 |
| Cassandra Peterson and Richard O'Brien (in TOMB OF LIGEIA mode). |
Donna and I recently watched ELVIRA'S HAUNTED HILLS, which was directed in Romania by our friend Sam Irvin way back in 2001 and was released as a fully restored Collector's Edition Blu-ray by Scream Factory last October. Sam had recently sent us a copy as a gift and—missing our friends as we do—we decided to spend our most recent Pizza Night with him.
Truth be told, I've never really been on the Elvira wavelength, so I never sought this movie (nor the first one, ELVIRA MISTRESS OF THE DARK) out. Turns out to be my loss, because I found HAUNTED HILLS to be highly enjoyable. Behind the cleavage and the bawdy jokes, it's actually quite a knowledgeable, funny, and heartfelt tribute to Roger Corman's Poe pictures of the early 1960s—I wonder if it might have reached a wider audience had it been sold as such? I didn't laugh at everything in the film that was supposed to be funny (sometimes I did—I could say the same about almost any comedy), but it did have me laughing as soon as the first image faded up.
What most amused me, what made me laugh most heartily, were the many moments when the atmosphere just... clicked into that seemingly inimitable AIP vibe. The dialogue (written by Cassandra Peterson and John Paragon) plucks a number of familiar verbal bon-bons from the movies it honors, so it's smart as well as silly—and the film's fidelity is not just due to Sam's input (he was the creator of the much-respected fanzine BIZARRE in the early 1970s) but also to Ms. Peterson. Her finest moment in the film (and probably Sam's too) is the pay-off to a series of jokey references to Elvira's presumably low-brow music hall act: a genuinely remarkable explosion into skilled song-and-dance that rockets out of the screen with just the right mix of good and bad taste; I don't know that even Ken Russell could have done it much better. Richard O'Brien (the creator of THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW and Riff Raff in the celebrated film version, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) is also in the film and he's spectacular. I was also pleasantly surprised by Scott Atkinson, an actor with whom I wasn't familiar, who is cast as the film's suave Vincent Price surrogate and plays the part with a voice purloined from the late George Sanders.
In a supplementary interview, Sam mentions that he set out to make a Mel Brooks-style spoof of the Corman Poe films, and it really is the Roger Corman corollary to YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA—DEAD AND LOVING IT. It's humor is to a great extent derived from how precisely it mirrors the films it honors. It was made in Romania where I imagine the budget could be stretched farther, and also where old world artisan craftsmanship is still part of their culture—you can see it in the beautiful, lavish sets.
If you haven't seen this film, but have seen all of the Corman/Price/Poe pictures many times, and love what Mel Brooks did with his horror spoofs, give this one a chance. It goes well with pizza, and you're the audience it was really made for.
Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email
If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.
