Elvira

Elvira Ring Adult
$3.99
Includes: Ring. This is an officially licensed Elvira ��� Mistress of the Dark TM accessory.

Elvira Wig Adult
$15.00
Includes: Wig. This is an officially licensed Elvira ��� Mistress of the Dark TM accessory.

Elvira's Movie Macabre: Maneater of Hydra/The House That Screamed
$14.99
Plot for both movies:
Maneater of Hydra (1967)
This is a Spanish-West German co-production released in the former country as La Isla de la muerte ("The Island of Death"), in Germany as Das Geheimnis der Todesinsel ("Secret of the Island of Death"), and first released theatrically in the United States as Island of the Doomed. The picture is a more-entertaining-than-it-ought-to-be throwback about a mad scientist and an island of poisonous and carnivorous plants.

Six tourists - erudite James Robinson (Rolf von Nauckhoff) and his lonely wife Cora (Kai Fischer); handsome architect David Moss (George Martin) and stock ing���nue Beth (Elisa Montes); frumpy shutterbug Myrtle Callihan (Matilde Munoz Sampedro); and an inquisitive scientist, Professor Jules Demerest (Hermann Nehlsen) - embark upon an unusual vacation, spending their holiday at the castle of Baron von Weser (Cameron Mitchell), a botanist so desperate for cash that he's willing to turn his picturesque estate over to the tourist trade.

There's plenty of room, certainly: the Baron's big island has been uninhabited since legends of a vampire-type creature sent the island's other residents packing. After a short digression with Mrs. Robinson living up to her name by trying to seduce an unresponsive Baron, people start disappearing or dying under mysterious circumstances, including the twin brother of mute manservant Baldi (Mike Brendel) and driver Alfredo (Ricardo Valle). Though the Baron is acting strange and overly-protective of his prized petunias and such, everyone begins to suspect Baldi of the various murders, though it's clear early on that the real culprit is a blood-sucking monster tree.

Directed and co-written by New York born actor Mel Welles, best-known for his performance as flower shop owner Gravis Muschnick in Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Maneater of Hydra is actually quite atmospheric if predictable, ultimately silly but effectively played with straight faces, and even the big vampire tree looks pretty good, far better than the American one-sheet poster above would suggest.

The English dubbing, perhaps supervised by Welles, is nothing if not amusing. Mr. Robinson is given a voice that's like a parody of George Sanders, while the Madrid-born Sampedro, despite her character's Irish-sounding name, is looped with a broad, Brooklynese Jewish mother voice, like Molly Picon or Louise Lasser.


The House that Screamed (1969)
A lavish Spanish production much more in the style of Henri-Georges Clouzot than, say, Jess Franco, this is a real find, an underrated, virtually forgotten thriller undeserving of the pithy treatment given the picture by Elvira & Co. Though its denouement is a disappointment, it's a class production all the way though the poor if letterboxed transfer hardly does the film justice.

The picture, released in Spain as La Residencia ("The Residence"), may have been an influence on Dario Argento's Suspira (1977); both are set at an all-girl academy and Lilli Palmer's icy headmistress, Mme. Fourneau, is very much like Alida Valli's similarly austere character in Argento's picture. Set in late-19th century France, the story mainly follows new girl Theresa (giallo star Cristina Galbo), the daughter of a single-mother cabaret dancer (and/or prostitute), shipped off to the boarding school Fourneau runs with an iron fist.

Theresa adjusts to her new life fairly well all things considered, though sadistic head girl - and coded lesbian - Irene (Mary Maude, whose looks suggest Barbara Steele) plots to humiliate her. Meanwhile, Isabelle (Maribel Martin), in love with Fourneau's teenage son, Luis (John Moulder-Brown) is brutally murdered, her throat cut, but as her body never turns up it's assumed that the girl has merely run away. Later, Theresa likewise befriends Peeping Tom Luis after he's trapped in a boiler room vent trying to get a looksee at the girls taking showers, but soon thereafter plans to run away herself to escape Irene's brutality.

Directed by Narciso Ibanez Serrador (Who Can Kill a Child?), The House That Screamed surprisingly was condemned in Phil Hardy's Encyclopedia of Horror Movies as "cynically sexploitative" and "offensively misogynist." Beyond the irony that Hardy's book heaps mounds of praise on many of Jess Franco's inept and far more crassly-made horror-sex films, the reality is The House That Screamed is almost too restrained and tasteful for its own good. It's certainly nothing like Hardy's book suggests: though ultimately downbeat the picture is nearly as Victorian as its setting - the girls even take showers demurely clothed in undergarments.

After a slow start, the film builds to some enormously atmospheric set pieces that are genuinely creepy, approaching in the style of Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) and Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963). Key to this are the film's stunning Franscope cinematography and Waldo de los Rios's moodily effective score. Manuel Berenguer's (King of Kings, 1964's The Thin Red Line) camera backwardly tracks through the school from room-to-room a la Stanley Kubrick, and the superb lighting exemplify the obvious care that went into the production.

Maneater of Hydra looks awful. Filmed in Techniscope, it's bad enough that the film is panned-and-scanned and that the transfer probably dates back to the early-1980s. Worse, it's derived from a battered 16mm television print complete with splices, a few jumps, and distracting reel change cues. The image is soft and murky with terrible contrast. In one daytime scene, several of the characters are wearing white shirts, which are so "hot" that they shimmer like the Planet Krypton wardrobe in Superman (1978). Particularly bad is a videotape "tracking" issue throughout the picture at the bottom of the frame. At least the nearly 88-minute film seems complete or nearly so; it even includes the original European exit music, running about a minute-and-a-half.

The House That Screams seems to have originally aired on Movie Macabre in a panned-and-scanned version, but what's presented here is fully letterboxed, albeit not 16:9 enhanced. Where this transfer was located is anyone's guess: the titles are in Spanish (and bear the title La Residencia, not The House That Screamed) and in one scene a letter, likewise in Spanish, is translated via subtitles. The English-only audio is very poor, muddy and frequently distorted, and the letterboxed image is well below par as well, soft and fairly murky, though at least the original Franscope (2.35:1) screen shape is retained.

Running times for the film vary between 76 minutes (possibly the original U.S. theatrical version) and as long as 104 minutes. This cut runs 97 minutes but clearly is missing at least one full (and probably key) scene that presumably covers Theresa's first meeting with Luis. As it is, she finds him trapped in the vent then the next thing we learn they've been seeing one another for several weeks.

As with previous Movie Macabre releases, viewers have the option to watch the film all by itself, without Elvira's segments. Even so, the film still abruptly and artificially fades in and out where these segments would be. The mono audio on both films is below average. There are no subtitle or alternate audio options, and no Extra Features.

Elvira's Box of Horrors
$29.98
Plots:
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL: Vincent Price has one of his juiciest roles in this haunted-house thriller as millionaire playboy Frederick Loren, who invites five guests out to a genuine haunted house, offering them each $10,000 if they spend the night. Severed heads, a skeleton, an acid vat, ghostly screams, and a noose that creeps around on its own and strangles unsuspecting victims are just some of the treats in a film that has been spooking delighted audiences on late-night TV for decades.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: Seven people secluded in a Pennsylvania farmhouse face relentless attacks by reanimated corpses seeking to eat their flesh. The group, which includes a married couple and their daughter, a pair of young lovers, and an African-American man, try to keep their sanity as the living dead try endlessly to enter the house.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE: A boorish doctor who has devised a way to bring the dead back to life gets into a car accident and kills his beautiful fiancee; he takes her severed head back to the lab with him and keeps it alive in a tray of serum. She is unhappy with the situation and begs him to let her die, but he embarks upon a search for the perfect body for his amour, visiting strip clubs and streetwalkers and scouring the city. Meanwhile, the fiancee discovers that a side effect of her current status is telepathy, and she begins to communicate with the doctor's "mistake," which is held captive in a locked room off the lab. With the monster's help, the bodyless woman manages to save the life of the doctor's chosen victim and burn the lab down in the process.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS: Jonathan Haze stars as clumsy assistant florist Seymour, who saves his job in Mr. Mushnik's skid-row flower shop when he brings in a unique man-eating plant. The problem is, it's a very hungry plant; every night it opens its huge jaws and demands to be fed, forcing poor Seymour to take to the street in search of victims, lest he disappoint his boss and his adoring girlfriend, Audrey (Jackie Joseph).

CARNIVAL OF SOULS: Made in 1962 in Lawrence, Kansas for very little money, Harvey's CARNIVAL OF SOULS has become legendary for it's ability to create a tensely creepy atmosphere with virtually no special effects. A young woman (Hilligoss) is involved in a car crash when her car falls off a bridge while drag racing with some friends. After she pulls herself from the river, she moves to a new town to take a job as a church organist. Meanwhile, a distinctly eerie and hollow-faced man in a black suit seems to be following her wherever she goes. The effective organ score enhances the film to great effect.

DEMENTIA 13: Francis Ford Coppola's directorial debut, produced by horror king Roger Corman, is a terror-filled tale of family ties chopped to pieces. Set in a spooky Irish castle, DEMENTIA 13 begins as the Haloran family gathers to memorialize the death of the youngest sister, Kathleen. While various family members plot and connive, an ax murderer is terrorizing the grounds, and Kathleen's body shows up at just the wrong time. Slowly, the family members become increasingly suspicious of each other--as well as of the ghosts that haunt the castle. But when the sinister family doctor is called in to help with the mystery, the expertly planned Coppola chills really take hold.

This is great to have if you are a Elvira fan. Fun, corny, bad jokes,and B-movies.