Elvira's Haunted Hills is a 2001 American comedy horror film directed by Sam Irvin and written by Cassandra Peterson and John Paragon. The second film starring Peterson in the title role (credited as Elvira), after the 1988 theatrical release ', it also stars Richard O'Brien, Mary Scheer, and Scott Atkinson.
In 1851 in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Elvira and her maidservant Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith), on their way to a can-can revue in Paris, get kicked out of an inn for a slight monetary discrepancy. After making their way out of the village, they are rescued by Dr. Bradley Bradley, who takes them to stay at Castle Hellsubus, in the hills high above the village. While there, Elvira meets the residentsâÂÂand discovers that she happens to resemble the deceased former wife of his Lordship, the Count Vladimere Hellsubus.
Elvira's Haunted Hills was independently made and privately funded; Peterson and then-husband Mark Pierson mortgaged their house and the apartment building they co-owned to raise $1 million, with donations from relatives providing the remaining $500,000. Filming took place in Transylvania, Romania, and the film was promoted at film festivals and horror/sci-fi conventions.
The film parodies the Roger Corman-directed Edgar Allan Poe films of the early 1960s â dedicated to the memory of the then-recently deceased Vincent Price â as well as the British horror films from Hammer Studios. Atkinson's character is clearly evocative of Price, who starred in many of the Poe films.
The film opened on the July 5, 2001 weekend at the Laemmle Fairfax Cinemas in Los Angeles after premiering at the International Rocky Horror Fan Convention on 23 June 2001. It was released direct-to-video on 31 October 2002.
In an unfavorable review, Ty Burr in the Boston Globe rated it as "A sloppy slapstick throwback to long gone bottom-of-the-bill fare like The Ghost and Mr. Chicken." In his review for The New York Post, Lou Lumenick wrote that it is "more entertaining than much of the big-studio schlock out there."
Ian Jane of DVD Talk wrote in 2011 that "if (...) isn't a classic it's amusing enough for what it is, and that's a playful, harmlessly sexy parody." Also in 2011, on IGN, Rl Shaffer called it "a mess. It also holds a small place in my heart as the first film I ever walked out on. (...) But if you're an Elvira fan (...) is a must-watch."
Cody Hamman of Joblo.com wrote that "Haunted Hills is seen as inferior, but the truth is, itâÂÂs just different."