For most Halloween heads, the calendar swipe to October 1 is a celebratory day that brings skeleton yard ornaments and whispered Pumpkin Spice Latte orders. But for Cassandra Peterson — better known as Elvira — the month of the macabre is a little more complicated than that. On this particular October 1, the 74-year-old has emerged from her enclave in Los Angeles to promote her latest project, Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell. Having swapped her jet-black wig for her lesser-seen auburn waves, Peterson is now poking around the crevices of Halloween Adventure NYC, the costume shop that haunts the East Village year-round. She runs her hand along a rack of eroticized cartoon ensembles: Sexy Tinkerbell, Sexy Cookie Monster, Sexy Knockoff Princess Peach. What we’re really looking for, though, is a wearable version of her. “The Elvira costume cumulatively has been the No. 1 best-selling female costume in America,” Peterson estimates, as if she were a contestant on Shark Tank. “And my costume is here somewhere, damnit!”
We’ve actually walked right past it — the store owner, who’s operated the place for 40-odd years, was so excited about her arrival that he brought every Elvira wig and costume he had in stock to the front lobby display. His fandom is very much warranted: The Mistress of the Dark has stretched her run as the witchy man-eater like a spider’s web, spanning two films, the long-running variety series Elvira’s Movie Macabre, a memoir, and now, a cookbook with recipes like Guaca-Morbid and Bloody Hell Mary. Elvira has been the labor of Peterson’s life; she’s still hustling to enshrine her legacy as the queen of Halloween. And despite the fun façade, playing Elvira is grueling physical work: She’s a wisecracking, tata-twirling temptress — or, as she pouts in the 1988 film Mistress of the Dark, “the gal who put the boob back in boob tube.”
