Elvira

The truth is that Elvira and I have a history, of sorts. Ten or twelve years ago, someone gave me one of those stand-up cardboard figures of her that were used to advertise some brand of beer around Halloween. When Elvira showed up at a toy show in Houston a while later, I took the cut-out to be autographed. She had to stand up and lean over the table to do the signing, and she said, "Some of these guys have been waiting all day to see this."

OK, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "That's not much of a history." Maybe not, but it was pretty exciting for me. I lead a sheltered life, after all.

Elvira was a good sport about signing the cut-out, and I liked her on TV when she was introducing horror movies. I thought she was pretty funny. So when I got a DVD called Elvira's Haunted Hills for Christmas, I thought that might be funny, too.

I was wrong. Cassandra Peterson dresses like Elvira, but she steps out of the TV persona to play Elvira as a hot-to-trot entertainer who spends the weekend in a haunted castle. The idea of a movie sending up all those American-International versions of Poe's stories isn't bad. It's the execution that's lacking. The one-liners just aren't funny, and while the Poe spoofing (of just about every famous story Poe wrote, and some of the poems as well) is interesting for a minute or two, it doesn't really work. Which is too bad, since I wanted to like the movie.

I have to say that the production values are better than average (except for the big special effect at the end, but maybe it's supposed to be so bad that it's funny, which it's not). And Elvira's hills, haunted or not, are on prominent display throughout the movie. Even that (or those) isn't enough to save it unless you're a real Elvira fan. I am, so I managed to watch the whole thing, or at least most of it. I'm sorry to say that I can't recommend it to anybody else, however.