It’s been less than a year since I last reviewed a Blu-ray edition of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. I’m not sure what kind of loosey-goosey rights issues brought us to this place, but it is now time for another.
To recap, RLJ Entertainment’s Blu-ray of Elvira’s spooky, kooky film debut was generally underwhelming. According to 2019-me, the disc’s image is “soft and dull” and its colors are “muted.” “Extras are non-existent aside from a trailer.”
For most reasonable people, that blah disc would still be a sufficient presentation of a juvenile eighties comedy that spends a lot of time spewing mammary puns. But we cultists are not reasonable people, and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark has earned a cult devoted to a star whose charms extend well beyond her décolletage (ugh, these lines just write themselves). Cassandra Peterson’s horror hostess with the mostest is limitless fun: part sexy firecracker, part take-no-shit wisecracker. If Julie Newmar’s Catwoman and Bugs Bunny had a baby, and they hired Lily Munster to be her nanny, that baby would grow up to be Elvira. With her presence, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark would be a fab way to waste 95 minutes even without Peterson and John Paragon’s never-dull, pun-jacked script, the slew of charmingly lo-fi special effects, and Edie McClurg. To once again quote 2019-me, “If you don’t agree that Edie McClurg makes everything better, I don’t want to know you.” 2020-me stands by that statement.
Renowned for its lovingly packaged Blu-rays of goofy horror movies (as well as some not-so goofy ones), Arrow Video is the right company to do Elvira right. While the picture can get a bit too grainy at times, Arrow’s disc is still a massive improvement over the previous one, with all the vibrancy, depth, and sharpness RLJ failed to supply.
Arrow also supplies several substantial extras, chief among them being a feature-length making of documentary with many members of the original crew and cast (but where’s Edie?) that was originally supposed to be included with a scrapped German Blu-ray. There’s also a neat 22-minute featurette about the puppet monster that lunges out of Elvira’s goopy casserole in one of the picture’s most endearing scenes, a short and unabashedly inept introduction from director James Signorelli, several image galleries, and several older audio commentaries by Signorelli, Peterson, Paragon, and McClurg (there’s Edie!).
