
#Personal nightmare elvira editions movie
What followed was Elvira's Movie Macabre, featuring a quick-witted Valley girl-type character named Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, with heavily applied, pancake-horror make-up and a towering black beehive wig to conceal Peterson's flame-red hair. Since they were unable to continue with the Vampira character, the character Elvira was used instead. She and her best friend, Robert Redding, came up with the sexy punk/vampire look after producers rejected her original idea to look like Sharon Tate in The Fearless Vampire Killers. Producers left it up to her to create the role's image. Peterson auditioned against 200 other horror hostess hopefuls and won the role. The station continued with the project and sent out a casting call. Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but eventually quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. Deciding to use a female host, producers asked 1950s horror hostess, Maila Nurmi, to revive The Vampira Show. In the late spring of 1981, six years after the death of Larry Vincent (who starred as host Sinister Seymour of a local Los Angeles weekend horror show called Fright Night), show producers began the task of bringing the show back. Peterson dressed as Elvira at the 2006 San Francisco Gay Pride parade The special was called Elvira's 40th Anniversary, Very Scary, Very Special Special. In 2021, she recreated her show for a one-night movie marathon on the streaming service Shudder to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary.
#Personal nightmare elvira editions series
Elvira returned as a horror hostess in 2014 with 13 Nights of Elvira, a 13-episode series produced by Hulu. This revival aired on This TV until 2011. The show was revived in 2010 as Elvira's Movie Macabre, in which Elvira hosted public domain films. The character returned in the 2001 film Elvira's Haunted Hills. The popularity of the show led to a feature film, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, which was released in 1988. Elvira occasionally interrupts the films with comments and jokes, and in some episodes receives phone calls from a character called "the Breather" ( John Paragon).


The show features B movies, particularly those in the horror and science fiction genres, and is hosted by Elvira, a character with a black dress and heaven bump hairstyle, played by Cassandra Peterson. Movie Macabre with Elvira, Mistress of the DarkĮlvira's Movie Macabre (titled on-screen as Movie Macabre with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in its original run), or simply Movie Macabre, is an American hosted horror movie television program that originally aired from 1981 to 1986.
