Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark (1988)

The trashy and tacky Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) hosts a TV show that runs bad sci-fi and horror films. She needs money to finance her Las Vegas act. When her great aunt from New England dies and leaves Elvira an inheritance in her will, she finds all she has inherited is a dilapidated old house, a poodle and a recipe book (which is really a book of spells). Worse, the uptight and puritanical townspeople treat her like a pariah. This horror comedy manages to be both cheesy and legitimately funny and near irresistible. The closest equivalent that I can think of would be ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. It's silly yet there's an eagerness to please that makes the silliness work. The comedic highlights include Elvira's FLASHDANCE parody, her "casserole" dinner and a picnic in which she casts a sex spell on the town's puritans. Peterson squeezes all the double entendres she can out of her ditzy, cheap dingbat and everyone is pretty much a straight man to her though Edie McClurg as Chastity Pariah, the town's moral arbiter, manages to steal a few scenes. Directed by James Signorelli. With Daniel Greene and Susan Kellerman.