“If I’m not back in an hour, wait another hour.”

Justin’s rating: There’s so. Much. Screaming in this movie. Too much.

Justin’s review: As with any devoted fan of B-movies and cult cinema, I hold a fondness for the largely unsung UHF hosts who added personality before presentations of our Saturday Afternoon Scifi Horror Movie. Perhaps the most famous of these was Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, who hosted the “Movie Macabre” from 1981 to 1986 in Los Angeles.

Peterson got her biggest moment in the spotlight when she appeared in 1988’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, a fun little horror-comedy flick made in the same campy vein of all of the movies she’d been covering that decade. Fewer people seem to be aware that she created a follow-up more than a decade later — Elvira’s Haunted Hills — which drew inspiration from Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and the Hammer films from the 1960s.

With a beehive hairdo, the deepest of all V-necks, a Valley Girl accent, and a tongue-in-cheek penchant for double entendres, Elvira returns to the big screen for a visit to a haunted castle in Romania. She’s a spoiled entertainer traveling to Paris with her maidservant Zou Zou when she finds herself the overnight guest in a not-at-all haunted castle where many things are afoot, including the fact that the structure seems to be ripping itself apart.

This has shades of Young Frankenstein in its template, with visitors coming to a bizarre ancient castle and its quirky inhabitants while all manner of ridiculous slapstick and puns fly about. The difference is fewer genuinely funny moments and more Elvira-ness. Elvirocity? Elvirability? You get my drift. She’s a modern-sounding character plowing right through the world of 1851 eastern Europe, and you best get out of her way.

A lot of mild intrigue ensues, from a castle that seems alive to a perpetually coughing woman who wants to escape to the fact that Elvira looks an awful lot like the dead wife of the creepy castle’s master (Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Richard O’Brien). Elvira seems at home here, refusing to be scared as she uncovers torture chambers and a strange stable-master who’s heavily dubbed and a spirit from beyond the grave.

This movie is campy in the extreme, with everyone overacting to the nines and Elvira taking it to 11. By 2001, Peterson had been playing this character for two decades, and she’s obviously comfortable with her sassy, silly alter-ego, going so far to break the fourth wall on multiple occasions.

Because there’s practically no story, this 90-minute romp bounces between set pieces where everyone stays just long enough to wring out as many gags and puns as possible, and when those are exhausted, we move to the next room/scene. And if things get too slow, there’s a musical number and unwanted cartoon sound effects.

Elvira is endearing and a few of these jokes do work, but by and large, Elvira’s Haunted Hills is a pretty tedious affair. For a $1.5 million budget, it doesn’t look horrible at all, but the laughs are lacking when they should be uproarious. And that’s the fatal flaw here, iconic main character or no.

Intermission!

• This isn’t from the movie itself, but I have Elvira’s Monster Hits album, and it’s worth seeking out for her wonderful “Monster Rap.” I play it unironically all the time.
• Let’s all take a minute to appreciate that fine masonry work as she’s being walled in
• “Here’s Johann!”
• “No one told me this was going to be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”
• “Who listens to the Village People any more?”
• Lotta ugly guys in portraits
• “Oh hi, thanks for spying on us!”
• OK, I got a chuckle out of Elvira playing with old-fashioned ships in her bathtub
• “What are you doing, you wanna blow the rating on this picture?”
• “I think this is a piece of your lung. Ew.”
• “What’s stopping you, your legs painted on?”
• Secret Door achievement achieved!
• The heavy dubbing on the stable-master is pretty amusing
• What’s scarier: the fake spider or the real fluffy bunny?
• “I tried everything to cheer her up!” cue the happy-face pancake
• Tasting a guy’s chamberpot thinking it’s stew is… we’ll just move on to the next scene
• Elvira’s little sleeping noises are adorable
• Oh no, not a musical number… please…
• About time we had a decapitation
• “What do you think you are, a freaking parakeet?”
• The skeleton behind the wall is a nice touch
• Elvira’s long arms are suitably freakish
• Dying in grinding gears is not a great way to go
• The magnifying glass. If you know, you know.
• The castle going down like the Titanic (with music)