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Acknowledgements
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(Cassandra Peterson 1951– ). American actress and film host.
Appeared
in: Elvira's Movie Macabre (series of televised movies; host) (1981-88);
Filmgore (compilation; host) (Ken Dixon 1983); Jekyll and Hyde ...
Together Again (Jerry Belson 1983); Pee Wee's Big Adventure (Tim
BURTON 1985); Friday Night Videos (tv series; host) (1988); Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark (and co-wrote with Mark Pierson) (James Signorelli
1988); Friday Night Surprise (tv pilot) (1989); "Sing for the Unicorn,"
"Mummies Curse," episodes of Super Mario Brothers (1989); Elvira's
Midnight Madness (tv series 1990); Encounters in the Third Dimension
(Ben Stassen 1998); several television specials.
Video
host for: Dead of Night (tv movie) (Dan CURTIS 1977); Carpathian
Eagle (Francis Megahy 1981); Rude Awakening (1981); Guardian of
the Abyss (Don Sharp 1982); Natas: The Reflection (Jack Dunlap
1983); many others.
Roughly
speaking, television film hosts fall into three categories. In the early days
of television, hosts often tried to genuinely mimic the mood of their films:
Vampira of Los Angeles television of the 1950s tried to be truly horrifying, as
did the unseen sepulchral voice that introduced Chiller movies to
Minneapolis viewers (like myself) in the 1960s. Second, there are rare hosts
like John STANLEY of San Francisco's Creature Features who are visibly
detached from their movies but are willing to take them seriously. Most
frequent, however, are hosts who openly despise the films being introduced and
devote all their energies to making fun of them, including Laraine Newman, host
of Canned Film Festival; the sardonic viewers of Mystery Science
Theater 3000; and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the host I am most familiar
with, whose weekly film series started in Los Angeles and later achieved
national syndication before collapsing.
Dressed like
a standard vampire (much like Vampira, who complained that she was being
imitated), Elvira steadily projected a flip and disrespectful attitude towards
her films; she was watching them, she told viewers, only because she was paid
to do so, and she didn't understand why anybody else would want to watch them.
At the beginning of her vignettes between scenes of the films, she was often
seen asleep, apologetically waking up when she realizes that the camera was on
her again. At first she made jokes about the films only during breaks; later,
anticipating the format of Mystery Science Theater 3000, she began
intruding upon the films themselves, displaying her face in a corner and making
comments while scenes proceeded. Finally, Elvira came to display a complete
lack of interest in the movies, with skits focused on unrelated subjects like
an obscene phone caller, Breather; in a way, ignoring the movies displayed even
more contempt than her jokes.
Despite the
eventual cancellation of her film series, the character, like other noteworthy
vampires, has kept coming back from the grave again and again: Elvira starred
in her own, unsuccessful film, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988), made
cameo appearances elsewhere, and continued to make commercials and guest
appearances on television programs throughout the 1990s. She has also appeared
as host of a series of horror films released on video, stressing once again at
every opportunity how awful they are. Most recently featured in a 1998 IMAX
film, Encounters in the Third Dimension, Elvira now seems destined to
endure into the next millennium and beyond.
To be sure,
many movies that have received the Elvira Treatment perhaps deserve only
derision, but it was disconcerting to see a good film like Michael Powell's Peeping
Tom (1960) served up for wisecracks during her series. Certainly, despite
her talents as a comedian and entertainer, anyone with a genuine interest in
science fiction and horror films will eventually grow tired of her
determination to see all of them only as worthless time-wasters. Elvira's
defenses—that she rarely if ever assails classic films, and that she
encourages people to view awful films which might otherwise be forgotten—do
not seem persuasive; some might even blame her and others of her ilk for a
continuing refusal to take science fiction and horror films seriously; and it
is hard for a critic of science fiction film to be charitable to someone whose
avocation is to constantly denigrate the genre and its related forms.
And that is
why I cannot devote an entry to the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000,
the film hosts who seem more relevant to this volume: I cannot bear to watch
the show. With Elvira, at least, one can sometimes watch and appreciate a film
on its own terms; but Mystery Science Theater 3000 makes this
impossible. The one time I attempted to watch it, they were showing The
Killer Shrews—admittedly not a good film, but I had never watched it, I
wanted to watch it, and I could not enjoyably watch it, as one cannot enjoyably
watch any film with an incessant babble of sophomoric humor from the next row.
The fact that the first (and hopefully last) Mystery Science Theater 3000
film fires its rhetorical cannons at a true classic, This Island Earth,
demonstrates that good films as well as bad films can be subjected to this
torture; and it requires no genuine wit to envision a similar denigration for
films like The Day the Earth Stood Still ("Hey! That looks like the
robot on the Ringo Starr album cover") or 2001: A Space Odyssey ("Why is
he doing all that heavy breathing when there aren't any chicks around?"). (I
hope no one associated with the series reads this; I don't want to give them
any ideas.)
Everyone has
to make a living, but all I can say to Elvira, the Mystery Science Theater
3000 crew, and all their compatriots is: if you want to make a living by
constantly insulting my favorite types of films, then you are no friend of
mine; and why you have so many friends in the science fiction community is a
mystery to me.
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