Elvira's Haunted Hills

After rewatching Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark and discovering she made another movie, I was curious. It was decidedly more low-budget. A whole new crew. Almost 20 years removed from the original. Would the new team be able to make Elvira's shtick work in the 21st century? Would the lower budget hurt the movie? I was pleasantly surprised to see that Elvira's Haunted Hills manages to navigate all its challenges and come out just as fun as Mistress, albeit in an entirely different way. Whereas Mistress positioned Elvira in a fish-out-of-water story, Haunted Hills serves as a tribute to classic horror movies from the 60's like The Raven and The House On Haunted Hill, usually starring Vincent Price and directed by either William Castle or Roger Corman. Creepy castle that looks like it's made of cardboard blocks? Check. Overly weird proprietor of the house that's obviously a villain? Check. Ghosts and torment from beyond the grave and lost loves? Check, check, and check. You name the cheesy trope from that era, and Haunted Hills leans into it with all its weight. This is a love letter to that era, with the bonus of dropping in the First Lady Of Horror and her unique brand of humor into the mix, and it works. At first, I was worried it wouldn't, as the characters in these kinds of movies have to be rather cartoonish and OTT, and the magic of Elvira's first movie was largely rooted in her being the oddball in a small town of squares. Smartly, Haunted Hills reverses the dynamic; despite her signature beehive, double entendres, and 65% of her breasts on display, she is the straight here, and the world around her is crazy. That doesn't mean she doesn't deliver with the jokes, far from it. It's just that she is now the most grounded person in the room, which puts a different spin on the formula. I do say formula literally, though, because Haunted Hills is almost a Mad Libs of Mistress. She's on her way to put on a show, she gets waylaid during her travels, meets up with a cast of people who don't understand or like her, falls into a preposterous series of events, kidnapped and almost killed by the antagonist, but survives in the end and gets back on the road. The elements within, the events that get Elvira from point A to point B, are different, but the formula is a total cut-and-paste. I can't lie and say I wasn't a little disappointed to see a movie so similar to its predecessor, but it's Elvira. She's too damned fun and charming to hold a grudge over making a formulaic movie. Besides, given what this was a tribute to (and that reverence is in every frame of this movie in the best way), it had to have the climax it did. Is it a comedic masterpiece? No, there are plenty of jokes that land like a dead fish. They dropped the running gag about her assistant's cleavage being like Felix The Cat's bag way too soon, and Elvira's musical number grinds the movie to a halt for something that adds nothing. And the way the main bad guy looked, I kept thinking it was Jeffrey Combs, but it isn't, and it just made me want Jeffrey Combs in the role. But Mistress isn't a flawless movie either, and this isn't trying to be held in that regard. It's a niche movie for a niche audience, and for that, it out-kicks its coverage in the most admirable way. I had a stressful day and an overall stressful week, and this was the exact tonic I needed to clear my head.