So, I’m finishing out the first two weeks of Elvira with a review of Elvira’s second movie, Elvira’s Haunted Hills from 2001.
Like Mistress of the Dark, I had never watched this one, so with the surprise of actually liking that first movie, I sat down to watch this one hoping to also like it.
And I didn’t. It’s more of the same but not done as well. Elvira is Elvira. Double entendres abound. It feels like it wants to be something like Young Frankenstein, or, to be more accurate, Haunted Honeymoon. But the charisma of the cast (or lack thereof) can’t overcome the poor script and attempts at humor. I know this was made on a shoestring budget, and it’s lampooning old Vincent Price Poe movies like The Pit and the Pendulum (the poster for which even had the giant swinging blade on it) and The Raven, which I honestly haven’t seen. But it still didn’t land, meaning mainly the humor.
The sets for this movie were pretty great though. The giant castle, as a set, worked very well and had lots of cool elements incorporated into the design including a small hidden door in the side of the giant fireplace (sidenote: I love giant stone fireplaces in castles). And the overall story was actually not that bad, but this movie lives or dies on the humor and the humor just doesn’t work as well in this one as it did in the previous movie. It was so MEH that I didn’t really have anything I wanted to talk about more in depth by pulling out screen grabs. It’s just not as fun a movie as I wanted it to be.
I wish it wasn’t so, because I still love the character of Elvira.
Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
