Elvira's Movie Macabre


Elvira's Movie Macabre, or simply Movie Macabre, is an American hosted horror movie television program that originally aired from 1981 to 1986. The show features B movies, particularly those in the horror and science fiction genres, and is hosted by Elvira, a character with a black dress and beehive wig played by Cassandra Peterson. Elvira occasionally interrupts the films with comments and jokes, and in some episodes receives phone calls from a character called "the Breather".
The popularity of the show led to a feature film, , which was released in 1988. The character returned in the 2001 film Elvira's Haunted Hills. The show was revived in 2010 as Elvira's Movie Macabre, in which Elvira hosted public domain films. This revival aired on This TV until 2011. Elvira returned as a horror hostess in 2014 with 13 Nights of Elvira, a 13-episode series produced by Hulu.

History

In the late spring of 1981, six years after the death of Larry Vincent, 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. 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. 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 .

Episode list

Original run

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

''Elvira's Movie Macabre'' (2010–11)

In September 2010, Elvira's Movie Macabre returned to television syndication in the United States, airing on This TV. This revival saw Elvira hosting public domain films. 27 episodes were produced; six were left unaired, but were released on both DVD and iTunes.
s#e#Film shownepWeek of
s1e01Night of the Living Dead1September 20, 2010
s1e02The Terror2September 27, 2010
s1e03The Giant Gila Monster3October 4, 2010
s1e04The Brain That Wouldn't Die4October 11, 2010
s1e05The Satanic Rites of Dracula5October 18, 2010
s1e06Scared to Death6October 25, 2010
s1e07The Werewolf of Washington7November 1, 2010
s1e08Eegah8November 8, 2010
s1e09Teenagers from Outer Space9November 15, 2010
s1e10Santa Claus Conquers the Martians10December 20, 2010
s1e11I Eat Your Skin11January 17, 2011
s1e12Don't Look in the Basement12January 24, 2011
s1e13Untamed Women13January 31, 2011
s1e14Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter14February 7, 2011
s1e15Lady Frankenstein15February 14, 2011
s1e16The Manster16February 21, 2011
s1e18Tormented18April 25, 2011
s1e1919May 2, 2011
s1e20Hercules and the Captive Women20May 9, 2011
s1e21A Bucket of Blood21May 16, 2011

''13 Nights of Elvira'' (2014)

13 Nights of Elvira was 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.
EpisodeFilm shownDate
01Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of DeathOctober 19, 2014
02Puppet MasterOctober 20, 2014
03Demonic ToysOctober 21, 2014
04HobgoblinsOctober 22, 2014
05The Gingerdead ManOctober 23, 2014
06DollmanOctober 24, 2014
07TrancersOctober 25, 2014
08OblivionOctober 26, 2014
09Shrunken HeadsOctober 27, 2014
10Hideous!October 28, 2014
11Evil BongOctober 29, 2014
12SeedpeopleOctober 30, 2014
13Night of the Living DeadOctober 31, 2014

DVD releases

Time Life

In 2004, Time Life released a series of three special Elvira DVDs titled Elvira's Horror Classics, which was done in a similar fashion to Movie Macabre. Each DVD had two films and they were later re-released in a box set titled Elvira's Box of Horrors. The films featured were all in the public domain. They included:
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 either complete with Elvira's interruptions or uninterrupted. Unlike the original broadcasts, the films are complete and uncensored.

Single DVDs

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 films were released in their edited format as aired in syndication.

Single DVDs