“OPPORTUNITY ONLY GIVES YOU KNOCKERS ONCE” — the failed but fabulous ELVIRA sitcom
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by William Bibbiani, Staff Writer
It is a truth universally acknowledged that all goodhearted people love Elvira and watch her movie Elvira: Mistress of the Dark every year (and Elvira’s Haunted Hills probably just once). But even many diehard Elvira fans don't know about her 1993 sitcom, The Elvira Show, about a supernatural sexpot living in Kansas and struggling to keep her witchy family out of a conservative town's crosshairs. The Elvira Show was too raunchy for CBS in the 1990s, but it may be one of the funniest failed pilots ever made, and the world should know about it. You should know about it.
If you don’t know who Elvira is, shame on you. Shame. But since I want you to read the rest of this, she’s the creation of comedian Cassandra Peterson, who hosted Elvira’s Movie Macabre from 1981 to 1986. Lounging on her chaise in a dark and dingy dungeon, Elvira watched low budget monster movies — usually bad ones — and interrupted the feed to make jokes and take comedic phone calls. Elvira was the latest in a long line of TV horror hosts, several of whom — like Joe Bob Briggs, Vampira, Svengoolie, and John Zacherle — became local or national celebrities.