Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988)

Directed by James Signorelli
Starring Cassandra Peterson, her boobs, and her poodle.
Rated PG-13
USA


"There's nothing wrong with G-rated movies, as long as there's lots of sex and violence." 

Cassandra Peterson was a flame-haired go-go dancer from Kansas who invented a valley girl character as a member of The Groundlings improv comedy troupe. In 1981, she was up for an audition for a horror host at a local LA TV station. She decided to mix the wisecracking valley girl character with a vampy seductress for the audition, and Shazam! Elvira was born. She rocketed to fame soon after, thanks to her quick wit and her tight, black, cleavage-heaving dress. She soon became one of the most recognizable pop culture icons of the 80's. Aside from her horror hosting duties, Elvira's image helped sell everything from her own posters to comic books, video games, video tapes, and even cases of beer. It was inevitable that she would get her own film, and thusly, Elvira Mistress of the Dark was unloosed in theaters in the fall of 1988. Written by Pee Wee's Playhouse veteran John Paragon and directed by SNL producer James Signorelli, Elvira-the-movie poses an intriguing question: can you really get away with boob jokes for 90 minutes straight?

Let's find out!

It's another thankless day for TV horror-hostess Elvira. She barely spits out her good-evenings on her show when she's whisked off the chintzy soundstage to make way for the news team. Worse yet, before she can make her ecsape, she's accosted by the TV station's new manager, a porky, grabby cowpoke named Earl. Their impromptu meeting goes sour quickly. Earl grabs Elvira's boob, she shoves him into the newssdesk, and in the blink of an eye, her career is over.

She's not too worried, though, because she's got a show in Vegas opening soon. Or does she? While furiously changing in her dressing room (into the same slinky black dress she was already wearing, naturally), she has a discussion with her balding, gold-medallion sporting agent, Manny, who tells her the club in Vegas wants $50,000 seed money to do the show. And she just got fired. Ouch!

But then she gets a telegram!

Turns out she's got a great Aunt that just died, and she left her something in her will. Fantasizing that she's about to inherit enough dough to cover the show and anything else she wants, Elvira jumps into her souped-up, all-black convertible and zooms her way to Falwell, Massachusetts, for the reading of the will, terrifying hitchhikers, dropping hot dogs on her boobs, cleaning the windshield with her boobs, and blowing up gas stations along the way.

Eventually she makes it to the sleepy town of Falwell. She meets local gossip Chastity Pariah (Edie McClurg), who hates her, as well as Patty (Susan Kellerman), the busty proprieter of Patty's Tide Bowl bowling alley. She hates her, too. There's plenty of drooling men-folk around as well, including Travis, the town creep (Jeff Conaway), and small-town jock Bob (Daniel Greene), who saves her from getting mashed – or worse – by Travis and his buddy. Turns out Bob owns the local movie theater, so Elvira tries to bond with him by professing her love for satanic horror flicks and suddenly, weird romance blooms. Sorta.

And so, Elvira attends the reading of the will. The only other living relative is Morgana's sinister brother, Vincent (W Morgan Shepard). Both of them assume they're going to get all of great Aunt Morgana's dough. Both are sadly disappointed by the reading.

Elvira gets the house, her aunt's poodle, and a recipe book. Vince gets nothing. Elvira's bummed out that there's no money involved, but Vince is even more upset that he did not get the book – turns out the “recipes” are actually powerful witchcraft spells! Vince calls Travis and his idiot friend, and the three of them scheme about how to get the book from Elvira's clutches. It doesn't take much effort – Vince just asks for her for it, and she agrees to let him have it for $50. The end.

No, that's not the end. First she has to check out her new house – as you might guess, it looks like a dilapidated, haunted mansion. Also, she gets her aunt's poodle, which she proceeds to shave and dye pink. The dog's not thrilled about it, but he's also kind of a magical dog, so right before Vince shows up, he hides the book so Elvira won't sell it. Vinnie's pissed, but what can he do?

That night, a storm brews. While Elvira's inside, changing into something less comfortable, a trio of horny local teens show up with a ladder and attempt a little peeping, Animal House-style. She catches them and chases them off, but not before one of 'em get's a racy Polarioid out of the deal.

The next day, the fellas show up again, this time with a bunch of tools and whatnots to help Elvira fix the join up. An authentically 80's style fixin' up montage, complete with many grautuitous tits n' ass shots, ensues.

Since they had limited funds, the kids painted her house 17 different colors. Luckily, she digs it. Lemonade all around!

Ok, so the kids in town love her, but the adults? Well, that's a different story. The town council – lead by Chastity Pariah, naturally – are tired of Elvira's wanton wickedness, and they unanimously decide to run her out of town. Of course, no one's more desperate to get Elvira out of Falwell than Elvira herself. She has an open house to sell her creaky old mansion, but nobody wants it.

Desperate for cash, she tries to get a job in town, but is turned away wherever she goes. She runs into Bob in front of his theater. Unintentionally dirty marquee sign antics ensue, and then he clues her in to why she's not having any luck. She's been blackballed!

Suddenly, she has a brainstorm. Bob's not making any dough showing his nature films, and she knows how to fill a...ahem...theater, so she makes a deal with him to have a midnight horror show! Even though all the kids in town are banned from hanging out with her, she goes to the bowling alley and guilts them all into going. They all make plans to sneak out of the house. Many shots of bungling teenagers falling out of bedroom windows ensues.

Also Patty, who overheard the plans, is skulking around in the shadows herself, looking for a way to sabotage her rival.

Showtime! Elvira shows Attack of the Killer Tomatoes with her own live commentary. The kids love it! There's even some adolescent groping going on. What a night!

After the movie's over, Elvira does a Flashdance routine, but instead of a bucket of gold glitter getting dumped on her, she gets tarred and feathered courtesy Patty. Surely she must know, this means war. While Elvira soaks in the bath tub, scraping off chunks of tar, she plans her revenge.

First though, she wants to seduce Bob. Sure, he rejects all of her advances, but he's the only viable sexual candidate in town. Assuming that the easiest way to a man's penis is through his stomach (true!), she decides to whip him up some vittles using her aunt's recipe book. You know, the spellbook. This should go well.

Spoiler alert: it's not a casserole, it's a monster. But this doomed foray into the kitchen causes Elvira to discover her true nature: she's the daughter of a powerful witch, and the book is her key to becoming the Mistress of the Dark. In fact it's already working, because she finally gets to bang Bob.

The next day is the annual Fallwell Morality Picnic. Elvira attempts to ger her revenge by bringing the monster casserole, but she screws up the recipe and turns into some kind of sex stew. An elderly sex orgy breaks out. Edie McClurg says, “Is this face taken?” before sitting on the high school principal's head. It's craziness.

The next morning there's an emergency town council meeting held to discuss what just happened. Uncle Vince saunters in and blames it all on Elvira. Which is correct. And he's got a plan to get rid of her once and for all. He wants to arrest her, put her on trial for witchcraft, and if at all possible, burn her at the stake.

Elvira gets tossed into the slammer while the townsfolk prepare their horror-hostess flambe. The kids try to brerak her out by busting a hole through the roof of the jail, but they screw it up and end up in the next cell over. Bob and Gunk-the-poodle are also working furiously to save her, but Vince and his goons have the book. Things look bleak as the cops march Elvira outside to the blazing bonfire.

Bob never gets there in time. Elvira is burned at the stake, her flesh bubbling away as she screams into the night. The end.

No, that's not what happens. There were no sad endings in the 80's. But there were a lot of white-people-rapping endings, and this is no exception.

Elvira Mistress of the Dark is absolutely a product of it's time – thete is no doubt this is a late 80's confection, and it will never transcend the era that spawned it. The syrupy optimism, the clanging heavy metal riffs, the oversized glasses, puffy hair and sweater vests, the fixin' stuff up montage: 1988 is represented perfectly here, in all its noisy, cheeseball, acid-washed glory. As for the actual content of the film – well, it's essentially 90 minutes of a boob jokes with a Full Moon productions-style backdrop, so who can really argue with it? Cassandra Peterson's heaving cleavage is prominently displayed in almost every scene, Edie McClurg indulges in public fornication, Jeff Conaway stumbles around in it, there's a pretty sweet monster, and it ends with a a glitzy showgirl number. I have no complaints or regrets.

- Ken McIntyre 

Valley Girl (1983)

Directed by Martha Coolidge
Starring Nicolas Cage, Deborah Foreman, EG Daily
Rated R


"Is this movie in 3D?"
"No, but your face is."

In many ways, "valley girls" - affluent, material-minded, anti-intellectual young women from the San Fernando Valley, California area in late 70's and early 80's - were sociological pioneers. It wasn't actually popular to be vapid before then, and suddenly, "clueless" was cool. It didn't really last, and by the dawn of the 90's, smart girls with glasses were hip again, but the concept returned with a vengeance during the Bush presidency, and it still hasn't left us. What are reality stars like the Kardashians and the Jersey Shore kids, if not the direct descendents of valley girls? Dumb is not only back, it's a richly rewarded commodity. Seriously, walk around a mall sometime. Neon plastic sunglasses are back, and I'm pretty sure the idiot kids wearing them aren't even being ironic. Had Martha Coolidge known the horrors her film would spawn 25 years later, would she still have done it? Probably. After all, she thought she was remaking Romeo and Juliet with Valley Girl. And while that might seem absurd at first glance, let's face it: if William Shakespeare was writing screenplays in 1983, this is pretty much the kind of thing he'd come up with.

Curiously, the opening credits music is not Valley Girl by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa, but the comparatively limp fluff-pop “Girls Like Me” By Bonnie Hayes and the Wild Combo, which plays over sweeping shots of the valley in question, as well as a montage of Deborah Foreman and her pals shopping for day-glo clothes at the mall. Grumpy ol' Frank Zappa would not let the producers use "Valley Girl", and in fact sued them (unsuccessfully) for creating a film based (partly) on his satirical song.

Deborah Foreman (the perky blonde from My Chauffeur, Real Genius, April Fool's Day, Waxwork, etc) is Julie,  the leader of a quirky quartet of titual valley girls (including Streets of Fire's own EG Daily as plucky Loryn) who spend most of their time at the mall, accessorizing badly (Julie's got an American flag pin and a Woody Woodpecker brooch tacked to her sweatshirt in the opening scene!) and ruining boys' days. Like her long-time boyfriend Tommy, who gets unceremoniously dumped on the mall escalator.

The big news is that there's a big party tonight at Suzi's, and all the cool guys and hot girls are gonna be there, even teen rebel Randy (Nicolas Cage), the big hunk they all peeped on at the beach earlier that day, who normally doesn't like going to the valley, because he's from Hollwood, man. But what the hell, a party's a party. Julie and Stacey (Heidi Hollicker) get ready and before they head out, they have to endure a little awkward and fairly creepy chit-chat with Julie's parents, played by former 70's T&A queen Coleen Camp and perpetual pervy character actor Frederic Forrest, who sports a pretty amazing mustache."Oh Stacey, if I was twenty years younger, honey," says dad. Ick.

By the way, Coleen Camp is only 9 years older than Deborah Foreman, so they put some goofy glasses on her to age her a little.

So, the party happens. Seems like a wash-out. Lame music, bad dancing, and the guy Julie's into, Brad, is kind of a douche. All the guys wear their collars turned up. Some guys even have double-collars! Suzi, by the way, is played by Michelle Meyrink, AKA the mousy love interest in Val Kilmer's finest hour, 1985's Real Genius. Suzi only threw this stupid party to impress a big lug named Skip, but he seems to be more interested in her sexy red-headed stepmom, Beth (Lee Purcell).

Also, Loryn makes out with Tommy. Treacherous! Still, boobs! Director Coolidge said at least three sets of boobs were required by the studio so that teenage males would see the movie. And they have a point, because otherwise Valley Girl is kind of a rom-com.

Anyway, things perk up when Randy and his buddy Fred (Cameron Dye), show up with “punky” haircuts and “punky” attitudes. They're clearly outcasts in this preppy scene, and Randy's about to bail until he locks eyes with Julie. They start chatting and things are going pretty good until drunken asshole Tommy, who's finished banging Loryn, storms downstairs and socks Randy in the mouth. Then he and his pals toss Randy and Fred out the door, like the poor punk rock trash they are.

Rubbing his swollen cheek, Randy proclaims that Julie is “Truly dazzling”.
“Yeah,” Fred reluctantly agrees, “But she's not one of ours.”

They're from the wrong side of the tracks, man!

The fellas leave in defeat. But a few miles down the road, Randy has an epiphany. Nobody's gonna tell him what girls he can hit on!

Randy sneaks back in through the bathroom window and hides in the shower, waiting for Julie to show up. Meanwhile he peeps a guy feeling up his girlfriend, a group of friends getting high, and a bunch of people peeing. Then he watches silently when Julie comes in and stares forlonly at herself in the mirror. This isn't creepy at all, Randy.

Still, she seems pretty charmed by it.

She agrees to split this lame-o scene with him. They drive around downtown and Randy impresses Julie by knowing all the sketchy characters hanging around. Then he takes to see the Plimsouls and tells her they're way better than the “techno rock” she listens to. He also tells her she's a programmed robot. Yet, they still end up making out in his car until the sun comes up. Bad boys!

Some time later, Julie goes for her dirving test. WKRP's own Les Nessman is the instructor! Sadly, she gets so distracted talking about her date that she pays no attention to the task at hand and fails miserably. Also she says "trippindicular"!

Then there's a weird 70's porno-setup scene with Skip and Suzi's stepmom – he comes over to deliver the groceries, if you know what I mean- but it doesn't go anywhere.

It as this mid-point in the film where we are subjected to the obligatory falling-in-love montage, wherein Julie and Randy stroll the strip, looking at signs for donut shops and hamburger joints while “I'll Melt With You” by Modern English plays on the soundtrack. THE WHOLE SONG.

And then the girls all get together and go through Suzi's stepmom's lingerie drawer and then dance around in their underwear.

Also, Skip drops by and has sex with Suzi. So she's happy. Good for you, Suzi.

So, all this time Julie's been conflicted, because her friends want her to go back to Tommy and her old hangouts and the mall and whatnots, and she wants to stay with Randy and hang out on street corners in Hollywood looking at hamburger stand signs. So she consults her dad, who is an old hippie, who sensibly tells her not to be a square. And so she stays with Randy and they live happily ever after.

No, that's not what happens. After lying in bed holding a creepy clown doll, she comes to her decision. She announces it to the gang the next day. She's leaving Randy for Tommy. They're pretty psyched.

 Conveniently, Tommy shows up and they officially get back together. And then they live happily ever after. The end.

No, first Julie has to break up with Randy. She gives him the ol' 'It's not you it's me' speech. Randy's not having it. He knows what's really going on.
"It's your fuckin' friends," he points out, astutely. "It's your friends. Well, fuck off. Fuck off FOR SURE. LIKE, TOTALLY."

So then he gets drunk and bangs a chick named Samantha in the bathroom of that stupid club that's always got the Plimsouls on stage. When it's over, he feels strangely unsatisfied. Usually, bathroom sex fixes everything. Then he pukes in an alley. Hollywood!

There's only one thing left for Randy to do: stalk Julie relentlessly until he wears her down. Or until Tommy kills him, whichever comes first.

Either that, or he can always bumrush the prom. The junior prom. Aren't they all like 23 years old?

Anyway, Josie Cotton is the featured performer! While she sings her signature hit, Johnny Are You Queer, Randy and Fred hide behind the stage curtains and figure out the plan to get Julie back. Basically there is no plan, so they go with that. And then they say, "Time to crush...that...fly!"

Was “Crush that fly” something that people used to say back then? I don't remember it.

Anyway, there's a grand finale. It involves fake karate and kicks to the balls. And a food fight. And a happy ending. Ladies and gentlemen, the 1980's!

Without Nicolas Cage, Valley Girl would've probably been lumped in with all the b-grade 80's teen coms, ie the Fraternity Vacations, Screwballs and Losin Its, but even at this early stage in his career, it's obvious that the guy is a star. A really weird, overly intense fruitcake of a star, but a star nonetheless. He's such an iconic actor now that it's almost unsettling to see him as this young, awkward guy stomping and storming through this breezy comedy. Aside from Nic, the major appeal here is Valley Girl's time-travel qualities. It really does look like the 80's the way most people remember it: gaudy, cheap,  hoplessly shallow, but with a sense of playfulness and innocence that's all but lost in today's society. EG Daily is great (as are her boobs), Deborah Foreman is the height of 80's adorableness, the soundtrack is as gleefully cheeseball as you'd hope, and it's very difficult not to get caught up in the giddy fun of it all. If you miss the 80's (why?) or want to know what they were like, Valley Girl is perfect for shamelessly wallowing in the day-glo decade.

- Ken McIntyre

House on Sorority Row (1983)

Directed by Mark Rosman
Starring Kate McNeil, Eileen Davidson, Harley Jane Kozak, Jodie Draigie
Rated R
USA

"I'm a sea pig!" 

The 80's didn't really start until 1984. I think Billy Idol really invented the 80's. Before that, it was still the 70's, as evidenced by the clothes and the woeful Cars rip-off band prominently featured in 1983's (relatively) bloodless slasher, House on Sorority Row. The nonsensical premise is, at least, uncomplicated: sorority girls accidentally kill their wicked house mother, then dump her in the pool so they can throw an end-of-semester blow-out party. Things go awry when her body keeps popping up in different spots around the house, and the girls involved in the accidental murder/purposeful cover-up start showing up dead, slashed, seemingly, by the deceased house mother's own metal-tipped cane.

And that's pretty much all there is to it. Of course, there's no reason to just dump the old bitch. It was an accident, a prank-gone-bad, and a call to the local yokel cops would have cleared it all up in an afternoon. Some folks (like Stacey, my wife) could not get past this leap in logic, but hey, who knows what we'd do in similar circumstances? Pools are very convenient places to dump stuff, after all.

Katie (Kate McNeil, one of the several young actresses here who managed to bridge the gap between b-queen and soap star pretty effortlessly) is the token "Final Girl". She's the only one who thinks they ought to call a cop. Sadly, she caves into peer pressure and goes along with the cover-up instead. That's not very plucky. Also, she doesn't have a gender-neutral name. She's pretty much the worst Final Girl ever. At least she wears unflattering work clothes to a drunken blow-out and spurns the advances of her dorky date.

Vicky (future soap star #2, Eileen Davidson) is the ring leader. She's the one that causes the accident in the first place and spends the rest of the movie barking orders to the rest of the girls. Kind of a one-note performance, but effective enough. Also, excellent eyebrows.

Diane (Harley Jane Kozak, soap star #3, third from the left above) is...well, another one of the girls. There's not a lot of characterization at work here. I thought she looked a lot like Marcia Stassman, AKA Mrs. Kotter on Welcome Back Kotter.

Interestingly, Stacey thought Kate was a deadringer from Mrs. Kotter. We were probably just wishing we were watching Welcome Back Kotter instead. Anyway, Harley-Jane is in it, too.

So is Jodi Draigie, who steals the show as the dim-witted blonde-bombshell Morgan. First of all, she has a tremendous look. Her facial features look like somebody was trying to construct the perfect, Dorothy Stratten-esque 80's platinum-blonde glamour queen, but gave up halfway through. For most of the film, she's wearing a crazy "sexy" dress that Melanie Griffith or somebody would have worn to the Oscars in 1982, but no college girl would ever wear, especially to a beer-bash. At one point, after getting smacked in the noggin by the attic stairs, she decides the best course of action (this is is during a raging house party, mind you) is to slip into some flimsy lingerie and take a nap. As a character, she's a completely blank slate (I think she's supposed to be the stupid one?), which is perfect, because Draigie's clearly a non-actor. She only has about three lines, but every one is spat out with an energetic awkwardness that suggests Draigie knew she was over her head, but what the fuck, she's there already, might as well make the most of it.. Draigie/Morgan is the best part of the movie. Too bad she's only in it for about five minutes total.

Oh, can't forget the band, 4 Out of 5 Doctors. Virginia power-poppers with mullets. If you're young and thinking that maybe this band just seems spectacularly lame because they're from the early 80's, I am here to tell you that, even for the early 80's, 4 out of 5 Doctors are off-the-charts, kill-the-hostages, woefully LAME.

Oh, and the killer? Well, at the beginning of the movie, there's a prologue  that takes place 20 years prior. In it, the house mother is extremely pregnant and being cared for by a kooky, sinister "doctor". Clearly, something terrible and gooey is about to happen and there's some yapping about an experiment gone wrong. Very soon after, Katie ends up in the attic of the sorority house, where the house mother has been keeping some unseen kid all these years. This might seem like a spoiler, but it's not, really, because there aren't any other suspects. Not one. No red herrings in sight. So, you know, who else could it possibly be?

In summation: There's a good head-in-the-toilet gag, a flash or two of nubile 80's nudity, and gratuitous Jodi Draigie. Otherwise, House of Sorority Row is mostly tedious, with no mystery, gore, or surprises to recommend it. I actually liked the 2009 PG-rated remake better. And that had nepotism's number one poster girl/block-o-wood Rumer Willis in it, for crying out loud. When Rumer trumps the 80's, you know things are bad.

- Ken McIntyre 

Sugar High Glitter City (2001)

Directed by Jackie Strano
Starring Shar Rednour, Kiki Carr, Simone Del La Getto
Rated XXX
USA 


"You want some fuckin' candy, bitch?"

Jackie Strano was the lead singer for Sappho-rawk band The Hail Marys. Along with zine-editress Shar Rednour, she was also the prime mover behind SIR video. That's Sex, Indulgence, and Rock.  They made lesbian videos. Not the phony lesbians that you're used to, though -the airbrushed former cheerleader straight porn girls that purr like kittens and nibble on each other like toothless grandmothers with finger sandwiches. You might be wishing for such puffball illusions by the end of SIR production, but your not going to get it. What they're all about is the real lesbo-underground, and it's a raw world of sexual outlaws with their own brand of rough riding justice. Strap yourself in. Or on, whatever.

Sugar High Glitter City is a near-future Dystopian fantasy, more than a little redolent of 70's underground sex classic Cafe Flesh. No sex-negative rubber neckers in Glitter City, though. All the citizens here are in on the rough trade at one end or the other. The problem with this town is that sugar- not a euphemism, I'm talking about lollipops and such, is outlawed. There's no real explanation for this- I'm guessing Nazi dentists, though. At any rate, you know how it goes with humans- outlaw something, and suddenly everybody wants it.

Kit Kat bars are like vials of crack here, and desperate sugar-fixers roam the streets. Many have resorted to prostitution to support their habits, and that's where the trouble starts. Crooked vice cops take full advantage of these troubled times, two in particular. Head honchess Jackie S. herself, and her silver pantsed side-kick Stark (who looks violently insane throughout these proceedings, by the way), bang every Nutrasweety in town- dangling blow-pops in front of them and threatening jail time if they don't go along.

Their are also sugar mamas, a chocolate mafia, and sleazy Janes of every shape and size strutting their stuff in Glitter City, all looking to score in one way or the other. Although all the candy whores in town are lesbians of the lipstick variety- a little rough around the curves, maybe, but definitely het-friendly, the rest of this clit-crazy town is populated by girls who look like they work at the health food store. For squareball straights (like me, turns out), it can be pretty alarming. It's a particular mind-bender halfway through when what looks like a thick-waisted Dave Navarro - you know, cheesy mustache and chin hair, cowboy hat, leather pants- trades some sugar pills for some back seat education from a Billy Idol girl, and when she gets moving, she tears off her body-wrap to reveal a very feminine, though oddly Ron Jeremy-like figure underneath. Yikes.

There are endless variations on this theme in Sugar High. Groovy chick in the back of a van is peddling cherry pies, mowhawked skate-dyke wheels in and makes out with her, and the pie. Sugar slut parades around town in a bra made of candy hearts. All day suckers are sucked on, all day long. The whole thing is one hallucinatory gang-fuck of confection and girl on girl love. This film won a ton of awards when it was released last year, and I'm not surprised. On an obviously ultra-low budget, SIR has created a whole alternate world, part hardcore pornography, part 70's ghetto-fried blaxploitation, part Twilight Zone. If it didn't scare me half to death, I would have loved it.

- Ken McIntyre