It’s late at night. You’re lying on the couch. You feel a lump under you and you hope it’s the channel changer because you have a suspicion that an infomercial is headed your way. But no, the dulcet intonations of horror movie music reverberate around the room. The iconic goddess of the fright flick comes into focus and you know the evening has just begun.
Many people think of a pair of hot legs, horror, and beer commercials when they think of Elvira, Mistress of Darkness. The talent behind that image is one of imposing magnitude. Writer, director, actress, songstress, dancer, and all-around comedic mastermind, Elvira’s creator- some might say alter ego- Cassandra Peterson is a woman of unique ability.
She took off for Los Vegas at the age of 17, and became its youngest professional dancer Elvis Presley quickly took her under his wing and told her to start a band. She packed off to Italy with her band and landed a role in Frederico Felini’s La Roma, a film, and a director worthy of deification, according to the majority of culture vultures. Paying her dues slowly back in the states, she landed the MC role on a Los Angeles late night horror show, where the irrestible character was created.
Her latest adventure is the uproariously funny feature film. Elvira’s Haunted Hills, available in video stores now. The Crier caught up with her recently.
TVP: Everyone wants to be someone else for a while. How does it feel to have consistent access to an alter ego with a frightening amount of creative license?/ Cassandra Peterson: Feels great! I can do all the things that I wouldn’t do in my normal life. I have this outrageous personality that I can withdraw from when I want to. I can hurl the most incredible insults and be so incredibly truthful to them and they think it's cute, they love it.
T.V.P.: Do you find yourself being nicer in compensatory fashion when you’re being Cassandra?
E./C.P.: People who know I’m Elvira- I want them to know that I’m not always that forthright. I do withdraw a little bit, as of to say “See? I really am a nice person.”
T.V.P.: Is it safe to say that your die-hard fans are numbered among the more unusual people?
E./C.P.: That’s definitely safe to say. I’ve sort of figured out my fan base- there’s a lot of different components- old ladies to little kids, to the Metal crowd, and the Goth crowd of course, prisoners, bikers, soldiers. it's just weird. The one thing I’ve noticed about my really big fans is that they’re the misfit's of the world. I always considered myself the same type of person. I seem to hold some kind of connection with those people who don’t seem to fit in. Those people usually turn into the really coolest kinds of people when they grow up; more creative, more in control of their lives, not following the same old crap that everybody does. But they feel like I did, completely out of it, total social geeks when they’re growing up.
T.V.P. All creative people seem to share that need to create an alternative to the circumstance in which they found themselves.
E./C.P.: That’s right, and I did that with a vengeance! I went for that literally, you know?
T.V.P.: Given the unique nature of your fan base, I’m going to guess that a lot of interesting interactions crop up.
E./C.P.: Where do I start? A thing that used to be bizarre but is now so common that I hardly even blink is fans getting my image tattoos on their various body parts. When that started I was like, “Wow that’s so cool!” Now every time I appear someone comes up and says, “Hey, check this out,” and they have my whole entire image on their thigh or their shoulder or their butt- which is very common. Or I’ll be signing my autograph on their arm and I’ll say, “Go have it tattooed.” A couple hours later they come with this bloody scab. I always think I should’ve told them to knock over a 7/11 and bring me the cash.
I had a girl come up to me and say, “Elvira, I love you! I’ve been practicing this for years now just for you!” I told her I couldn’t wait to see what she was going to do. She tool out a 2 by 4 and a hammer and some nails, and nails her tongue to the wood. I had to say, “Gee, that’s great!”
I’ve had people put screwdrivers up their nose into their skulls for me. Just a bunch of wacky fans out there.
T.V.P.: You have a resume that says Destined for Greatness: discovered by Elvis, appeared in a Fellini film- only the greatest film director of all time, worked in a troupe that spawned a slew of comedic geniuses-including yourself. Does it seem a bit surreal to you that it was Elvira that threw you into the limelight?
E./C.P.: it's kind of funny because I always say to people “ I’m going to write my autobiography.” They always say “You’re too young to write your autobiography.” But it would probably stop at the point where I became Elvira.That’s when my life got boring. I had a much more exciting life before that. Say from 14 to 30- that’s when it was really happening. This is my job now, not that it's a boring job.
People ask me what I mother thinks of me wearing the Elvira dress. In fact, she’s relieved that I’m wearing any clothes at all. And I have a steady income.
I’ve had a pretty diversified and varied past, I can tell you that.
T.V.P. You had a parallel musical career, that it seems you could have taken very far.
E./C.P.: That’s how I started out, dancing and singing. I was really depressed when I took up acting and gave up my singing career. All those years working on that, and then quitting. The funny thing is that it is coming around. As Elvira I use singing for a lot of things. I did this IMAX movie that was basically a music video of one of my songs, “Livin’ in a Haunted House.” I have several CD’s of Halloween music out. I still use those talents.
I wanted to stay in the music world. At the point when I got the Elvira part it was the 80’s and there was the whole New Wave thing. I was so into music and musicians. Crissie Hinds was my idol, and Joan Jett. I probably would have gone in that direction.
T.V.P. I can easily envision you at Ozzfest with a Speed Metal band behind you.
E./C.P.: That’s scaring me. I still get to hang out with a lot of bands and musicians because I always do the intros. All the old 80’s metal bands, everybody from them to U2 I’ve introduced for shows. Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, Kiss, Motley Crew, all those guys. Right now I’m friends with that group Roony that just did the Lollapalooza tour. I’ve always been crazy about bands and music. I guess that translates into the way I put the Elvira character together in some ways.
T.V.P. You spend a lot of time in character.
E./C.P.: I do
T.V.P. Not just on sets but in a lot of live appearances. Do you ever find yourself thinking in Elvira mode?
E./C.P.: Oh yes! I like that. She has the more healthy personality. it's definitely the more confident, strong, woman. I’m not afraid to say what I’m thinking. it's a character that I wish I could incorporate more into my real life. And actually, as I get older, I am and I think it's a really good, healthy thing.
I get so many letters from teenage girls who love the character of Elvira, and I know why they love it. She’s an incredibly sexy-yet powerful, empowered woman. Just because she is empowered she doesn’t have to look like Hillary Clinton or Opra Winfrey.
T.V.P. There’s an unfortunate thing in our culture where there’s a dichotomy between female empowerment and beauty.
E./C.P.: There really, really is. I just really realized that. Either you’re incredibly smart, together, empowered and you look like Eleanor Roosevelt, or you’re a big breasted sexy bimbo. People can’t seem to incorporate the two. Elvira is the perfect incorporation. She’s not a brain surgeon, but she’s powerful. She knows what she wants and she goes after it.
That’s the appeal in Elvira for younger girls. There’s not much out there that brings beauty and empowerment together. I get so much mail from preteen, teenage and twenty-something girls.
T.V.P.: Young girls are incented not to appear intelligent.
E./C.P.: Yes, they’re rewarded for it. And there’s little else in the media. Take Laura Croft for an example. She’s basically just a two-dimensional robot character. She can kick some ass, and she looks sexy, but where’s the rest of it, you know? Where’s the vulnerability, where’s the femaleness of all that. it's not really there. She’s like a guy in drag.
T.V.P. A lot of that has to do with specifically American culture. Intelligence in general is not considered a survival skill here.
E./C.P.: So true. it's not really rewarded like it is in other countries. Here, looks rule.
T.V.P. And youth.
E./C.P.: I was trying to forget that. Really, I was stressing out about not being really young anymore but I decided not to bother. I plan on bringing the Elvira character into animation. Or, I don’t care if Angelina Jolie plays Elvira in a movie. To me, the character can make that transition.
T.V.P. it's not just a character, it's an archetype.
E./C.P.: Exactly! You are so smart, I love you! I tell people people that all the time. It doesn't need me behind her to keep playing her. How many actors have played Batman in the movies, or 007? Agent 007 doesn’t disappear when Sean Connery gets too old to play him. Or Santa Claus, someone with whom I align myself closely.
T.V.P.: Do you think in about a century kids will be waiting for Elvira to come down the chimney on Halloween?
E./C.P.: If I can get that going, yeah!
T.V.P. Not a bad gig. Can you tell me a little about Haunted Hills?
E./C.P.: it's out there in the video stores now. it's very much a parody of the old Gothic Horror films that I grew up with. In the 60’s Hammer and Roger Korman and A.I.P. were all making these incredibly slow movies, but scary as hell. They would put people to sleep now, because images move so fast and special effects are so advanced. Back them they were the scariest movies around.
What we set out to do was to make a parody of that genre of film. A lot of people in their teens and twenties have seen those movies because they’ve become camp classics. We set out to do to that genre what Austin Powers did to the spy movies of the 60’s.
T.V.P. The horror of that era had a lot of unintentional self-satire built in . You showed an unusual amount of dexterity in bringing that to it's furthest logical conclusion with Haunted Hills. That film was released in October of last year, and it's already becoming something of a cult classic.
E./C.P.: I’d like to think so. Anybody who’s into horror movies is going to enjoy this movie. It doesn’t make fun of the traditional horror films, as much as just pulls the fun out of it. People watching it can tell that I’m celebrating it.
T.V.P.: My wife is always quoting a passage from that film, “Oh Mr. Pirate, please don’t pillage my booty!” That’s a terrific line!
E./C.P.: I thought it was funny. Most of he time, in the theater when it plays, I don’t think anyone hears that line. I’m laughing to myself, and I look around, and silence!
T.V.P.: You shot it for under a million bucks, I believe. It doesn’t look like it, at all.
E./C.P.: Looks pretty damn good, doesn’t it? I have to give myself and my producer Mark Pierson a little pat on the back, because I think the quality is amazing. If you noticed, we had a real original score with an orchestra, which is unheard of these days in any low budget film.
T.V.P.: Or many high budget films for that matter.
E./C.P.: it's all electronic, you know? We went to Russia and had the Russian Symphony Orchestra record the soundtrack. The producer, Mark Pierson, was really adamant about that because these old films had that kind of score. If you tried to fake it, you’re gong to lose a lot of the quality.
T.V.P.: I hadn’t noticed it, but that’s where the uncanny ring of authenticity comes from.
E./C.P.: We’ even used tungsten lighting. One, because that’s all they had in Rumania, two because that’s what they used in the sixties. It gives off a special light. That lighting gives this quality that you can’t get with the lights they use now. A different quality, different colors. We used that ultra- saturated color so the red is really red and the colors really pop out not in a realistic way, but in a way that really captures the look of the 60’s low budget films.
T.V.P. It was an advantage that anything you really couldn’t afford would just add to the cheese factor.
E./C.P.: That was a great thing. We tried to find a black cat, and apparently they don’t have black cats in Rumania or something. I’m a real animal rights person so I wasn’t going to have another cat dyed black. The producer said, we have to have a black cat! Every Roger Korman movie had a black cat!” I told them to go out to a toy store and buy the best looking stuffed black cat they could find. They came back with a brown stuffed kangaroo. which is as close as they could get. We spray painted it black and we still used it. We used a piece of the tail sticking out from behind the curtain, and cut to stock footage of a cat running away.
That’s what shooting was like almost every day in Rumania. In the end all those things worked out. Like the thing with that actor who plays my love interest, that big hunky guy. We wanted Fabio, the Italian model who does all the Romance novel covers. He wanted more money than anybody in the film. We dropped negotiations with him and started looking for the Rumanian version of Fabio. We auditioned hundreds of guys. There was only one guy who had the muscles and long hair.
We took him despite the fact that he knew no English.
T.V.P. I say that in the Special Features of the DVD. You did an intentionally bad lip-syncing job for the film.
E./C.P.: What else? We had the bad B Movie dubbing job edited in. It turned into one of the highlights of the film.
T.V.P.’s: With that kind of creativity you don;t even need a budget.
E./C.P.: Next time we’ll go somewhere even worse than Rumania! it's a wonderful place with wonderful people. I guess you get a little spoiled when you want this or that and they can’t be found.
T.V.P.: Other than the accommodations and the food, what was the scariest thing that happened?
E./C.P.: The accommodations and the food were pretty damn scary. We wanted four black stallions to thunder across the road. What we ended up with was two ancient nags from the dog food factory. Every day was scary. I was the only writer there, I had to show up on the set two hours before everyone else to do my makeup. Somebody would show up and say they couldn’t do this or get that and I’d have to rewrite the scene right then.
It was the hardest thing I ever did.
T.V.P: You think you’re going to do it again?
E./C.P.: I might be directing direct to video or TV some books I wrote a few years ago, One of them is called Camp Vamp. Somebody else is going to finance that one. I learned my lesson- never do that again! We financed ourselves to the tune of $1,500,000 and that is really scary, when you know you might be losing your own money. You work really hard when you know that’s happening.
T.V.P. You’re probably that much more deferential to producers.
E./C.P.: Yes! No producer uses their own money. Nobody would be that stupid.
T.V.P. : Are you appearing in Hollywood Squares this year?
E./C.P.: I usually do. Last year I got to sit between Tammy Fae Baker and Rue Paul, perhaps the two people on earth who wear more makeup than me.
T.V.P. Is there anything our readers should be looking out for besides Haunted Hills?
E./C.P.: There’s the launch of a new channel called the Monster Channel. It’s going to be horror movies 24/7, and I’m going to be the host.
T.V.P. If you had anything to say to someone who was trying to launch an acting career now, what would it be?
E./C.P.:I regret not having gone to college, I could have taken it in college and gotten a strong background. I now think that’s important. Also, stick to it. If its really what you want, just do not give up. You will eventually get what you want.
I always think about myself and my girlfriends when we were in our twenties. We were all actresses. The reason I finally made it was that I was the only one who kept going Ihey dropped out one by one and got married to a lawyer or went into real estate. They all had their expensive cars while I drove a beat up Volkswagen and lived in a hovel. It’s like, “How long can you live with suffering?” But eventually you will get it if you do not give up.