Elvira's Haunted Hills

Title - Elvira's Haunted Hills
Language - English
Genre - Horror, comedy

Elvira’s haunted hills is the second film outing for Cassandra Peterson’s Elvira but it is not a sequel to Elvira mistress of the dark.

Set in 1851 Elvira and her assistant Zou Zou are traveling through the Carpathian Mountains on the way to put on a show in Paris.  Out of money the two have to run form an inn and find themselves stranded on the road.  A coach stops to pick them up after the other passenger, Dr Bradley Bradley recognizes Elvira from her promo posters..

Doctor Bradley is on his way to one of his patients who let Elvira stay the night with the doctor promising to take them away the next morning.  As soon as Elvira enters castle Hellsubus lady Hellsubus sees her and runs screaming and this is the reaction she gets from most of the residents the first time they meet her.

Elvira is told that she is the spitting image of Lord Vladimere Hellsubus’ first wife, Elura who died in mysterious circumstances.  

The members of the Hellsubus family believe that they are cursed never to be able to leave the castle and, it is this that lead to Elura’s death.  The curse also manifests itself in other ways in some of the family members,  Vladimere has sensitive hearing and vision and his niece, Roxanna keeps fainting.

Doctor Bradley is called away to treat the plague in the next village stranding Elvira and Zou Zou in castle Hellsubus and with Vladimere’s insanity growing will any of them get out alive.

Elvira’s Haunted Hills is a spoof of the old ‘Hammer Horror’ films and is even dedicated to Vincent Price.  It has all the trappings of the haunted house style of film  from the creepy castle to the Dracula like Lord Vladimere.  The film is played of laughs and is definitely more of a comedy than Mistress of the Dark which keeps it’s humor dark.  The jokes range from cleavage/boob jokes to Elvira spouting anachronisms which, until you get used to them can throw the flow of the film.

As the film is a parody the acting is over the top with a great performance from Richard O'Brien as Lord Vladimere Hellsubus.  we get lots of sneaky looks to the camera with Elvira even addressing it in one scene.  the character of Adrian the Stable Stud has an English voice over dubbed on to his own in homage of the dubbed foreign films of the past.

Elvira’s Haunted Hills has a few things in common with Mistress of the dark, Elvira is trying to put on a show, she has no money and of course there are plenty of cleavage but it  is a noticeably different film from Mistress of the Dark in tone and story.  It is, however still a fun and enjoyable film so give it a watch after all it’s not every day you see Richard O'Brien's over acting stand out more than Elvira.  

Elvira, Mistress of the dark

Title - Elvira, Mistress of the dark
Language - English
Genre - Horror, comedy, witchcraft

Elvira, T.V. scream queen and inspiration the Simpsons 'Boobarella' has one dream, to get her show to Las Vegas. 

  Unfortunately she needs to raise $50,000 which is looking impossible after she rejected her bosses’ advances.  So when she receives a telegram telling that her Great Aunt Morgan has died and left her some inheritance Elvira thinks nothing of jumping into her car and travelling to Fallwell Massachusetts for the reading of the will.

Elvira is disappointed when she is left no money, but she is left a house, a dog and the family cookbook.  Deciding to renovate the house to sell to try to raise the money for Vegas Elvira stays in Fallwell but soon finds that she has to deal with a sleazy estate agent who in interested in more that her house, the local busy body Chastity Pariah who is trying to get Elvira kicked out of town and her great uncle Vincent who is desperate to get his hands on the cook book.

After using the book and then finding note from her aunt Elvira realises that she can't let Vincent get his hands on the book but with the whole town against her how can Elvira survive to see her dream of getting to Las Vegas?

Elvira Mistress of the dark is the of two films where scream queen legend Elvira (Cassandra Paterson) takes the lead roll  taking her T.V. persona to the big screen and fleshing out the character.  The film is more of a comedy than a horror although it uses a lot of tropes and references to old horror movies and it makes a change to spells that don’t always come back to the caster, for example the casserole 'love' spell affects everyone at the party but doesn't really have any (magical) consequents for Elvira where as in a lot of modern witch films love/lust spells often have a darker consequences often resulting in the caster being stalked and can turn the flow of the film.

Elvira is a fun character who has a quip for every situation and a charm that reaches beyond her chest.  Elvira has the ability to be sexy without bring the tone of the film down and a sense of humour that keeps the film light when it could easily become a bad horror  

Mistress of the dark is a great film and well worth a watch with a great story and a few laughs along the way.

Razor Blade Smile

Title - Razor blade smile
Language - English
Genre - Vampire, Action

A group of Goths sit in the ‘Transylvania’ night club discussing vampires, mainly would a vampire work and if so what would their perfect job be.  Most of the table laugh when Lilith Silver suggests that they would make a good hit man.  What the rest of the table don’t know is that Lilith is speaking from experience as she is both a vampire and a hit man know as the angel of death.

Lilith starts of the film by explaining that, just like normal humans Vampires get bored and so they have to find ways of   keeping themselves entertained.  To this end Lilith has become a hit man, a job that not only necessities working in the dark but also helps find victims to feed off.  Lilith’s current assignments are all members of a secretive cult and, as part of the hit she must also collect the ring that they all wear but, due to unexpected security she ends up leaving it behind on her first hit of the film.

Unknown to Lilith the head of the cult, Sethane Blake, is the man who turned Lilith into a vampire in the first place.  Sethane knows that there is a hit man targeting his organisation and so he sends Detective inspector Price to investigate, Price being a member of Sethane’s organisation. As Price investigates the hits he begins to suspect that a vampire is involved but, of course no one believes him.

Lilith begins to look into the cult but things come to a head when her client kidnaps her handler, Platinum because he is not happy that she missed the ring on one of the hits.  Lilith is then in a race to save Platinum life whilst avoiding Inspector Price.

I found Razor blade Smile a bit disappointed.  The story has potential but the dialogue is  is not that good at times it’s trying to be too gritty and just results in way too much swearing. As the film progresses Lilith goes from spouting really naff puns to telling us the rules of being a vampire. It seems slightly unnecessary to have Lilith tell us the rules as they are normally being played out on screen at the same time.  A lot of the dialogue also seem slightly forced.

There seems to be an attempt in the first half of the film to include as much sex as possible without turning it into porn.  Some of it is an attempt of character building between Lilith & Platinum but it seems to distract more than build as they are trying to show that Lilith cares for him.  Other sex scenes are meant to show the relationship between the vampire feeding and pleasure; we even have Lilith giving a voice over to tell us this.  I have nothing against sex in movies and it is used in other vampire movies to better effect but in razor blade smile it does just seem to be an excuse for a bit of titillation.

As the film progresses the story does start to fill out but only starts to deliver on its promise on the last few scenes with the relationship between Lilith & Sethane being one of the best plot devices.

At times there is a feeling that Razor blade smile is trying to be a bit of an art film with the flashbacks to Liliths past being shot in black and white with splashes of colour.

I’m not sure if i would recommend razor blade smile as good vampire film, i remember enjoying it more when i was younger but now it just seems full of distractions from the story