Dis­cov­er the retro camp charm of this Razz­ie win­ning com­e­dy horror

James Signorelli’s Elvi­ra: Mis­tress of the Dark is a film full of dual­i­ties and ironies, where things tend to come in pairs. First there is the tit­u­lar hero­ine Elvi­ra, appear­ing, accord­ing to the clos­ing cred­its, ​“as her­self”, but in fact the brain­child and alter ego of Cas­san­dra Peter­son, who had been play­ing host­ess to B‑horror TV show Elvira’s Movie Macabre in this sexy/​snide per­sona since 1981, and who co-wrote the film (along with Sam Egan and John Paragon).

Elvira’s first big-screen out­ing begins in full meta mode, with her film­ing one of her small-screen out­ings, as she presents – and affec­tion­ate­ly ridicules – Roger Corman’s cheapo sci-fi schlock­er from 1956, It Con­quered the World. Appear­ing in her trade­mark low-cut black dress, and in her black-dyed hair­style that improb­a­bly merged a ​’50s bee­hive and an ​’80s mul­let (bridg­ing the decade of cin­e­ma that her show cel­e­brat­ed, and the decade in which it was broad­cast), Elvi­ra is all sarky, smut­ty sex pos­i­tiv­i­ty, mak­ing a promi­nent dis­play of her two best assets: her ver­bal wit, and her abil­i­ty to laugh at every­thing and every­one includ­ing, first and fore­most, herself.

Fired after refus­ing to grant sex­u­al favours to the station’s new own­er, Elvi­ra hopes to take up a new gig in Vegas, but must first trav­el to Fall­well in Mass­a­chu­setts, where her great aunt Mor­gana Tal­bot (also played by Peter­son in flash­backs) has recent­ly died, leav­ing Elvi­ra an inher­i­tance. Des­per­ate for cash, Elvi­ra tries to make over and sell on Morgana’s dusty, dilap­i­dat­ed man­sion, while work­ing out what to do with the mys­te­ri­ous cook­book and the white pup­py (Algo­nquin, or ​‘Gonk’) that form the rest of her lega­cy – even as creepy great uncle Vin­cent (W Mor­gan Shep­pard) shows an unusu­al inter­est in the tome of recipes.

Mean­while, stuck in a small-town throw­back to the kind of whole­some ​’50s val­ues (with dark­er under­cur­rents) that were preva­lent in the films that she typ­i­cal­ly presents, Elvi­ra finds her­self both a mis­fit, and fit­ting right in, as the arche­typ­al bad girl and ​‘witch’.

This is where the ironies begin to abound. For while Elvi­ra cer­tain­ly talks the talk of promis­cu­ity in an end­less stream of hilar­i­ous sex­u­al innu­en­do and dou­ble enten­dre, she remains a para­dox­i­cal mod­el of inno­cence and unavail­abil­i­ty, eas­i­ly fend­ing off the grop­ing advances of any num­ber of lech­er­ous admir­ers while strug­gling to get as much as a chaste kiss from the lat­est object of her own affec­tions, local cin­e­ma own­er and all-round hunk Bob Red­ding (Daniel Greene).

In oth­er words, Elvi­ra some­how man­ages, after her own fash­ion, to embody the very puri­tanism that she is accused of sub­vert­ing. She may offer a reveal­ing décol­letage, but she is, so to speak, all cleav­age and no nip­ples – and heav­en help any­one who tries to lay their filthy paws on her goods. Mean­while, the town’s out­spo­ken moral major­i­ty, which gears up rapid­ly from dis­ap­prov­ing­ly tut­ting, to black­list­ing their new guest, to lit­er­al­ly try­ing to burn Elvi­ra at the stake, rep­re­sents the real abom­i­na­tion in the town – a per­verse gallery of fak­ery and hypocrisy, with their leader Vin­cent a lit­er­al­ly demon­ic figure.

Only the teens are tru­ly turned on to Elvi­ra, as she teach­es them not so much how to be bad as how to rel­ish bad cin­e­ma with an iron­ic twin­kle in their eye, and to rebel against their par­ents’ more irra­tional pre­scrip­tions. Elvi­ra is, of course, her­self old enough to be their (cool) mother.

Elvi­ra: Mis­tress of the Dark was declared the year’s Worst Pic­ture by the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, and earned Peter­son the Gold­en Rasp­ber­ry for Worst Actress. This depre­cia­tive recep­tion is per­haps the final irony. For the film has as its cen­tre­piece a spe­cial screen­ing of ​‘worst movie in the world’, John DeBello’s Attack of the Killer Toma­toes! from 1978, which satir­i­cal­ly res­ur­rect­ed the very dumb­est tropes of ​’50s B‑movies. Elvi­ra: Mis­tress of the Dark engages in a sim­i­lar game of par­o­dy and pas­tiche, know­ing­ly plac­ing its hero­ine into a back­roads town that time for­got and into a sce­nario famil­iar from any num­ber of old­er films (not just the oeu­vre of Cor­man, but also of Russ Meyer).

Yet the film is only play­ing stu­pid, while its real­i­ty is rather more sophis­ti­cat­ed. Like­wise its icon­ic pro­tag­o­nist may come across as a dumb non-blonde, but she end­less­ly out­smarts and out-sass­es every­one around her, and always emerges on top, with­out ever hav­ing to put out to any­one she doesn’t fan­cy. Elvi­ra is a con­fi­dent, inde­pen­dent woman who knows exact­ly what she wants, who gives no ground to axe mur­der­ers, to pow­er-hun­gry wiz­ards or to more bog-stan­dard misog­y­nists, and who knows how to have a good time.

If all we notice is Elvira’s breasts (which are of course, as more than one char­ac­ter points out, nice), and we don’t see past them to their owner’s strength of char­ac­ter and refresh­ing take-no-shit atti­tude, then per­haps the dumb­ness is ours alone.

Elvi­ra: Mis­tress of the Dark is released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray on 10 December.