This is the final episode on Elvira sopPrepare yourself for a wild ride as we reveal the dramatic life and career of the iconic Elvira. We'll take you behind the scenes of her controversial syndication, the unexpected popularity in the Bible Belt, and her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. We'll also expose the impact of the AIDS epidemic on her mental health, a shockingly personal story that many are unaware of.

As we navigate through the highs and lows of Elvira's movie venture, brace yourselves for incredible revelations. From the inception of the "Queen of Halloween" saga, to the shock of being replaced by Pamela Anderson and the launch of her own beer, we've got it all covered. We'll discuss the creation of her movie, the casting, the iconic Macabre Mobile, and the mixed reactions it drew from fans and critics alike. We also shed light on the unexpected success of her movie on VHS and the extreme measures taken for its promotion.

In the final segment, we share intimate insights into Elvira's personal life, a side lesser known to the public. From her realization of her attraction to women, to her stormy relationship with her ex-husband, and her secret relationship with her trainer, we delve into the details. We'll talk about her purchase of the Briar Cliff Manor, her appearance on the Super Mario Brothers Super show, and the four Elvira pinball machines that were released. We pay tribute to Elvira's success and the enduring popularity of her character, wrapping up our series while celebrating this fascinating woman's life and career.

Feel free to check out our website for links to our YouTube channel and more!
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Our host Nathan also does art in addition to this podcast, including having is own sticker store. Please check it out and purchase anything that strikes your fancy.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/stickersbytownsend

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Shaun: 0:14

Elvira, Part 4 and the final part in our series. Today we're going to talk about her movies, her relationships and what major event of the 1980s that nearly ruined her mentally. But first an Elvira fun fact, Fun Elvira fact. Virtually every convention or signing she does. There will be one potbelly middle aged dude in a trucker hat who sings Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys to her. She hates that song because this happens so often. So stop it. Does she stop them? Does she stop them? No, I don't think she does, because that would just be rude and angry.

Shaun: 0:45

Because they always sashay up with this looking. They're always like, oh, this is clever, and this is going to make her interested in me, or something like that. They're like nobody's ever done this before and they'll start singing and she just kind of like just stares at them with this dead look in her eyes. Yeah, that would be obnoxious. Yeah, and it happens so often. She says she's just tired of that song.

Nate: 1:03

It's almost like that joke people give I try not to, I don't try. It's not that hard to not try.

Shaun: 1:09

Oh, there's someone trying to scan something to register and it doesn't scan like, oh the free ha ha ha, because that means it's free Her, her, her, and you can see the registered kind of person where you register like huh. Yeah.

Nate: 1:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly how that works.

Shaun: 1:25

It's obviously free. Well, elvira's career was going great, one thing would arrive to bring turmoil to her private life. Remember how she's friends with every gay man she meets and drag queens and all this and that. Well, here comes the AIDS epidemic. Sadly, she saw many good friends of hers waste away to what they first called gay pneumonia, then gay cancer and finally AIDS and a few other things they called her over the years, but those are the ones she mainly referenced. Also, her sisters have become bad addicts with drugs and alcohol at the time and it constantly ended out of rehab and jail.

Shaun: 1:55

Naturally, all this stress took its toll on Cassandra and she started drinking heavily to fight off the depression and to fight off the hangovers. The next day she turned to cocaine to help with those. So now she's a heavy drinker and a heavy cocaine user just to get through the day. Yeah, this quickly leads to anxiety, paranoia and something she's never experienced before but only heard about. She starts getting her first panic attacks, which I've never had, but I hear they're awful. They're awful, I've had them plenty of times. Eventually, cassandra was convinced she was being stalked because she's having such bad panic attacks and at one point she flat out passed out at a grocery store because she thought somebody was following her. This was her sign to start seeing a therapist and get some real medication. And she wasn't on the cocaine and booze too long but the therapist that did help. So the medication she started cutting out the drugs and bringing her drinking back in check.

Shaun: 2:45

1986 was a huge year for Elvira character. They secured syndication rights for the movie Macabre, making her the first horror host to be televised throughout the USA. Before all the horror hosts were just like little local guys and her being syndicated actually did lead to a little confusion early on because the show looked so low budget. People are starting to assume hey, this must be local to us. So people in Ohio were like, obviously this Elvira is a local character. Look how crappy it's made. Nothing like that could come out of LA or anywhere else.

Nate: 3:15

That would work. Especially back then there was no internet. People were like, oh yeah, so everyone can think this Elvira person she's not mine, but she's ours. You know she belongs in, I don't know fucking. Oh look, unicorn Ohio. Like us, here in the small town of Unicorn Ohio, we have this local celebrity called Elvira.

Shaun: 3:41

We don't know where she lives, but and then there's that one kid who's really into horror movies, off in the corner and be like no, no, she's from LA and everybody's like shut up, kid, she's ours.

Nate: 3:49

Burn him.

Shaun: 3:49

Yeah, yeah, right, he's like, but no, I have these horror magazines. They talk about stuff.

Nate: 3:54

Why are these horror magazines stuck together?

Shaun: 3:59

And not on the pages you're expecting either.

Nate: 4:02

Be one of the Elvira pages untouched.

Shaun: 4:04

Yeah, that page with the brimlins on it, completely messed up.

Nate: 4:12

Why are the critters just cropping?

Shaun: 4:18

Yeah, when she went syndicated she actually got a lot of complaints from the Bible Belt due to her outfits and boobs. Of course they did. Their highest ratings were from the Bible Belt probably because of her outfit and boobs. Yep, I know, when I read that I'm like well, that's one of the least surprising things I've read in this entire.

Nate: 4:34

Right.

Shaun: 4:37

Yeah, apparently the station manager would get all sorts of complaints from the Midwest being lack, cover up that cleavage, make that leg less visible, and so on and so forth. So in the time-honored tradition, whenever the boss would show up and tell the crew, hey, fix that, they would look and be like sure thing, boss, and then they would absolutely do nothing. And if the boss came back and was like, did you get that done, they'd be like sure, did, boss. And he'd be like all right, whatever, and just head up back and do his thing. And that cycle would basically go on for the rest of the show's run.

Nate: 5:02

I mean look, the biggest hit in any religion and any of this throw and dart. It doesn't matter who they are, if they have hardcore conservative beliefs in terms of people cover themselves up or whatever, and again across the world, across all mixed models and religions. If the harder they complain, the more they're into it, and so it's just yep, they're confused by what they like, and it makes them angry.

Nate: 5:31

Yeah, of course, no shit. Like yeah, I mean by God. I mean there was one thing where they Pornhub released, and I'll probably get this wrong, but I mean this stands. I'm not even trying to guess the areas, even though I think I know where they are, but I might be wrong. There are areas in the world where they shut down porn, like okay, we can't do porn anymore. And Pornhub released, like all the illegal, all the streams are going and it was just the sickest shit. Yeah, like gay porn all up in, like the anti-gay areas. It was just.

Shaun: 6:01

I don't know, and none of this is surprising at all.

Shaun: 6:05

If you've not even a little bit, not even remotely. Yeah, 1986 was actually a pretty big year for Elvira because she also made the MTV special Elvira in Salem. And this was also the time of her first comic book run for Elvira in DC Comics. It was Elvira House of Mystery. And she would actually go on to be in a lot of comic books over the years Her own little mini series and stuff like Elvira's Horror Series Never in like long running ones, but you know those go Right. This was also the year Elvira would be a guest at WrestleMania 2, where she would do some guest commentating and I think she was a ring girl too for the main event. She said it was a fun experience and all the wrestlers were really sweet to her. And as Cassandra she got a role in the movie Alan Quartermaine in the Lost City of Gold playing Queen Solaris, and I remember seeing that movie back in the day. Did you ever see Alan Quartermaine? No, indiana Jones knockoff. Basically, yeah, I know who he is.

Nate: 6:58

I can't. I don't know if I've seen it.

Shaun: 7:02

It's a fun movie Worth watching. I would think, of course I haven't seen it in 40 years, but 30 years. Anyways, check it out. I remember those ones.

Nate: 7:11

See, there was a, was it. There are two movies that came out. They were very similar. There was another one, michael Keaton, not Michael Keaton, kirk Douglas. How's it get those two confused? Michael Keaton?

Shaun: 7:23

Not Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas not Kirk.

Nate: 7:27

I knew this was Douglas Damn it, Michael Douglas and he was an adventurer, it was. There was a Dane, DeVito was in it.

Shaun: 7:35

Oh, Romancing the Stone.

Nate: 7:36

Yes, romancing the Stone, jules DeNile.

Shaun: 7:39

Yep. Those were actually pretty good too, to be honest. I like those.

Nate: 7:42

Yeah, and I thought I remember there was like a knockoff of that and it might have been the cord, of course. Cordermane's probably. I think that character's been around longer.

Shaun: 7:49

Cordermane is one of those he goes back to, like the I don't know late 1800s pulp books or something like that yeah. And yeah, I think it was one of those two, like the whole Romancing the Stone and Jules DeNile was big hits. So they're like, hey, let's just go pull some public domain character out and write about them.

Nate: 8:02

Yeah, A year after, yeah, Romancing the Stone E5 and okay. So anyway, that's, we got track. But yeah, that's who I think of when I think of the Cordermane guy and I'm just like, no, I haven't seen it. If I have, it is no longer in the. They can't find the file.

Shaun: 8:26

So somebody shredded it a while back in order to make this brother stuff, even though it was the same year. It got approved for syndication later that year, in 1986, would also be the final run of a move of Macabre 140 episodes of the show is made overall and even though the show ended, still you know LVRI was being syndicated everywhere, doing a whole lot of other stuff, so her career was far from over. And also the fact, remember, she owns her character outright, which is pretty cool.

Nate: 8:50

That man, I that may. I have mad respect for that. Yeah, me too.

Shaun: 8:53

That's good 1986 would also see Kors beer come a knock, and Kors wanted to turn Halloween into a big drinking holiday for adults. And with their initial efforts they came out with the Kors Wolf for Halloween. And that one failed. It was a very dumb mascot. It was basically a werewolf wearing a baseball cap that was supposed to make you want to buy beer for Halloween. Look up, there's a picture of them out there. So before castling the Kors Wolf, they decided to pair them up with Elvira and they'll be their new Halloween duo. Well, elvira was a smash hit. The wolf was not, and discontinued shortly thereafter.

Shaun: 9:28

This celebrity endorsement will also make Elvira the first female celebrity celebrity to endorse a beer ever. That's kind of impressive. That's impressive, yeah, and this is also where the legendary Elvira cardboard cutout displays would make their debut. Apparently, they were so commonly stolen that Kors could barely make enough to keep them in circulation. And a funny thing is too, there's a lot of complaints about them being quote unquote, too scandalous because Elvira's on there. If you look up pictures of the original ones, they completely cover up her like boobs in cleavage with hair. They're like completely not that a boob orific.

Nate: 10:00

Okay, for some reason I was thinking like it's totally stupid. She said the cover with hair and I imagine like she had a car.

Shaun: 10:10

Yeah, just hair Like, but that makes more sense yeah Her hair comes down. She's got like a photo. They just like Photoshopped Robin Williams chest over her with just all that hair. Also, if you want to get one of those cardboard cutouts, you can find them on eBay, but be prepared to pay $200 or more for one.

Nate: 10:28

What does this come out? They came out in 86 cardboard cutouts.

Shaun: 10:34

You can also Google Kors original Elvira cutouts.

Nate: 10:38

I've seen a lot like recent. There is no hair covering there, all about Maybe this one? Okay, yep, I see it. Yeah, the hair they covered as much as they could with the hair.

Shaun: 10:54

Yeah, they did. I mean you can see a little bit of a Bresticles there.

Nate: 10:57

Oh yeah, I mean it's not gone, Like they acknowledge her there. But yes, they totally took the cleavage part out of it. Her hair got extra long for this shot.

Shaun: 11:06

Yeah yeah, you can tell that's not original hair because it's like she's got long hair and a beehive hair too. It's like a lot of hair there. This campaign was massively popular and also ran in October of 87 as well. Then, in 1988, her Kors sponsorship came to an end. Why? Well, it's kind of a surprising one, why the satanic panic started flying around everywhere.

Shaun: 11:27

Yes, that whole dumb thing we had to live through in the 80s. So basically, the whole Kors cancelling started out when there's rumors of Procter and Gamble being a satanic conglomerate that was donating all their money to satanic churches and stuff. And all of a sudden, some of the big corporations across America started getting really nervous, namely the ones that were owned by super religious people, and Kors was one of those. And when their super religious owner got swept up in all this, he immediately saw Elvira and started going evil, evil, and he took that as a sign that apparently they were becoming a satanic company. So he was like, hey, we're going to fire her even though she's hella popular. Not a great business decision there to be honest yeah, I mean like who wants money?

Nate: 12:08

Yeah right.

Shaun: 12:10

Oh no, it was made with tons of money and I guess what it was canceled to everybody in Kors was like shocked, especially like the promotion. Guys are like why are you canceling this? This thing is going over like gangbusters. Because their whole plan with this was to turn Halloween into an adult drinking holiday, as much as it was for kids and changing by how Halloween is nowadays. They kind of succeeded in that, right, yeah Well, god never closes the door without Satan opening a window. And here comes Pepsi, who's looking to hype their newest sodas, mug root beer and mandarin orange slice. And they're like, hey, guess what? We don't care if people think we're satanic, we're Pepsi. Come on, elvira, we'll let you be our new spokesperson. So in 1989 and 1990, pepsi ran a campaign where people buying those sodas could win the Go Psycho with Elvira contest, where you could win a trip to Universal Studios to attend a party hosted by Elvira.

Nate: 12:59

I never liked this Like I mean, I've never done, I've never even entered. So I'm not saying I won one, I like it. I just I never liked the idea of winning a dinner or winning a party like with a celebrity, because basically, what are you going to do, you know?

Shaun: 13:15

you go to a public place and feel publicly awkward around a celebrity. You may or may not?

Nate: 13:20

Yeah, I don't think you know. Thank you, yeah it's. And then a party like so is she going to be your buddy the whole time?

Shaun: 13:26

Like yeah, or did she just show up and be like welcome to my party and then just disappear in the back and do a bunch of blow while you just wander around like I?

Nate: 13:32

don't know anybody here. I mean I don't, I just never saw the point.

Shaun: 13:36

I mean it's just if you do meet up already, where are you going to be? Like so, do you like stuff?

Nate: 13:42

Yeah, I mean it's and it's just like. I mean, I get it. If I don't know, if you're a very, a big genre star and you end up getting a neck of beard going in there and they're going to give you a third degree, it's like they're, they're, I don't know. It's Kevin Sorbo, with the fuck does he know about Hercules? You know why I don't ask you about the writing about it and all he'll do, they know, all he'll do is like yellows right wing talking points at you. But you know, it's like I don't know. For some reason, kevin Sorbo's first like, like Kevin Sorbo.

Shaun: 14:13

It's.

Nate: 14:13

It was the first B tier actor I could think of that was in a genre thing Well, B tier is really generous.

Shaun: 14:20

Yeah, that's get D tier.

Nate: 14:23

Okay, D tier I'll take. Yeah, his B tier status went away a long time ago.

Shaun: 14:27

Yeah, yeah, and he was barely B tier, maybe for a hot moment.

Nate: 14:30

People liked him in a for you're right for a hot second back for a hot second.

Shaun: 14:35

And then Zena came in and just blew him out of the water with a superior show with more tits, and ask Absolutely. The campaign was a success. And when it ran its course, course showed up, hat in hand. Off her Elvira her job, back with him, turns out there attempts to replace her with Leslie Nielsen didn't work out so well. He played the bumbling detective searching for the Phantom of the fridge. I vaguely remember that ad campaign too, because a naked gun movies were pretty big at the time and I like those movies. I like Leslie Nielsen, but also remember those commercials being pretty bad.

Nate: 15:03

Yeah, leslie Nielsen is awesome. I love Leslie Nielsen, of course. Then you go to the naked gun movies and then it's like, oh, his, his psychic. Um, let's, let's just say he, he didn't get to the term for too well.

Shaun: 15:17

Yeah, the second course campaign would be very successful but also ended suddenly in 1995 with very little explanation. The best answer Cassandra and her crew is able to get was a combination of a combination of the owner still think you're satanic and also mothers against drunk driving were targeting Halloween because apparently course ads can succeed in there's a lot more drunk driving wrecks in the Halloween area, halloween time and also one thing too that happened around this time is the famed drop to 0.08 BAC, blood alcohol content for driving. The you can't blow 0.08 or more was passed by Bill Clinton right around that time, and I remember this happened around that time because I was playing online with a guy, ultima online and he was going off about how he hated that law and that was going to be the end of all drinking in America. It won't be able to use mouthwash without getting pulled over and thrown in jail. Oh, that's dumb. Yeah, I mean, this dude was totally like you can't even drink up beer now and then they'll just round you up and throw you in prison.

Nate: 16:15

I'm like, yeah, and I remember seeing some clips where they're like when they first entered the no drinking and driving like can't drink beer while you're driving, and they've all these videos, these people interviews going. Well, what am I going to do when I get off a long day of work and I would have a beer on my way home and there was a boy lady who was like in a Volkswagen with the kids in the back. She's like I think I would have a beer while I'm driving.

Shaun: 16:41

That's my right. He's got all these screaming kids in a back of my V Dub. Are you expecting me to drive around sober? That's not happening, because I remember back in the day to when your dad would just have a beer, while maybe not your dad, but my dad would just like drag along a beer or rum and coke. Not a great time, right.

Nate: 16:57

It's like who cares? Whatever They'll be like, yeah, they didn't care, even though Varsha likes about it in her book.

Shaun: 17:02

Her dad used to just drive down the road with like a bottle of Jim Beam between the seats and a Coca-Cola and everyone's like open me a new Coke, dear. One messed up thing that came out of this was the fact that since the start of the Elvira character, she had referred to herself as the Queen of Halloween and she even called herself that like way back when, when she was a little kid, to a fire call. Well, of course, like that moniker. And after the second run with Elvira they trademarked that line and just stole it from her. They were like hey, she never copyrighted that or trademarked it, we're going to take that line from her. So then course took the Queen of Halloween and they dubbed Pamela Anderson the new Queen of Halloween, and that's basically who they replaced Elvira with. Was Pamela Anderson.

Shaun: 17:39

And yeah, and apparently course was even a little more douchey about this than you would think too, because round that time Cassandra heard from a local club owner that the club advertised hey, elvira is going to be here, you want to hang out with Elvira around Halloween time. And apparently a course representative showed up at that club and told the owner hey, if you get rid of Elvira, we'll send Pamela Anderson here with the course crew and hook you up with course for the night, and yeah. So basically they're trying to like shove out Elvira every place they could or every chance they could get. Apparently, the owner of the apparently the owner of the club refused because, one, his old friends with Elvira and two, it was a gay club. So nobody cared about Pamela Anderson, to be honest. But if they did that one place, I'm sure they did it other ones.

Nate: 18:21

I like Pamela Anderson. I mean I, you know, as a straight male who likes her assets, I mean it. You know I was all about some Pamela Anderson, but yeah, I mean sorry, elvira is Elvira.

Shaun: 18:36

Yeah, yeah, can't really replace Elvira Pamela Anderson. They're two totally different personalities and Pamela Anderson is not made for Halloween, really.

Nate: 18:44

No.

Shaun: 18:45

Yeah, that ad campaign actually went down in flames too. Oh did it? Yeah, actually Pamela Anderson didn't go over very well. So then after that they decided to try the new Queen of Halloween contest, and they like had a bunch of people like line up and try to try out for it, or something like that, to make the new course Queen of Halloween. That also failed.

Shaun: 19:05

Cassandra would get some revenge in 1996, though, when some ex-cores guys decided to help her launch her own micro brew, elvira's night brew. This actually made Elvira the first celebrity to market her own beer. It was a dark logger, but I couldn't find any reviews on it and they don't make it anymore, so I couldn't try it. Her trying to make her own beer pissed off course, and they did everything in their power to force her out of the game. And they kind of succeeded to his or beer only lasted a year. Like they would show up to conventions and stuff like beer conventions and beer tasting of this to hype their beer and all of a sudden you know like the bouncer at the door be like well, you can't enter this, or you know the whole event would come up with weird reasons that they couldn't let them attend. So they're just assuming cores was kind of fucking them over.

Nate: 19:47

Yeah, yeah, that just really sucks. I mean what to, to what end, you know right.

Shaun: 19:53

Why does course have a vendetta against Elvira? Well, money, I guess Not a vendetta against her.

Shaun: 19:57

Yeah, I just want more money. Okay, so we kind of got sidetracked on beer and soda in the 90s and we need to hop back to the second half of the 80s and talk about the Elvira movie for a moment. Before the movie got made, the crew the Elvira crew had two options Get Elvira sitcom or go for the gusto and get an Elvira movie made. Popularity was high at the time so they figured movie would probably be their best option, because it's easier to go from being a movie star to a TV star than to go from a TV sitcom to a movie star kind of thing. So guess who comes into the play right now? Our old buddy, brandon Tartikov from NBC. Remember him from a Alf A team?

Nate: 20:32

Yes, yes, that boy, brandon Tartikov was either one who killed Alf or he wanted Alf to continue.

Shaun: 20:38

He wanted Alf to continue, and then he got fired in the 90s or late 80s or so.

Nate: 20:42

He was.

Shaun: 20:42

Brandon, hmm, ousted, ousted, yes, but at this time he's still with NBC cranking out hit after hit and Brandon Tartikov was a huge fan of Elvira and Martin happy to give her a movie deal. So Cassandra and her friend and writer, john Paragon, teamed up with Sam Egan who is the writer and producer on the Incredible Hulk, northern exposure and the outer limits, and they got fast to work on a story. Originally it's supposed to be closer to spoof of Wizard of Oz, but eventually it turned into a slightly different kind of fish out of water story because the studio was like and we don't really like this idea, make it more of a comedy kind of thing, or of a comedy, less of a spoof. I guess One thing the studio did insist on having was teenagers in the movie. They insisted, the studio insisted that teenagers would never go see an Elvira movie if there wasn't teenagers in them from them to relate to.

Shaun: 21:32

Yeah, yeah, I know Cassandra crew were like that's not true, look like the Indiana Jones with a digital listed off a bunch of movies that didn't have a crew of teenagers and they were super popular. But the studio is like no, no, no, no, no, it's got to have teenagers for them to relate to. So apparently all the teenagers in that movie were forced in at the last minute, so if they seem kind of weird and tacked on because they were, yep yeah, however, whether they're doing auditions, one person who auditioned and failed for the role of the lead teenager was actually Brad Pitt. Before he is like famous for much. Cassandra says that Brad Pitt owes her one for not hiring him and ruining his career before it started.

Nate: 22:13

Yeah, yeah, I think she called up, she called it that one. Yeah she was correct. She is, she was correct.

Shaun: 22:22

And speaking of casting, she wanted to hire as many of her fellow groundlings actors as she could, trying to, you know, do a solid for her friends. And the problem is, even though you want to give all your friends jobs, sometimes there's not roles for them. So she only managed to get a couple of them roles, which caused some fresh friendships to fall apart. Some of the people are on the ground is like well, if you didn't get me a role, we're obviously not friends. I'm never gonna talk to you again, yeah, which that's kind of dumb Cuz mean they should realize, being in the industry, that sometimes there's just not a role for you, man.

Shaun: 22:50

Yeah, I mean some, you're absolutely right sometimes yeah and it broke up some friendships with her and other comedians. And the sad thing is Paul Rubens basically went through the exact same thing with Peewee's big adventure. He was like, hey, I'll try to get all my fellow groundlings a job in this movie and could only get a few of them and the ones it didn't get the movie like Anyways, yeah you know, yeah, she did manage to get her parents in background role.

Shaun: 23:11

However, I think it's in the scene where they're about to burn out the steak her parents like way off in a corner Just hanging out. The actual shooting for the movie was really rougher, cassandra, because she wasn't really paying attention when they're writing the script or the screenplay and she was basically written into every scene in the movie, which means she had long days of shooting. Yeah, some people would be like, hey, you're not gonna be in scene for a while, you can go home. Nope, not Cassandra. She was in pretty much every scene in that movie and I didn't realize until I read the book. And, yeah, they're right, she is in a lot of that movie.

Shaun: 23:41

Luckily, though, in order to help Dole out the workload a little easier on her, they had a model do some stand-in scenes that didn't involve her face, you know, like her turning the key to the car, you know little hand stuff, or just like walking in the background. That model had a boyfriend who was a comedian trying to break it through and make it big in New York City at the time. That comedian was Jerry Seinfeld, elvira and that model did become fast friends and still work together on occasion when it calls for it, because I guess she looks like Cassandra. So there you go. We have ancillary connection to Jerry Seinfeld.

Nate: 24:12

I Mixed feels budgetary Seinfeld, because sometimes she's like he's hilarious, but then other times it's like, oh no man, he seems like a dick.

Shaun: 24:18

He does seem like a dick. He seems like if you meet him in person you just blow you off and okay yeah, he seems like a guy who's funny on stage and funny when he's on, but if he's just like hanging out, he's probably not a very funny guy. I have a feeling.

Nate: 24:30

I mean fair. I mean not not all comedians are on all the time, but it just he's tries me as someone who loves the smell of his own shit. Oh absolutely he did. I'm, you know I will have mad respect. Oh he is. He's written down every joke he's thought of and saved it. Yeah, so he has binders and binders and like Nope, little note cars, note cars of jokes.

Shaun: 24:54

So I respect that he combined all that made the B movie the greatest B movie we've ever seen. Oh my god, just my god.

Nate: 25:02

I mean let's, I know, I know let's have a relationship between a bee and a human. You know, a bee who has None of what's required to mate with any kind of mammal and also lives very briefly.

Shaun: 25:15

Well, it's the birds and the bees and she's a bird. If you're a British person like bed, what's up? Anyways, I deserve that. At the end of her show she'd always comment it's time to hop in the macabre mobile and take off. But there was no such card in existence. They just use as a ending line for the show.

Shaun: 25:37

But for the movie they actually wanted to make one so she could drive around in it. So they didn't know exactly what kind of car they wanted to use it for and were playing around with ideas. And then one day on her work way to work, cassandra sigh, 1959 Ford Thunderbird, a dealership, said that's it, that's the car I want for the macabre mobile. So she went to production, said, hey, let's get that, make it look spooky. And the production looked at her and laughed and laughed and laughed, said we do not have the budget to make a running car like that. So what they were able to do is buy a Junker Thunderbird from a lot and basically make it a non running prop. There's like no engine, no drivetrain in it. It just looked good. But they had to, you know, tow it around or just roll it around. In scenes that makes sense.

Nate: 26:17

Yeah, I suppose you go with a hearse. Oh yeah, no, it's a little bit too. On the nose Well.

Shaun: 26:23

so I think they want a convertible so they could see her better. Because Fair enough, yeah, because that way her head could be out and that way you'd be like, hey, that's Elvira there, if it's just at the top of a hearse. Yeah just.

Nate: 26:35

But again, I mean, it's also also like that is cut to on the nose.

Shaun: 26:41

After shooting, the car would be auctioned off later to Sondra, would track it down and buy it back. Then later in 2016 history channels counting cars would give it a makeover and make it a real running car. However, I saw that episode where they do the makeover and I think they kind of ruined the car because beforehand it had this really cool black and white mook how interior and they replaced it with a leopard print interior. That just did not look as good to me and we're from like a nice, stunning black and white interior color to a just off brown. Mmm, yeah.

Nate: 27:13

Yeah.

Shaun: 27:14

Yeah, you can look up pictures of the car online. It's a sweet looking car, to be honest. Couple more fun facts from the movie. At At one point you remember that flash dance scene where you know the lady dances around and sits in the chair and pulls a Little bucket and water comes down and cools her off. Yeah, yeah, well, they redid that scene for this movie.

Shaun: 27:31

Well, for the recreation, instead of using water they used a pail of black paint because somebody was pranking her at the end of it. So they used an actual, real kind of paint in that. But the problem was they put the bucket way too high up in the air and didn't consider the fact that paint is actually pretty heavy. So when she like plop back at the chair through her head back and pulled down the buck lever that, the paint came down with enough force to almost break her neck. Apparently it like sprayed her neck, hurt the hell out of her, forced black paint all up her nose and stuff and filled her sinuses with black paint. That was coming out over the next few days and she said it was an awful, awful, painful experience.

Nate: 28:08

It sounds like yeah, it did not sound good, and I mean of all the ways to go.

Shaun: 28:14

Yeah right, I'll buy it dies, have black paint dumped on her head, I mean it's like you go about all the people who died on production.

Nate: 28:21

You know you've got those. The Saigon person, you got killed by the helicopter. And then you got Elvira you got killed by paint. Yeah right.

Shaun: 28:30

Up an actor movie. Heaven is like how'd you die? Well, Alec Baldwin shot me. How'd you die? Paint yeah, Elbow shot me.

Nate: 28:40

Never make out out bald angry. He'll write, just said. He'll arrange those real bullet in there and then waste you from across the room.

Shaun: 28:47

Yeah, I'll say, just get me a letter in the mail. You're like, wow, I thought I really pissed off Alec Baldwin, but he wants me to be in his new movie with him to make up. Oh, that's sweet of him. It's a western, huh? Hmm, oh, yeah, right, oh, at the end of the movie there's a scene where she's about to get burned at the stake by the Falwell townsfolk.

Shaun: 29:04

Yes, the town that she shows up in is called Falwell, after Jerry Falwell, who apparently really hated Elvira. Of course he did. Of course he did. He hates everything. At least public doesn't make him money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this scene actually had real fire all around her and she had to be soaked in fire retardant to prevent her from going up in flames. This made her clothes incredibly itchy, which sucked because her hands were like tied behind her back for this entire scene, so she couldn't scratch herself and was just completely miserable. Also, the retardant smelled like paint thinner and, to top it off, it was also cold and rainy. So, since it was like real flames, she's either cold, wet and miserable or they would like to fire around her and she'd be hot, wet and miserable. Yeah she's like.

Shaun: 29:45

That was a horrible scene. Don't ever do a scene where they set you on fire or you're around fire, cuz the movie premiered on September 30th 1988, which Cassandra says was the best and worst day of her life. Good day because the movie premiered, yay, it was a bad day because her father also was diagnosed with bone cancer that day. Boo.

Nate: 30:05

That's a movie, yeah, the same day, you know, like give her a day.

Shaun: 30:09

Well, what happened is her parents hopped in the Winnebago and traveled down to LA for the premiere of the show and when they showed up, her dad had like a massive headache. I was like, ah, my neck and my head hurts. And Cassandra was like, well, I'm gonna send you my chiropractor. He's gotten opening. And he went to the chiropractor and chiropractor was like go to the doctor right now. I can't help with this, you need to get checked out. So he immediately went to the doctor, got an x-ray and the doctor was like you got bone cancer.

Shaun: 30:33

So yeah, apparently it all happened like super fasted, yeah, so yeah, I guess they could have saved it for the next day. Well, I mean, if it was incidentalus, remember, huh, and how? You're saying yesterday was the best day of your life, well, guess what honey, guess what I we could decide if we wanted a best day and the worst day be two separate things or lump them together, I don't know. So like if you have Christmas and your birthday back to back. So the movie was the number three grossing film behind punchline with Tom Hanks and Gorilla's in the mist with Sigourney Weaver. I've never seen either of those movies. I know of them, though. I know of punchline. I remember the cover from the video store that I worked at. I've seen clips. What was the other one? Gorilla's in the mist with Sigourney Weaver? Okay, I've never seen the one. Yeah, that was the one where she played Jane Goodall, I believe, and went out there and had orgies with monkeys.

Nate: 31:26

Yeah, and I I never get like Because she said I've never seen interviews like people say ask me, they asked by it, you know intercourse of the monkeys. My thing is like she's never given a clear, definitive look of the camera. No, this is true, I don't. I don't remember any kind of like Interview where this is it's addressed or whatever, and she just very clearly, concisely, looks dead set of the camera and says I did not have sex with monkeys.

Shaun: 31:56

Yeah, no, every time they ask her, she just points it to her only fans account. As I check that out to know. Despite the movie doing well, it was Unceremoniously pulled from theaters after just a few weeks. Why do you ask? Well, you didn't ask, but I'm gonna tell you anyways, nate. Well, the movie was produced by NBC subsidiary, a new world pictures, which was, side note, founded by Roger Corman. So the heads of this company were actually being investigated for racketeering and fraud, and this led theaters to believe that the studio would Be shut down any day and the theaters would get their money from the movie being shown. So most theaters were just like, hey, if we're not gonna make our money back from this, they just pulled the movie from the screens to freed up or other stuff, because I guess I don't know I guess the way it's set up is the theaters don't get their money until afterwards from the studio.

Shaun: 32:44

Oh, no we're funny, but yeah, basically the theaters are like hey, this company's going under or this studio is going under, so we're not gonna get our money back from Elvira of showings. Didn't make sense to me, but also I'm not in the theater industry, so hmm, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, yeah, and also to those of the 80s things might have changed it before a year, since you're in the theaters also a factor yeah yeah, a lot changes.

Nate: 33:09

Like years back of the day they used to stand a guy with a Tommy gun to make sure that all the gut they're cut Yep.

Shaun: 33:19

Yeah, see now we're here for movie money yeah.

Nate: 33:25

Sorry, yeah, so I cut them. I cut them. Bugs, buddy.

Shaun: 33:32

Whereas the public, like the movie critics, largely hated it, for you know, it's not a very critic friendly movie. Of course they did, because their assholes Yep, like she said, the one that hurt was Roger Ebert, because Roger Ebert was a huge Elvira fan but absolutely hated the movie.

Nate: 33:48

Well, fuck that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I Lost my respect for him with the whole like video game thing happening. So I was working a video game store. I like video games. I think now obviously the all video games Pac-Man is an exactly, you know, a story rich environment, you know, but like you can't tell, you can't play the last of us and then turn around tell me that video games don't like just story in our art.

Shaun: 34:14

Did you? Ever hear his explanation on why he said that? Because he was an asshole Basically in his mind. In order for it to be art, it has to be one consistent experience that a person can experience over and over again. Video games you can alter the outcome, you can alter the flow, you can alter the pacing of it and you can make it it's somewhat different from the original creators, intentions of the story, sort of thing.

Nate: 34:38

Yes and no, but like yes and no, but it Sure, like not every, but the it's not, like it's random. You know you don't play any video, you don't pop into video game and it's like oh, you'll either, you know, save the princess or I don't. You turn to a sheep and then eat grass and explode.

Shaun: 35:01

You know, like there's just make a warcraft reference, like 1995, I started.

Nate: 35:09

I started pull quick, quick an analogy down now, now and then also things to have warcraft and the thing is like, each one of those things, well, I literally pull that on my ass Individually. It wasn't one complete thought, it was three complete random things that happened, equal.

Nate: 35:25

Oh, p tier Griffin, yeah, that's exactly what happened, exactly what just happened, but uh, but yeah, I mean there, everything that happened was intended to happen is so. You know, even with multiple endings. You know the people who designed that game Design those, those endings. It's not random, you, you get the endings that you get. Now the one ending very well could be I suck at this game, I can't finish it. So the ending is whatever the ending happened to be, wherever you stopped. So, but even then it's like I don't know if you walk into a painting, you glance at the walk away. Did you actually did that painting work or not work? Was that art? Now, because you don't give a fuck about it. Like we went to Chicago, to the, to the art museum there and there is legitimately, there was a painting there that was just black, just black. There's no pain. I'm like this is it was an art because the guy couldn't like do more than black. I don't know.

Shaun: 36:27

Yeah, but as a token, if you walk up there and put a big white stripe across it, you change the original artists intention of that painting very sure. Yeah, I mean I kind of get what Roger Ebert's getting at, but I don't agree with him. But I kind of get what he's getting at. I fair enough.

Nate: 36:41

I'll give you that. I can see what he's talking about.

Shaun: 36:44

He's entitled that opinion, even if it's wrong, I guess is what I'm saying. And he's dead. That's a fucker. Yeah, he is dead. Yeah, can't break. Get him in here for an interview with his half face. Yeah.

Nate: 36:53

I was saying with this creepy flopping jaw.

Shaun: 36:57

The most disturbing short film of all time. Roger Ebert eating soup.

Nate: 37:01

Oh my god.

Shaun: 37:04

So for the movie, the Elvira movie, cassandra earned herself a razy award for worst performance by an actress for the movie. Ironically, that same year she also earned the Saturn Award for best actress on her TV show. She, the duality of Elvira.

Nate: 37:17

Did she go pick it up herself?

Shaun: 37:20

The razy, the razy. Yeah, I would just probably. I think a lot of those people do show up for their awards, don't they?

Nate: 37:26

No, a lot of people don't. That's why I really that no, what I mean, because it's who wants to go accept the award for the worst actress? No, halle Berry famously went and got her.

Shaun: 37:34

Okay, that's. That's exactly my first time. I was like, well, halle Berry went, so probably other people do. I mean, hey, an awards and award Well again, though.

Nate: 37:43

Who wants to? Who wants to celebrate? You know failure, as.

Shaun: 37:46

Was kind of time with theater flops. The movie did better in VHS H sales and then did in the theater and reportedly at one point Was in the top 60 selling VHS tapes of all time. When it premiered on NBC in 1990 it earned NBC their highest ratings of the year for that time slot. So people did like that movie, just didn't really get a chance in theaters to, which kind of sucked. To help hype this movie on release, brandon Tartakov went to SNL's Lauren Michaels that's Saturday Night Lives, lauren Michaels and said hey, let's put Elvira on his host so she can hype her movie. Let's do this for a Halloween episode. Lauren Michaels refused because he did not like the Elvira character in the least. Brandon Tartakov flexed his rank. He got Elvira on the show.

Shaun: 38:25

But it turned out to be a nightmare for Elvira because Lord Michaels did everything his power to make that appearance miserable for her. Not wanting to Elvira to have the spotlight, he made her co-host the episode with Dabney Coleman, who's very much not a Halloween kind of guy, and also the skits that are written for Elvira. Basically Lauren Michaels like no, she's not doing that skit anymore. We're giving this Dabney Coleman, which I don't know if you remember Dabney Coleman, but he was kind of like one of those more serious comedic actors, sort of. Also, another thing to Lord would actually break, find ways to berate Elvira one way or another and even demanding she give up her Valley Girl accent and talk normally, which I kind of okay.

Shaun: 39:05

So here's the thing. I was like does she really have a Valley Girl accent? And Nowadays not so much her character, but I went back some of the early interviews and she really laid that Valley Girl accent on thick at times and kind of annoying, to be honest. Oh, yeah, yeah, way back when she's like yeah, I'm like you know the. Yeah, like Halloween and stuff. Yeah, like you know a lot more of that kind of stuff. Okay, a little more like baby, yeah, it's kind of a little more annoying.

Shaun: 39:27

She has toned it down since then. So yeah, I mean I've never.

Nate: 39:31

Let me be real. I've never been a fan of Lord Michaels. I've never been against him either. I don't. I've never heard about really.

Nate: 39:39

Yeah, one way or the other, you know a lot of these like these people who are Powerful, like that. You know a lot of times they'll come across as dicks because you know they are. Yeah, but just just doing that, why? Why would you do that? And especially since it's SNL, I mean one thing like, oh, we in this limited run we had for you whatever, but it's SNL, it's one, one episode out. All of them. Yeah, you know, one of these people's gonna remember forever. One of these people I mean I looked at, I did a quick search and I mean he's not unknown like I, he, he has definitely been in things. So, like I saw his face, I'm like okay, back in the 80s he was definitely bigger.

Shaun: 40:20

He was any time, absolutely, but Elvira's like timeless yeah.

Nate: 40:21

I mean, yeah, she's not gonna be starring, let's all be real. Yeah, she's not about to go and I could be the star in the 10 Commandments. Yeah, yeah, she let my people go and the Goths just storm out of Egypt her career as an actress is pretty much over, however.

Shaun: 40:36

Like the.

Nate: 40:38

Icrodography of Elvira will last, you know, long after she's dead. This would also be Elvira's only appearance on SNL sad times.

Shaun: 40:47

Side note from this appearance, though during rehearse, one of the rehearsals, her friend from the ground links, phil Hartman, pulled Cassandra aside. He proudly pulled out an engagement ring and showed it to her he was gonna propose to his girlfriend, brynn. Several years later, checking in on her friend Phil Hartman, he would be like Brynn has made me the happiest man in the world. I am so happy I married her. If I died tomorrow I would be a diet happy man. Three days later Brynn would murder him in a cocaine field psychosis. I would say, well, it would be too good if it was the next day. I mean, really his, his passing is awful like I.

Nate: 41:19

He I really did. I thoroughly Loved him. He almost everything he did. Yeah, I like to do. Some people didn't like him so much, though there were some people like Jimmy.

Shaun: 41:30

Leroy, just like no, really, I mean I guess two each the road, I mean I'm not gonna go so far.

Nate: 41:35

I say he's my favorite. I'm just a lionel huts and that's all that. Really, yeah, he he is definitely one of my favorites. Yeah, I liked him and everything he was in.

Shaun: 41:46

I found him entertaining 1989 would see the first of four Elvira pinball machines to be released. I remember playing one of them and really liking it, but I don't remember which one it is. But if you want a the OG pinball machine you can buy them used on eBay for 6500 bucks and the most recent pinball machine, the 40th anniversary one, is 35,000 bucks, brand new if you want it. Benbalm machines expensive. That's why you don't see them very often anymore. 1989 would also see Elvira making a guest appearance on the Super Mario Brothers Super show, the show we all know and love. I remember that show P&L was watching occasionally back. As a kid I hated the live action but love the cartoon parts. Now, as an adult, I don't really like the cartoon parts that much, but the live action is gold stuff.

Shaun: 42:30

1989, cassandra would purchase Briar Cliff Manor in California, a mansion that was built in 1910 by a reclusive oil baron and later turned into a Scientology Center and looked like a cool haunted house. I mentioned this because at one point she invited Mark Hamill over to a place to hang out and when he arrived he says oh yeah, I used to live here when it was a college dorm and I was going to college down the road. Yeah, I had to move out after my roommate killed himself. Come here, I'll show you which room it was in and drug her up to a closet. It was like he hung himself right there. I don't know if he said it really excitedly, but I kind of like to think he was. Come here, look right there.

Nate: 43:03

Right, there's where I found his corpse hanging you can you smell the death?

Shaun: 43:07

Yes, I can still smell that shit that was in his pants.

Shaun: 43:11

Yes, one point two is also a Scientology Center. Also, when they bought the property at the time of the accident Scientology Center also when they bought the property it had a bunch of like birds just wandering around on it, because the previous owners were kind of weird, just let animals wander around do their thing. It's under head, said she became great friends with all the pet turkeys there. They would follow around like little pets and this and that and she could like pet them and they just did turkey things. Those turkeys are kind of cool that way. She also learned to that if you let turkeys eat all they can, they will eat themselves to death. And all her pet turkeys ate themselves to death.

Nate: 43:42

Nice yeah she also didn't know chicken, the same thing.

Shaun: 43:46

Yep, she also didn't know that chickens could fly to and the neighbors were getting all pissy. They'll chickens like flying over their house and shitting and then flying back. This is like we have a fence. Obviously chickens can't get out, but yes, they can. Chickens can fly. They're not great flyers, but they can fly.

Nate: 44:01

Yeah, they're not. So you're not looking up, like look at the majestic Soaring chicken up there.

Shaun: 44:05

Although what they can do is they can, sort of like quote-a-quote wall, jump their way up a couple of trees and once they get to the top of the trees, they can, kind of like tree, hop from the top of them and almost quote-a-quote sore, majestically, almost so, apparently. As Elvira learned, though, when you buy or Cassandra learned when you buy an old giant mansion house, it, the repairs and upkeep are way too expensive to make it worthwhile. So in the 90s she sold it to Brad Pitt, nice and Brett. Yeah, brad Pitt still owns it to this day, I believe, and Elvira just moved just down the road a couple of houses, I believe, or maybe move. She moved next door because I think Brad Pitt later tried to buy that house. Is offer to. So, you Like, make one big lot.

Shaun: 44:45

Anyways, there we go. Brad Pitt owns a Elvira's old house, hey, yeah, so for now in the 90s, and the Elvira role was still going strong for her, and now she's doing a lot of activism work, mainly in the realm of HIV and AIDS awareness, but she also became a Peters anti first spokeswoman. I wonder if she was still traumatized from that rabbit coat thing from before. I remember when the homeless person was jacking off into a rabbit for a coat.

Nate: 45:08

Yeah, yeah, I was like oh, that does sound familiar. Yes, Yep.

Shaun: 45:12

Oh so which is a Pita's uh spokesperson, which, uh, I agree with Pita's statements on? You know treat animals better, but I don't like that company. They do some real shady stuff.

Nate: 45:23

Oh dude, they do super shady stuff and especially, especially, a lot of them are like oh yeah, you know boo animal cruelty, you know they like kill more animals than almost any other animal like anything?

Shaun: 45:35

Yes, they do. They have like mass kill shelters. One time she hosted a Pita celebrity dinner at her place and among the attendees were Melissa Etheridge, katie Laying and Katie Segal have married with children fame. And also River Phoenix was there and she mainly remembers River Phoenix for one thing oh, he showed up late and uh brought along all his buddies and uh brothers and stuff and they didn't have enough seats. So that was kind of annoying. But apparently Cassandra made this great, beautiful pumpkin casserole that you brought out for the group and said in the middle of the table for the guests, and River like walked over, stuck his head over and looked down and his big, hairy, gross, uh, greasy beanie fell right off into the dish.

Shaun: 46:12

So I had to turn around and head right back to the kitchen and start picking all the fuzz and hair and crap out of it. Oh man, I'd be so pissed. Yeah, she, she was not impressed with that. She was really annoyed. But she was like, turns out, he was a really sweet kid. At the end of the night he gave her a big old hug and apologized for it. I was like sorry, I did that for you and basically everything was fine. And then it died.

Shaun: 46:31

Yeah, it was just about say later River Phoenix would die. Is Elvira like some sort of black widow? She just kills people. She doesn't intend to. She like after she hugs River Phoenix, he dies. Maybe hugs a, gives a Phil Hartman hug, he dies. Hmm, it's like give me a hug, no, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've seen what happened to these other people 1993. She, uh, cassandra Films a pilot for CBS called the Elvira show.

Shaun: 47:00

It was kind of an expansion on the 1988 film, but with the sitcom sitting and this would be of a young witch who would move in with her two witch aunts and they're talking black cat. One of the aunts would be played by Elvira and they would be dealing with nosy neighbors and uptight conservatives who wanted them to move out. All the while they tried to hide the fact that they were all witches. The show was not picked up by CBS, but she can find it on YouTube and you know it's all right, it is what it is. I don't think it would have made it, but it's Sabrina, yeah, pretty much.

Nate: 47:28

No, not pretty much. It's Sabrina, down from the beginning to the end. You have this girl living in a house with her two aunts who are witches, with a black cat that can talk in one series, and there's the newer one that doesn't talk for whatever reason.

Shaun: 47:43

I mean it's that talking cow is the best part of Sabrina, because she was a right cracker, one Right yeah, no, it was like it was like the only thing I liked about that show. Well, that was.

Nate: 47:50

I don't know I was hot. Heart was hot, but you know yeah, I mean, I never really I didn't have cables I can really watch it. But like I did watch some, yeah, I saw some, I saw clips and stuff, but yeah, and then they, the more recent one, which, like she's, the more I no, no, no, no, the more recent one they try to ground in quote unquote reality and so like they were literally worshiping Satan.

Shaun: 48:12

And I know which one you're talking about.

Nate: 48:13

Yeah, yeah, and that cat, that cat it's teen drama kind of thing, yeah, and that cat did not talk, which, again, like you just said, the best part of the original show was the talking cat. So why all the things to remove?

Shaun: 48:26

you remove that bit during the casting process for the show. It was down to two actresses for the role of Elvira's niece, phoebe and Hillary. They went with Phoebe, but many years later Elvira would run into Hillary again and ask her hey, what's up, hillary? I remember interviewing for it, you've been up to anything? And Hillary would say oh, you know, I just won an Oscar for this movie called Boys Don't Cry. Yes, it was Hillary Swank who auditioned for the part and failed. Cassandra says Hillary owes her one for not hiring her and ruining her career before it started.

Nate: 48:55

She was like all these actors you're gonna be blooded. I hear you.

Shaun: 49:00

Like if it wasn't for me and my bad casting decisions. She actually says that in the book. She's like my bad casting decisions made for a lot of good films later on.

Nate: 49:08

Meanwhile they're like I'll be, who dig at the path Like well, what about us Like?

Shaun: 49:11

sorry, sorry, I apologize, I ruined your career Exactly. The show tested really well and the president of CBS practically guaranteed the show to be picked up. However, unfortunately, even someone up higher in the CBS chain saw the Elvira pilot in her skimpy outfit and said we will not have that kind of smut on CBS. Yeah, apparently they were just like we don't want like a half dressed middle aged woman doing a thing on TV, dumb, yes. However, next year CBS would release their hit Sabrina the teenage witch, a young witch who had moved in with her two witch aunts and their talking black cat Elvira feels really cheated by that because apparently, yep, like you said, same as you, it's same exact show.

Shaun: 49:52

Just a year apart, 1994, at the age of 43, cassandra gave birth to her first and only child, sadie. Congrats on that. Shortly after that, in 1995, playboy came calling and offered her $1 million to pose nude for the magazine. That is the most they ever offered somebody and it equaled the other time they offered it the most money. The only other time they offered person that much money was Farrah Fawcett, who they also offered a million bucks to. And boy howdy did Cassandra want that money? She really, really did, but she was kind of still a little bit, if you, on whether she should do it or not. So she went to a convention, flowed the idea and the fans actually talked her out of it. They said, uh, seeing a viral nude would kind of ruin the mystery and allure of her being like the mysterious queen of Halloween. Uh yeah, cassandra agreed and I kind of agree with him on that too.

Nate: 50:39

Yeah, I mean as much as as, as much as my like little 13 year old boy self inside of me is like no boobies Uh if I if I, if I had to see boobies, I, it's a few keystrokes away, you know it, it's fine.

Shaun: 50:53

Well, she was still the second on the Playboy offer, though she decided now was a good time to get into shape, uh, after post child birthing days. So she went to a gym, got a membership and a personal trainer. Well, at this gym, cassandra notices one super hot dude working out just her style. He had long hair, muscles, tattoos, brooding energy. Cassandra immediately got the hots for him.

Shaun: 51:14

Then, much into much. To her surprise, they ran into each other in a women's restroom. Holy smokes, that's not a guy, that's a gal, she thought to herself. Am I sexual? Am I sexually attracted to women, cassandra thought. Am I gay? The answer is yes, and this lady she met the gym would be her future partner after her and her husband would get divorced, but we'll come back to that later.

Shaun: 51:33

So in the meantime, though, while all that was going on, cassandra and her husband manager decided that maybe it's time for another Elvira movie. Uh, it's been 10 years since last one. We're in the late nineties right now and they decided that, since the first movie was a VHS success and never really got his chance in the theaters, time to uh strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. So plans were put in motion to make an Elvira movie that spoofed the old Roger Corman movies of the fifties. Why wouldn't that be a hit? First of all, cassandra and her husband decided to bypass studios and finance the movie themselves, because they wanted those big bucks. Turned out to be way more expensive to make a movie than they anticipated, so to cut costs, instead of shooting in America, they went to Romania and got a bunch of non-union workers and the such. Also, the city had the area they were filming in, kind of had the look they needed, so they didn't, you know, have to do any set, design and this and that and it's just significantly cheaper to shoot over there and they were able to put the uh movie together for $1 million, which is a lot less than the first movie, which costs 13 million. So significantly cheaper. To shoot in Romania Sounds like yeah Right, it's like that. Million bucks for a movie sounds dirt cheap, no matter what you're doing.

Shaun: 52:40

Really, for the casting of movie, they actually tried to get Christopher Lee hired because she remembers him from being those old corny horror movies from back in the day that you even referenced earlier. Uh, so they reached out to Christopher Lee's agent and he respond huh, christopher Lee doesn't do those kind of movies anymore, look elsewhere. So slot, yeah, yeah, basically they threw him Hail. Marion tried to also get Mick Jagger in the movie. That did not happen either. Along the casting lines for the hunky male lead to play opposite L Vera, the only guy they could find the checked all the boxes, being big, hunky, steadily looking dude. He couldn't speak a lick of English, so they decided to write it as a joke and they dubbed his voice very, very poorly, like completely out of sync, and uh, they were actually acknowledged it in the movie. Like it was just really bad dubbing. And L viral just like staring at his mouth and be like, how is he doing that? That's actually kind of a funny joke. For the voiceover they got Rob Paulson, who was a yakko and pinky from Animaniacs and Raphael from the original Teenage Mutant, ninja, turtles and a million other things. Oh nice, the dub over voice. Yeah, we talked about him in a few other episodes.

Shaun: 53:42

I watched a movie. It's not good, though sadly, it's got a couple of all right scenes, but yeah, yeah, it felt like a really bad Mel Brooks knockoff kind of thing. Like, hey, we're going to make a Mel Brooks movie without any of the charmer humor. At the end of this movie, though, there's one scene where Elvira is tied to a table all of the pit in the pendulum and this giant blade swings down closer and closer and closer to it. At the last minute it's supposed to cut through the ropes because, you know her, the ropes are like tied to her breasts and her breasts are so tall it actually like, lifts her up, so the ropes cut first. So this scene was originally supposed to be done by stunt double Dude the fact that it involved an actual real blade cutting through the ropes and was actually kind of a dangerous stunt. However, when the stunt double showed up, she was flat as a board in the chesticle region and, no matter the prosthetics that they tried to use, they could not make it look good and it just looked ridiculous. So, lacking time in the budget, cassandra was like you know what I'll do this scene? And she said as she laid there watching that blade move slower and slower towards her, all she could think is boy, I hope these Romanian non-union workers know what they're doing. Yeah, right, and I can agree with her on that. If my life is online in a situation like that, I promise you I want nothing less than hardworking salt of the earth, homegrown Japanese people, because they know precision engineering. Definitely they do.

Shaun: 54:59

Did Elvira? Yeah, they do. Did Elvira get killed? Did Elvira get killed with the stunt? Well, no, it actually went off kind of without a hitch, but she did get a cut on her breast that they had to cover up with makeup for the rest of the shoot, so she didn't get out unscathed. A little cut the actual scene too. She actually like the blade actually just come down. She has like heaver chest up and it cuts through the rope and she's got to like roll out the last minute. It wasn't a nothing stunt, to be honest. It could have gone very wrong, especially the real blade, I mean yeah. I mean apparently she was like yeah, it was like a hundred pound blade or something like that. They're just like ah, we're doing it this way.

Nate: 55:31

They had to be a better way. I mean, obviously they did it. It's all over, but still.

Shaun: 55:35

Yeah, that's probably why it only cost a million dollars is because they're like well, we have this old blade from Vlad the Impaler we can use Sold. During the shooting of this movie, though, two bad things happened. Cassandra got walking pneumonia Bad, and her husband, manager Mark, was becoming a nightmare. Worse, he was being rude to the cast, alienated them, pissing everybody off, and he was also constantly berating Cassandra in front of the crew, like just like calling her out and just screaming at her over like nothing kind of stuff. Uh, she said it was very awkward to just stand there and be yelled at by your husband over nothing while the entire crew just watches. So not good times there.

Shaun: 56:11

Right, opening opening night proceeds of the movie were donated to local age charities in whatever city there was opening in. So you know, if it was opening in Seattle, all the proceeds from the opening night went to the local age charities in Seattle or and so on and so forth. Nice, yeah. However, the movie was not very successful. They didn't even come close back to making their money, and Cassandra says, through this experience, she very much advises to never finance your own movie. That makes sense, to be honest.

Nate: 56:38

Yeah, I saw it. There was a movie Uh, you know, it doesn't even matter what it was called, but, um, oh man, I'm telling you why I hate this with my name, with names. Oh God. Uh, a director actually like financed the whole thing with zone, and he with his own money, mel Brooks. Mel Brooks financed the whole movie and you wouldn't know, it would not know. As Mel Brooks says it has to do with. This is not a funny movie. Uh, it was like some sci-fi movie with a bunch of fucking kids. Uh, rick Moranis was part of it. Um, anyway, it was a terrible movie. It went out there. He actually like mortgage his house and he was in real trouble if it didn't sell, and so he actually ended up selling it and he got all he made just enough money to get out of it completely. He like, he paid off the mortgage. He did, he paid that off, he paid off anybody he borrowed money from and he made. He made like five bucks. No, he just, but he, no, he was like whew.

Shaun: 57:34

Okay yeah, making five bucks is better than losing money.

Nate: 57:37

Oh, yeah he's. He walked out there with a lesson. He's like. Never financed her own movie. Yeah, that was his big. That was the one thing he did. Like I said, it didn't turn out profitable, but he could not have been happier how he got out of that. It's like.

Shaun: 57:49

I'm done Right, Fuck this. It was like just barely missing a fatal automobile accident. You're like well, the side's on the wall. As for her marriage to Mark Pearson, that ended in 2003. What started out as a good relationship eventually devolved due to Mark becoming mentally and emotionally abusive.

Nate: 58:07

Explosive outbursts out of nowhere it was like, yeah, some likes me screaming at her stuff. I mean I'd leave him too, Yep.

Shaun: 58:13

It would be right Her out of nowhere for things that she wasn't even aware of. He also became controlling with the money, refusing to let her purchase things while buying whatever the hell he wanted at any time. Basically, yeah. So yeah, I should be like, hey, can I, you know, get a new dress? You'd be like, no, but I bought all these guitars for myself, kind of stuff.

Nate: 58:29

I want to take.

Shaun: 58:30

Yeah Right, she knew it was time to move on when they attended couples therapy, and Mark spent the entire session berating Cassandra in front of the therapist. When the therapist tried to get him to let Cassandra talk, he wouldn't and kept on yelling to the point where the therapist just had to in the session early because he's like well, this ain't working, let's spend awkward drive home after that.

Nate: 58:52

Well, I mean awkward, but also she's just. You know, obviously she got the message, you know. Yeah, they're the therapy absolutely worked.

Shaun: 59:00

Yeah yeah, right, the show. Hey, she gave it a shot and it showed her what she needed to know.

Shaun: 59:06

Yeah therapy with the power of hindsight. After the divorce she had realized that he was essentially her mother in the way he abused her, you know just the constant berating and never I don't know if it ever got physical, but she's just like well, I suddenly realized that while the relationship was abusive, there was some familiarity there because the relationship reminded me of the relationship I had with my mother. So that's kind of part of the reason. Yeah, that's a story that's you know, oldest time, I think. When you grow up, in like a situation that's a two out of ten and then you move up to a four out of ten, you're like, hey, this is twice as good, it is way better, but you're still at a four out of ten. So, right, yeah, everything's relative to where you've been. I guess this nicely, yeah. And the divorce he got all the money but she got to keep the rights to the character and her pension plan and divorce. That's kind of long in the short of it.

Nate: 59:53

Well, that's the age of crappy, because I mean she should have kept it anyway.

Shaun: 59:57

Yeah right, yeah, well, he was the manager, I guess. So there is some of that there. I don't know we could talk to them.

Nate: 1:00:05

Yeah, lawyers to talk about. Yeah, but they go.

Shaun: 1:00:09

Yeah, yeah, welcome. So anyways, now that she is done with her mark, she decides to give a shot with the relationship with that trainer that she saw at the gym who is called to tea, like that's the only thing that we have a reference to, as she tries to keep very quiet about her personal life. Nowadays she's kind of quiet about a personal life, or I write them until this book, to be honest. But basically when they started their relationship they weren't. They weren't in relationship at first, but her trainer and her, you know, they got along to a really good friends and after the divorce the trainer moved in to help her watch the kids, and you know this and that because the trainer also got out of a bad relationship, so on and so forth. And then, next thing, you know, hey, guess what? We're in a relationship together, her and T, cassandra and T but they sound like they were, just you know.

Nate: 1:00:53

Woke up one morning like ah, they're in bed, kissed each other. They start making breakfast and all of a sudden, like someone's set up real quickly, holy shit, we're in a relationship together.

Shaun: 1:01:01

Huh, actually, apparently the way it worked out is they were just kind of like having a day out Just hanging out and stuff. And then when they got back to their place, elvira was like, or Cassandra's like, I just wanted to kiss her for reasons I couldn't understand, and so she did, and they're like oh, now we're a couple.

Nate: 1:01:21

That was awesome.

Shaun: 1:01:26

Cassandra for the longest time, like up until this book, for almost 20 years, kept that relationship, her gay relationship, secret, because she thought the anti-gay backlash would actually help the hurt the Elvira character. Because, also, she realized be like, hey, guys won't be interested in Elvira if they find out she's gay. And you can kind of understand train thought because she comes from that arrow where you know if you come out as gay, it just destroys your career, no matter what your career is. Yeah, turns out, though, this train of thought was completely wrong, and when she finally admitted to the relationship in her book.

Shaun: 1:01:57

Everyone was super duper Supportive, as you would imagine. Yeah, I mean it's, that's fine. Yeah, also, I kind of get the feeling, you know, as far as movie genre fans horror movie fans might be some of the more open-minded fans. It fan base out there, I think you're like action or westerns or this or that.

Nate: 1:02:13

Yeah, you're probably right.

Shaun: 1:02:15

Yeah, yeah, here's a fun side fact the Elvira costume is the best-selling female Halloween costume of all time. Unsurprised, yeah yeah, I'm not surprised either. I mean because it's iconic, you know, and yeah, I mean it's cheap to produce too, I'd imagine, cuz it's just like one little sheet of polyester, right? I mean, yeah, it's not exactly your elaborate costume.

Shaun: 1:02:39

You can either make your own or and also on that note if you do buy an official Elvira costume, so that money goes to Cassandra because she owns the rights to the character. Yeah, I want to support Elvira.

Shaun: 1:02:48

Buy her actual license, stuff is all I'm saying. Yep, do it, because, unlike a lot of people where they just get like a penny out of it, she actually gets the full amount, which four pennies, I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea how licensing works. In September 2010, elvira's movie Macabre returned to public. Return to two television syndication, this time with public domain films. This run of the series was actually paid for Cassandra's own out of Cassandra's own pocket, and she said to remaster these movies even though the movies were like a public domain and free, to get the movie to remaster them so they're watchable cost about ten thousand dollars for each movie. She made 26 episodes of this, but only 20 aired. So I guess we could say let's see 26 times ten thousand, 26,000 yes, 26 episodes made, only 20 aired. And she hopes she learns her lesson about self financing this time, because she took a big old loss on this one as well. She's like yeah, apparently I didn't learn my lesson the first time and second time went just about the same lay whoops, but hey, at least she gave it a shot.

Shaun: 1:03:55

2014, we get 13 nights of Elvira, which was produced for Hulu by brainstorm media. Basically, this was another thing where she would line up in review movies, bad movies, but the majority of these were full moon feature movies and, if you don't remember them, they were like the ones who did the og, puppet master movies and those guys back in the 80s. Yeah, they also did evil bong starting Tommy Chong. Evil bong, evil bong starting Tommy Chong. Okay, that is a new full moon features movie. It does not look good from what I saw.

Nate: 1:04:29

So does the bong self-kill you? Or to make you make the bong like, make you turn evil?

Shaun: 1:04:33

Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure. Maybe I'll have to watch it. All I know is the cover. The box has a very evil looking bong and Tommy Chong on it. They got a bong rhyme.

Shaun: 1:04:43

Yeah, yeah, elvira's 40th anniversary very scary, very special special came out 2021. This was to celebrate the original shows 40th anniversary, a special one night movie marathon which premiered live on shutter, the horror streaming service. The special came out September 25th, the same week as her memoir, yours cruelly, elvira. Oh, by the way, just so everybody knows pretty much 90% the info, 85% info. This is from her biography Elvira, your, or wait, yours cruelly Elvira. That's her memoir. I recommend it. Good book, go check it out. And I didn't want just like use that book as a source, so I went back and found old articles on her and old interviews. So, yay, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Shaun: 1:05:29

And two of the movies that they did for that a streaming thing on shutter. The first movie they did was Elvira, mistress of the dark, her movie from 1988, and also the original horror movie that she first saw, house on Haunted Hill. But you get nice, stand by, not a bad movie. So now we're kind of winding down in the last few years, and as of 2018, cassandra says she's in talks for both a sequel to mistress of the dark and an Elvira animated series, but I've not really had any word since then. So maybe stuck in production? Hell, let's see what's that she's?

Nate: 1:06:01

she should go animated. Yeah, yeah, she should. I mean, she still looks great. Don't get me wrong, she still looks great. But.

Shaun: 1:06:09

I think she's also one of her interviews. She actually did say she wants to go animated because that will keep it. You know, yeah, basically your physicality can only last so long, but anime.

Nate: 1:06:20

Because it's still her voice, like her voice is also. Her voice is just as iconic as her figure.

Shaun: 1:06:24

Yeah, it really is.

Nate: 1:06:25

I mean, if she, I think she still could like if she went on there and pulled it off. I think she, you know, from what I've seen of her recently, I think she probably do okay, but that's, it's just nature, you know. Just she's getting up there in years.

Shaun: 1:06:41

Yeah, so yeah. She's in her 70s now, so 72, that is no spring chicken. She might only have a good 30 years left in front of her.

Nate: 1:06:49

Yeah, she could take care of herself. Hopefully she didn't, you know, unless she something sneaks up on her.

Shaun: 1:06:58

All right, let's see. Where was I? I got sad track because my brain was like, oh crap, there's something I forgot to add in here. Oh, yeah, god, when was that? At what point? They did actually have a little mini series, whereas I think it's like on VH1 or something. Whereas, fine, the next Elvira and a bunch of is a reality show where a bunch of people got to show up and, you know, show off their Elvira skills, and the plan on that was actually they kind of wanted to do like a Santa Claus thing where Every Halloween at a mall or whatever, they just have like regional Elvira show up and do their thing and hype up people and get them excited. That apparently fell through Because I think people want to see the actual, real Elvira. They don't want to see a fast Similee.

Shaun: 1:07:40

Yeah, I mean yeah, that's a good call yeah 2022, cassandra Peterson gets a role as a real estate agent in Rob Zombie's Munster movie. That apparently was not that great. I she. I've heard two train of thoughts on it. One that movies awful to. If you're a huge fan of the original Munster show, you probably would like it. Okay, did they ever release? Yeah, I did, oh, there you go. Yeah, I think it released on like it wasn't like a theatrical release, I don't think. I think it just went to streaming.

Nate: 1:08:12

They came out of the new, like. I saw a pilot episode for a new monster and monsters had any. Is it in it?

Shaun: 1:08:20

Was that the 1600 mockingbird lane one? Yeah, whatever oh that's fine.

Nate: 1:08:25

I yeah, oh, that was while ago. I liked it.

Shaun: 1:08:28

You know, it was you that one got a lot of good reviews, if I recall.

Nate: 1:08:31

Yeah, it was. It was pretty decent.

Shaun: 1:08:33

I don't know why they didn't go anywhere with it, but because wasn't that more of kind of a serious and less wacky monsters or something?

Nate: 1:08:41

Yeah, I mean it was still has comedy to it, but it was it.

Shaun: 1:08:45

Yes, it was picture some old studio head like watching me, like this isn't the monsters I remember. Get rid of this, because, I don't know, studio execs are just idiots sometimes, yeah, yeah. So basically we're up modern day now and outside of a lot of convention appearances the world over, she's mainly doing guest appearances and stuff. At the moment. You know little appearances on shows, here, their podcasts. She does say she's enjoying life as much as ever in her 70s and the relationship with tea is easily the best she's ever had. She's completely in love with her and loving life. So good for you, cassandra, I'm happy for you. Hey, yay, good for her. And we do have one last thing.

Shaun: 1:09:30

Well, I was writing this up I was like, hey, I could do something with all these characters. So Now I present the off-off topic movie I concocted. We start with Elvira and John Waters as they hop into the macabre mobile and hit the road for adventure. Eventually their car breaks down, but fortunately there is the great Antonio there to pull him to the nearest mechanic. That mechanic is mr T, who repairs the macabre mobile and also turns into a war machine. All four now travel to area 51, where they encounter Vitus, whose angelic falsetto and rhythmic tongue is able to communicate with the aliens. The five of them all drop acid and then watch the vivisection of a certain alien named elf. The end, yay.

Nate: 1:10:09

How high were you? Would you have that? Ha, ha, oh, oh.

Oft Off Topic

Elvira Pt.4 - Elvira Episodes End

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