Cassandra Peterson Tells Us What Elvira’s Got Cooking This Halloween

It’s been more than 40 years since Cassandra Peterson — a Manhattan, Kansas-born entertainer who went from underaged showgirl to singer to sketch comic with The Groundlings — developed the character of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Though Elvira was originally conceived to host horror movies on TV, she quickly outgrew Movie Macabre and became a fully fledged screen personality with appearances on talk shows, in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure with Peterson’s Groundlings friend Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens, and eventually in her own movie, 1988’s Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, which Peterson co-wrote with Sam Egan, and with her friend and former Groundling John Paragon. 

Over the decades, Elvira has proved to be nearly as immortal as the characters in the movies she hosted. She’s gone on to record multiple albums, headline the Halloween show at Knott’s Scary Farm and release several tie-in books and comics. Peterson made headlines with her 2021 autobiography, Yours Cruelly, Elvira, in which — among many other stories about her journey to fame — she revealed the romantic partner she’d kept secret for 19 years: a woman she called T.

Four years later, Peterson has a new book, in which she shares very different secrets. What cocktail could revive a corpse? What makes a salad sexy? And what’s actually in the Arkada Kozerole Elvira stumbles upon in Mistress of the Dark? Only Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell, out today, contains all these answers and more.

I spoke to Peterson last week about the recipes that turned out to be the most toothsome, whether “death-free” should replace “plant-based” when it comes to vegetarian dishes, the horror legend she still dreams of working with and much more. 

Have you always known what Elvira’s favorite dishes or flavors would be, or do her tastes just align with yours?

I just knew that they would all look creepy. That was the main thing. They had to have a certain vibe. It couldn’t just be mac and cheese: It had to be toxic green mac and cheese. So the important thing was that they look creepy — as well as taste delicious, of course.

Vincent Price taught you how to cook fish in a dishwasher. I didn’t see a recipe for that in the book, but did you consider it?

I absolutely considered it. That was one of the things that we were going to put in the cookbook, and the bad thing was, we finally decided that everything in the book really had to have a look, and there was really no way we could make the fish look that creepy when it was done. It’s a fantastic recipe. I mean, you basically just wrap the fish with lemon and herbs inside really, really tight aluminum foil and stick it in the dishwasher while you wash your dishes. You’ve got clean dishes, and dinner’s done. 

When the recipes were tested, were there any that were especially crowd-pleasing?

I’ll tell you, the one that everybody flipped out over was the totchos, and I don’t even know if that’s really a word in Mexican cuisine. First of all, who doesn’t like tater tots, right? And then they have a little salsa on top of them with an avocado sauce for dipping. Nobody could stop eating them. We ate the entire platter. I mean, after we shot it, of course — we heated it up again and everybody couldn’t stop eating it. So those were great for a crowd.

As a host or a guest, what element do you think is most important to make a dinner party a hit? 

The visuals. I mean, it’s got to taste good, too. You can’t just serve Lay’s potato chips. I used to call myself the Martha Stewart of the Macabre when I’d have dinner parties. I thought the flowers and the presentation was as important as the food. It almost makes a dinner that might be less than spectacular taste spectacular.

What skill level does a fan need to make the recipes in the book?

Oh, that’s one thing we gave a lot of thought to. We wanted a skill level that anybody could make it — people who were not cooks, not into the culinary arts. The most difficult thing, I think, would be the Till Death Do You Party wedding cake, which took up two pages of instructions. I’m not a baker. I’m going to tell you that right now. That, somebody else did. We came up with the look — and it’s delicious, I tasted it. I love eating baked goods, but not cooking them. 

So yeah, we try to get all skill levels in there, and like I said with the totchos, there are things that anybody can cook, and there are things that are really simple to make.

In recent years, “plant-based” has become the preferred marketing term for vegetarian foods, but after reading it in your table of contents, I think “death-free” deserves a chance.

Yeah. How do you like that? I think we can stick with that from now on, and it really worked for Elvira. I absolutely wanted to make sure that almost any of the recipes can be converted to a death-free recipe easily, because I’m mainly vegetarian, but I didn’t want to limit the book to only vegetarians, or I was afraid the audience for it would shrink.

When we saw Elvira cook in Mistress of the Dark, it didn’t go well for her, but it sounds like you’re a better cook than she is.

Well, it went pretty well for everybody else who ate it later at the picnic. 

Yeah, no, this is “Adraka Kozarole,” which I, of course, included in the book because everybody asked me for the recipe. Does it make you horny? I mean, maybe it will. I don’t know. If green beans make you horny, then it will, but it’s basically the green bean casserole that I had growing up as a child for Thanksgiving. The important part is that you top it with potato chips, which I like to sit on. 

My mom would make a casserole and then top it with crunched-up potato chips and Cheez Whiz — that’s kind of how my mom got us to eat food when we were young.

Do you find that new fans are relating to you in a different way since RuPaul’s Drag Race has made such a hit out of “How’s Your Head”? 

Well, I keep telling RuPaul, I’m going to make a T-shirt that says “Sashay Away” or something if he keeps that up. But I’m really happy that he got that out there and people now realize where it’s from, because Ru’s been very, very nice about telling people that the line actually came from me. He uses a lot of my lines from the movies. I really appreciate it, because it gets people to watch the film, and it’s brought Elvira more people, younger people, and, well, I can’t say “and gay people” because they were already there with me. It’s increased awareness of who Elvira is, so I’m very thankful to him for that.

I tease him with another thing. I was on his show one time, and while I was there, I broke my foot, and now when we write each other or run into each other, we say, “How’s your foot?” instead of “How’s your head?” It’s an inside joke between me and him.

You’re always asked about your favorite horror movies. What about horror comedies other than your own?

I love horror comedies, going back to An American Werewolf in London. I sadly watched it again a little more recently, and it didn’t really hold up. Special effects have just gone so far beyond where it was then that it didn’t hit. But that was a movie that I saw where a light kind of went on: what a great juxtaposition comedy can be in a horror movie. But now there are so many that really do it well. 

I don’t know if other people thought it was funny, but I laughed through the whole thing and loved The Substance. People kept giving me dirty looks. I thought it was hilarious and wonderful and had a real deep, dark sense of humor. So yeah, there are a lot of movies doing that — and TV, What We Do in the Shadows. I mean, oh my God, I love that. It’s just so damn funny.

You collaborated with original Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts on The Elvira Show back in the ‘90s. What do you remember about working with her?

Well, she was a showrunner. Basically, John Paragon and I wrote the show, and she would come in and just say, “No, you can’t have that.” So it was kind of a bummer. She was trying to get the show palatable for TV, and John and I were throwing everything out there that we could get away with, because one of Elvira’s trademark things is her risqué double-entendre humor. So, not to say anything bad about her, but because she was the go-between between CBS and ourselves, it was like, “Oh no. Here comes Anne.” Toward the end, John and I started throwing in really dirty lines. We knew, “Oh yeah, she’ll come in and she’ll hate that,” and we’d have to cut it.

You got quite a few in. “You can do it as much as you like as long as you don’t do it in public, or until you need glasses” has to be close to the line even if it’s officially about witchcraft.

I know. I watched it recently with some friends of mine. They hadn’t seen it before, and they said, “No wonder it didn’t go. This was pretty risqué.” And I agree. I didn’t realize how really pretty edgy it was for that time. I wish I could go back and do it now. It’d fit right in, but I’m a little too old for that, unfortunately.

You have hundreds of credits to your name. You’ve worked with some of the greats. Who is still on your wishlist that you haven’t worked with yet?

Stephen King. I love Stephen King. One of my favorite books on Earth is his book On Writing, which is sort of an autobiography, but man, he gave me the incentive to write my autobiography. I mean, I love his films, both horror and non-horror. Yeah, that would be a dream. I met him once a long, long time ago: me, Stephen King and Vincent Price were on Tom Snyder’s talk show together, and we had a great time, but that was the last time I ever saw him.

We also just saw you in Pee-wee As Himself earlier this year. The two of you had been friends and Groundlings colleagues for a long time. Were there any stories about him you wished the filmmakers had included that we didn’t see?

There were so many stories, I can’t tell you. I interviewed with them, and I’ve become very good friends with Matt Wolf, the director. I thought the movie was fantastic. I mean, I couldn’t have captured Pee-wee any better. I call him Pee-wee; Paul. But it was just amazing. I did that interview, it must have been five hours that I sat there and answered questions. And Paul said to me, “You can talk about anything you want.” And I did, and unfortunately, the movie was three hours long, so my comments got cut down to a minute or something. 

But God, Paul and I had so many stories and times together. Here’s one quick funny one: We were in New York together, and we had a limo, and we had several people with us, our PR people and our managers, and we were going to some event together. He was dressed as Pee-wee, I was dressed as Elvira. Everybody wanted to go out and party after the gig. And Paul and I were uncomfortable and tired, and we just wanted to go back to the hotel. So everybody hopped out. We dropped them off at a club, and Paul and I headed back to our hotel. The limo broke down. I mean, have you ever even heard of a limo breaking down? It broke down. And Paul and I sat there and sat there and sat there, and we were like, “When are we going to get another car?” And we were so tired, and Paul said, “Let’s just walk. Let’s get a cab.” And nobody would pick us up! I’m not kidding. We walked and walked. I took off my heels and was walking in my sad, shredded raggedy pantyhose down the streets of New York trying to get a cab, and no one would stop. I mean, do you blame them?

A few years ago you participated in The Search for the Next Elvira reality competition show. You’ve talked about there being a time someday when another performer might take over the role. Do you think that time is close, or have you changed your mind and you’re Elvira forever?

After doing The Search for the Next Elvira, I realized that it’s not going to work. We hired this girl to be the next Elvira and then tried to get her gigs. They just didn’t want to hire her. I’m afraid there’s too much of my personality in it, that’s just not going to translate. So I gave up on that dream. It doesn’t mean that some actress couldn’t play me in a biopic or something, but I don’t think she’s going to just put on the dress and go out there for appearances the rest of her life.

Halloween has been your busy time for over four decades. How do you keep the holiday fresh and fun for yourself, and not just a grind?

Well, I’m always doing something different. I never have a Halloween where I’m really doing the same thing. I was with Knott’s Scary Farm, doing live shows for years, but the show was completely different every year: it was new songs, it was new comedy material. So it was still interesting.

But every year I have something new. This year, I’m doing a mashup with Thirteenth Floor, with venues all over the country, doing pop-up stores, doing special little things in their mazes and all of that. So that’s a new, fresh thing. It’s never the same old Halloween twice.