Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)

From Coors Light commercials to Saturday afternoon horror flicks, the constant bosomy presence of Elvira on television did a real erotic number on me growing up, implanting a lifelong lust for buxom Gothic females fully loaded with a heart-ripping skill for double entendre and a heartbreaking like for me in their arsenal.

While those dark and stormy romances never turned out the way I devilishly hoped they would, when Elvira went to the big screen in 1988’s Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, it gave me an ironic glimmer of hope that someday a black-clad beauty would cross my path in her ever-lovin’ fight against demonic forces, real or imagined.

Working as a late-night horror hostess, Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) leaves her terrible job to collect an inheritance from a recently deceased aunt. Landing in the conservative town of Fallwell, Massachusetts, she soon learns her mother was the original Mistress of the Dark, which comes in handy when she also learns her Uncle Vincent (W. Morgan Sheppard) is an evil warlock with sights set on world domination.

But the real threat here is the small town, led by the stereotypical busybody Chastity Pariah (Edie McClurg), who, after eating a magical casserole, gets so aroused she sits on some guy’s face in a public park. With the help of the area’s equally horny teens, however, Elvira is able to win the town over and defeat her evil lineage.

With so many Mae West-ian jokes about breasts, fellatio and other sexually explicit acts, it’s amazing this film escaped with a PG-13 rating. But it was a different time, I guess — one where people could burn witches at the stake for surefire laughs. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a satanically overlooked comedy that should be rescued from the pyre. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

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