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Cassandra Peterson
Peterson in May 2011.
Born	(1951-09-17) September 17, 1951 (age 73) Manhattan, Kansas, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Actress and TV hostess
Years active	1970–present
Spouse	Mark Pierson ​ (m. 1981⁠–⁠2003)​
Website	http://www.elvira.com/

Cassandra Peterson (born September 17, 1951) is an American actress best known for her on-screen horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. She gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ wearing a black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing gown as host of Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation. Her wickedly vampish appearance is offset by her comical character, quirky and quick-witted personality, and Valley girl-type speech.

Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Peterson grew up near Randolph, until the area was flooded to create Tuttle Creek Reservoir; her family then moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. According to a 2011 interview, Peterson states that as a child, while other girls were occupied with Barbie dolls, she was more fascinated by horror-themed toys.^[1] During her teens, Peterson worked as a go-go dancer in a local gay bar.^[2]

She graduated from General William J. Palmer High School in 1969. Days after graduating, she drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, where she became a showgirl in "Viva Les Girls" at The Dunes, where she met Elvis Presley. She had a small role as a showgirl in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, played a topless dancer in The Working Girls (1974), and purportedly posed for the cover of Tom Waits's 1976 album, Small Change.^[3] However, this story is apparently unverified as Peterson has since described it as "a giant mystery", claiming that while she has no memory of the event, the picture looks enough like her that she feels "pretty sure" that it is.^[4] She is a vegetarian^[5][6] and has appeared in a humorous Halloween-themed ad for PETA promoting a vegetarian diet.^[7]

In the early 1970s, she moved to Italy and became the lead singer of the Italian rock band, I Latins Ochanats. During this time she had a chance encounter with director Federico Fellini, which led to a small part in Roma (1972). Back in the United States she toured nightclubs and discos around the country with a musical/comedy act, Mammas Boys. In 1979, she joined the Los Angeles-based improvisational troupe, The Groundlings, where she created a Valley girl-type character upon whom the Elvira persona largely is based.

Peterson auditioned for the role of Ginger Grant for the third Gilligan's Island television movie in 1981, shortly before KHJ-TV offered her the horror-host position.^[8] Peterson also was a radio show personality on Los Angeles' 106.7 KROQ radio station from 1982 to 1983.

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. Deciding to use a female host, producers asked 1950s horror hostess, Maila Nurmi, to revive The Vampira Show. Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but eventually quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. The station continued with the project and sent out a casting call. Peterson auditioned against 200 other horror hostess hopefuls and won the role. Producers left it up to her to create the role's image. 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.

Since they were unable to continue with the Vampira character, the character Elvira was used instead. 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.

Shortly before the first taping, producers received a cease and desist letter from Nurmi. Besides the similarities in the format and costumes, Elvira's closing line for each show, wishing her audience "Unpleasant dreams", was notably similar to Vampira's closer: "Bad dreams, darlings..." uttered as she walked off down a misty corridor. The court ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "'likeness' means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was based on Morticia Addams, a character in Charles Addams's cartoons that appeared in The New Yorker magazine.

The Elvira character rapidly gained notoriety with her tight-fitting, low-cut black gown which showed ample cleavage. The movies featured on Elvira's Movie Macabre were always B grade (or lower). Elvira reclined on a red Victorian couch, introducing and often interrupting the movie to lampoon the actors, the script and the editing. Adopting the flippant tone of a California "Valley girl", she brought a satirical, sarcastic edge to her commentary. She reveled in dropping risqué double entendres and making frequent jokes about her display of cleavage. In an AOL Entertainment News interview, Peterson said, "I figured out that Elvira is me when I was a teenager. She's a spastic girl. I just say what I feel and people seem to enjoy it." Her campy humor, sex appeal, and good-natured self-mockery made her popular with late-night movie viewers as her popularity soared.

Elvira was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and other talk shows. She also produced a long-running series of Halloween-themed television commercials for Coors Light Beer and Mug Root Beer (her trademark cleavage was concealed for the Coors campaign). She appeared in guest roles on television dramas such as CHiPs, The Fall Guy and Fantasy Island and appeared on numerous awards shows as a presenter. Although she is known primarily as Elvira, Peterson has made out-of-costume appearances as herself for television interviews and specials.

In 1982, with the success of Movie Macabre, Knott's Theme Parks hired Elvira to replace Seymour as the host of its annual Halloween Haunt during the month of October. Elvira appeared nightly at the park, live on stage with a Halloween-themed musical comedy revue similar to her Mamma's Boys act from the 1970s.

The Elvira character rapidly evolved from obscure cult figure to a lucrative brandname and "Mistress of all Media", spawning many products throughout the 1980s and 1990s including Halloween costumes, comic books,^[9][10] action figures, trading cards, pinball machines, Halloween decor, model kits, calendars, perfume and dolls. She has appeared on the cover of Femme Fatales magazine five times. Her popularity reached its zenith with the release of the feature film Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (co-written by Peterson) in 1988. She also played many non-Elvira character-roles in other films, most notably Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) with friend and fellow Groundling Paul Reubens (as his Pee-wee Herman character) and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1985) starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone.

In September 2010, Elvira's Movie Macabre returned to television syndication in the U.S., this time with public-domain films.

In 1985, Elvira began hosting a home video series called ThrillerVideo for U.S.A. Home Video and later International Video Entertainment (I.V.E.). Many of these films were hand-selected by Peterson. Choosing to stay away from the more explicit cannibal, slasher and zombie films of the time, these were generally tamer films such as The Monster Club and Dan Curtis television films, as well as many episodes of the Hammer House of Horror television series. She refused to host Make Them Die Slowly, Seven Doors of Death, and Buried Alive, so the videos were released on the LIVE Home Video label without Elvira's appearance as hostess. After this, several extended episodes^[11] of the British namesake series Thriller (i.e. The Devil's Web, A Killer in Every Corner, Murder Motel) were also released without Elvira hosting, sometimes various releases such as Buried Alive, the cast replaces Elvira.

The success of the ThrillerVideo series led to a second video set, Elvira's Midnight Madness through Rhino Home Video. In 2004, she revisited this concept with a similar horror film collection on DVD, titled Elvira's Box of Horrors. After more than ten years, Box of Horrors was the return of Elvira hosting horror movies as she did with Movie Macabre.

Elvira appeared in comic books from three publishers: DC Comics, Eclipse Comics and Claypool Comics. The Claypool series was co-branded with and distributed by Eclipse, afterwhich Eclipse ceased publication, was a sole product of Claypool. The series was edited and occasionally written by Richard Howell and featured photographic covers with interior stories and art by Kurt Busiek, Dan Spiegle, Jim Mooney, Steve Leialoha, and others. It ran for 166 issues, plus two trade paperback collections.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of Elvira-themed computer games were produced.^[12] Some of these were Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Elvira 2: The Jaws of Cerberus and Elvira: The Arcade Game.

Two Elvira-themed pinball machines were produced by Bally/Midway: Elvira and the Party Monsters^[13] was released in 1989, and Scared Stiff^[14] was published in 1996.

In the early 1990s, Peterson began a series of successful Elvira calendars with her striking, provocative, and campy poses in various macabre settings. One of the months can be seen in the video game, Blood, hanging on various walls.

• Diamonds Are Forever (1971), small role as a dancer
• Fellini's Roma (1972), small role as a dancer
• The Working Girls (1974)
• Cheech & Chong's Next Movie (1980), small role
• Movie Macabre (1981), TV horror hostess
• Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (1982), small role as "the busty nurse."
• Stroker Ace (1983), a bit part in this Burt Reynolds film.
• The Fall Guy, episode "October the 31st"
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), small role as a biker mama.
• ThrillerVideo (1985), home video series for U.S.A. and later I.V.E.
• The music video for My Mistake by Phantom, Rocker & Slick – (1986)
• WrestleMania 2 (1986), guest commentator
• Echo Park (1986), supporting role in Susan Dey drama.
• Elvira's Halloween Special (1986)
• Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987), secondary role as the evil Queen Sorais.
• Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988), title character and co-writer. (She, Sam Egan, and John Paragon collaborated on the original script.) Peterson's first feature film.
• Coors TV commercials (1988), spokesman.
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (1989), as herself, she appeared in the last sitcom segment of the program, called The Ghoul of My Dreams.
• Parker Lewis Can't Lose – Season 2, Episode 19, "Boy Meets Girl II", appeared as Elvira (1992)
• The Elvira Show (1993), CBS pilot revolving around two witches, played by Elvira and Katherine Helmond, moving to Manhattan, Kansas, with their talking cat.^[15]
• Helicopters with Elvira (1993–1995)
• The Ketchup Vampires (1995)
• Space Ghost Coast to Coast – Episode 27, "Switcheroo", appeared as Elvira (1996)
• Draw Your Own Toons (1998, series 1 only)
• Elvira's Ghost Stories Spooktacular show (1999)
• The Martin Short Show – TV Episode #1.35 (as Elvira) (1999)
• The Howard Stern Radio Show – TV Episode 19, June 1999
• Bride of Monster Mania (2000) (TV)
• Scares & Dares (2001) (TV)
• Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001). After several years of unsuccessful attempts to make a sequel to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Cassandra and her manager and then-husband Mark Pierson decided to take matters into their own hands and finance a second movie themselves. In November of 2000, Cassandra wrote and co-produced Elvira's Haunted Hills. The film was shot on location in Romania for just under one million dollars. With little budget left for promotion, Cassandra and Mark screened the film at AIDS charity fund raisers across America. For the many people in attendance, this was the first opportunity to see the woman behind the Elvira character. On July 5, 2002, Elvira's Haunted Hills had its official premiere in Hollywood. Elvira arrived at the premiere in her Macabre Mobile. The film would later be screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
• The E! True Hollywood Story – Scream Queens (2004) Hostess
• The Tony Danza Show – TV Episode #1.34 (2004)
• Monsterama: A Tribute to Horror Hosts (2004) (TV)
• Elvira's Box of Horrors (2004), horror film collection on DVD
• Red Riding Hood (2004)
• I Love the '80s VH1 – Peterson made appearances (both as herself and as Elvira) on several editions.
• I Love the Holidays (2005) (TV)
• I Love the '80s 3-D (2005), VH1 TV miniseries
• Playboy Presents: Hef's Halloween Spooktacular (2005) (Hostess)
• TV1 (2005), Peterson (as Elvira) hosted a show on Australian-based cable TV channel TV1; the format was similar to her old show.
• The Secret Life of Superfans (2006)
• Vampira: The Movie (2006). Peterson discusses the Vampira lawsuit.
• I Love the '70s: Volume 2 (2006), VH1 TV miniseries
• Living in TV Land – Sherman Hemsley (2006), TV Episode
• Elvira's Movie Macabre DVD series – (September 2006)
• The Girls Next Door – Girls Will Be Ghouls (October 2006) Elvira visits The Playboy Mansion to promote her Playboy-inspired DVD.
• The Search for the Next Elvira (October 13, 2007), TV reality show by Fox Reality. On April 19, 2006, Peterson announced she would be seeking a few good "Elviras" via a reality television program. Some^[who?] mistook this for an announcement of her retirement. As of October of 2006, she had cleared up the rumor by stating that she wanted to find other people to play the role, so that the character could appear at the multitude of personal appearance requests. As Peterson stated in an interview, there were many Bozos (the clown) making personal appearances, even though Larry Harmon himself had died since, so she saw no reason there could not be more Elviras. ^[16]
• Medium (2009), Special cameo appearance as Elvira in the beginning of the "Bite Me" episode.
• The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009), Amber
• Appeared in the Ghoultown music video for their song "Mistress of the Dark". (2009)
• Appeared as a downloadable character in the Sony PlayStation 3 game Pain (October 2009)^[17]
• A professional dominatrix in an episode^[which?] of Nash Bridges
• All About Evil – Linda (2010)
• Elvira's Movie Macabre Horror Hostess – (2010)
• Last Man Standing – Special cameo appearance as Elvira (2011)
• Elvira's Not a Witch – a 45 second viral video that spoofed a campaign ad by US Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell (October 2010)^[18]
• RuPaul's Drag Race – Special guest judge as Elvira in first episode (2012)

Elvira recorded several songs for her Halloween albums in the 1980s and 1990s. Here is her discography:

• Elvira and the Vitones 3-D TV (Rhino Records, 1982)
• Vinyl Macabre (Rhino Records, 1983)
• Elvira Presents, Haunted Hits (Rhino Records, 1987)
• Elvira Presents, Monster Hits (Rhino Records, 1994)
• Elvira Presents Revenge of the Monster Hits (Rhino Records, 1995)
• Elvira's Gravest Hits (Shout! Factory, 2010)

Elvira also performed guest vocals on a track called "Zombie Killer" for the band Leslie and the Ly's, released in February 2008. The music video for the track features Leslie & The Ly's performing to a sold out audience of zombies in a fictional venue called "Elvira Stadium." A 7" single was released.

On April 7, 1986, Cassandra, as Elvira, appeared as a guest play-by-play announcer at the Los Angeles Sports Arena portion of WWF WrestleMania 2, alongside Jesse "The Body" Ventura

On Halloween night of 1992 Elvira appeared with rock band U2, when they played at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on their Zoo TV Tour. Just as she apparently did some 14 years later, she declared her candidacy for President, noting that "we already have two boobs in the White House, might as well be mine." Following a couple of corny jokes, she led the crowd to sing "Happy Birthday" to drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., whose birthday is on Halloween.

She appeared on Cartoon Network's talk show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, in its twenty-ninth episode "Switcheroo" with Susan Olsen.

From 1995 to 1997, Peterson made appearances as Elvira at the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park for "Elvira's Friday the 13th" events held whenever the 13th of a month fell on a Friday.

In 1997, Ray Productions of Orlando, Florida, produced the first haunted house chain endorsed by Elvira titled "Elvira's Nightmare Haunted House". The attraction was fully themed (including Elvira look-alike Patterson Lundquist) and remained open for two Halloween seasons in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 2001, she appeared throughout the nation, including Los Angeles, New York, Key West, Chicago, and Atlanta, screening her second full-length feature film, Elvira's Haunted Hills.

Lockheed's "Skunk Works", which designed and built the F-117 airplane, built a bomb into a mobile trailer that targeted a computer system for guiding the airplane through the maze of enemy radar systems. The trailer and system was nicknamed "Elvira" for its ability to safely guide the airplane through the darkness of their night missions.^{[citation needed]}

On October 30, 2011, she was a guest DJ on 97.1 FM WDRV Chicago "The Drive" as their Sunday Night Star.

In the 90's Cinema Ride's (Motion Base Simulator), she was the Preshow video host for the Haunted Graveyard Run.

In 2012, Elvira made an appearance on RuPaul's Drag Race as guest judge. Elvira was later featured (among other celebrities) in RuPaul's "Glamazon" music video.

On July 30, 2012, it was confirmed that Casandra has joined the cast of the Indigogo-funded film "First Period", where she will be playing mother to Cassie (Brandon Alexander III).

In the mid-1990s, Cassandra Peterson enlisted female impersonators, Christian Greenia (Cassandra Fever), from Los Angeles, California, and Patterson Lundquist ("Elvira's Twin"), from Atlanta, Georgia, as her "official Elvira impersonators", calling them "the best she'd ever seen." The two later appeared with her as co-judges on The Search for the Next Elvira.^[19] The first official female Elvira impersonator, April Wahlin, the winner of The Search for the Next Elvira, was passed the crown on October 31, 2007. As the winner of the reality show, she made a few appearances during her one-year "reign" from October 31, 2007, to October 31, 2008. Despite Wahlin's win of the title and one-year contract as Elvira, both Greenia and Lundquist continue to appear as Elvira for various events across the country.

Los Angeles Silver Lake Film Festival

• Spirit of Silver Lake Award: 2001^[20]

Saturn Awards

• Best Actress: 1990^[21][22]

Raspberry Awards

• Worst Actress: 1988^[23]

• Maila Nurmi
• Midnight movie
• Tom Jones

• Official website
• Elvira's Myspace page
• Manor Macabre: The Ultimate Elvira Fansite
• Full text of court decision in Nurmi v. Peterson
• Claypool Comics: Elvira search results
• Femme Fatales: Winter 1992/1993, December 1995, January 1997, January 1998, December 1998, November 2001

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cassandra Peterson.

• Cassandra Peterson at IMDb
• Cassandra Peterson at AllMovie
• The Elvira Show (1993 pilot episode)
• The Search for the Next Elvira at IMDb
• HorrorHosts.com
• SWINDLE Magazine interview with Cassandra Peterson
• Cassandra Peterson's Guest DJ Project on KCRW KCRW Guest DJ set
• Elvira Movie Macabre App on the App Store
• ThrillerVideo Cover Collection
• Some of the Midnight Madness Covers

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