Film Enigma: 31 Days of Monster Mania: Day 9: Elvira's 1986 MTV Halloween Special

Written by Stu Cooper

For Day 9 I was able to track down something I thought I'd never see. As most horror fans know, Elvira is highly regarded as the Queen of the horror hosts and she peaked in the 1980's. She was able to capture audiences with her goofy comedy and extremely beautiful looks. One might even say she is a legend in a dying art form, that of the TV movie host. With the recent announcement of Elvira getting yet another series (this time on HULU), I figured now would be a great time to discuss "The Mistress of the Dark". Today we are going to discuss a Halloween special she did for MTV back when it was at the peak of it's success. Let's dive into this wonderfully retro piece of Halloween history.

The special epitomizes the heart of what the original MTV stood for. You have an iconic character from pop culture hosting a mash-up of various music videos, some of which had something to do with horror, some were just popular videos at the time. In between the videos we would be treated to Elvira hosting various segments from Salem,Massachusetts! She would wander around the town, checking out various hot spots and doing "On the Streets" interviews with random old men. The comedy flops pretty bad in most of these segments, but it's still vintage Elvira. The majority of the special is these music videos from bands like Oingo Bingo, The Banshees, The Cure, and Ozzy. At first the mix of videos is random, but the last 30 minutes or so is Elvira choosing some of her favorites.

We are also treated to a few skits from Elvira and some comedic friends. There is fake commercials for a witch academy, a fake halloween album infomercial, and my personal favorite the "Elvira Demon Possessed Barbie featuring Devil Ken". There is also a pretty funny fake aerobics video with Elvira "EXOR-cising". Get it? Yeah that's the kind of humor you're in for with this special. But what can I say, I'm a sucker for anything vintage Elvira.

The place where the special really shines is the commercials! There is some absolutely absurd commercials to be seen in 1986, including but not limited to a trailer for "Soul Man" where a guy does blackface in a hollywood comedy and it's totally cool, a overly exaggerated laser tag toy advertisement, and all sorts of Max Headroom endorsements. I encourage all of you readers to checkout some of the commercials, which I'll provide links for below. If you're a fan of vintage MTV and the John Hughes era of music video teen culture, you're going to enjoy the special and the playlist of tunes it provides. Unfortunately the cuts of the videos are super quick, and since the video is just a rip of the VHS, I think this was just MTV trying to cram in as many relative videos as possible. You have to applaud the effort tho. The art of the Horror Host, or even the TV Host is dying out and the "special" part of holiday TV seems to be fading with it. I know many yearn for the days where MTV was like this, so enjoy the special in all it's hammy glory!