavage was concealed for the Coors campaign). She appeared in guest roles on television dramas such as CHiPs, The Fall Guy, and Fantasy Island and appeared on numerous awards shows as a presenter. Although she is known primarily as Elvira, Peterson has made out-of-costume appearances as herself for television interviews and specials.
In 1982, with the success of Movie Macabre, Knott's Theme Parks hired Elvira to replace Seymour as the host of its annual Halloween Haunt during October. Elvira appeared nightly at the park, live on stage with a Halloween-themed musical comedy revue similar to her Mamma's Boys act from the 1970s.
The Elvira character rapidly evolved from obscure cult figure to a lucrative brand name and "Mistress of all Media", spawning many products throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Halloween costumes, comic books, action figures, trading cards, pinball machines, Halloween decor, model kits, calendars, perfume, and dolls. She has appeared on the cover of Femme Fatales magazine five times. Her popularity reached its zenith with the release of the feature film Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (co-written by Peterson) in 1988.
2010-11 series
In September 2010, Elvira's Movie Macabre returned to television syndication in the U.S., this time with public-domain films. Twenty-six episodes were produced, six were left unaired but found a home on both DVD and iTunes.
See E1 Entertainment for DVD releases.
2014: 13 Nights of Elvira
13 Nights of Elvira, was an all-new series produced for Hulu by Brainstorm Media. A new episode streamed each day through Halloween. The series teamed with film distributor Full Moon Features; it provided the majority of the films chosen for the series.
Time Life
In 2004 Time Life released a series of special Elvira DVD's titled "Elvira's Horror Classics" which was done in a similar fashion to Movie Macabre. Each DVD had two films and they were later released in a box set titled "Elvira's Box of Horrors". The films featured were all in the public domain. They included:
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory has released a small number of Movie Macabre episodes to DVD, in both single and "double feature" format. The DVDs allow the material to be shown complete with Elvira's interruptions or uninterrupted. Unlike the original broadcasts, the original films are complete and uncensored.
Single DVDs
Double Feature DVDs
E1 Entertainment
Following the revival of Elvira's Movie Macabre in 2011, E1 Entertainment began releasing episodes of the new series on DVD. Unlike the Shout! Factory editions these releases were released in their edited format as aired on syndication.
Single DVDs
Double Feature DVDs
Four Feature Sets
Parodies
The Simpsons character Boobarella is loosely based on Elvira.