EJ Moreno chats with the ‘Martha Stewart of the Macabre’, Elvira…
If you love the horror genre, you know the key part Cassandra Peterson has played in it. From a horror-loving host to the multi-talented icon we know today, Peterson took her buxom role of Elvira and made her a household name.
Now, we see Elvira invade our homes once again, but this time she’s heading straight for your kitchen. In the recently released book, Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell: Sexy, Spooky Soirées and Celebrations for Every Occasion, Peterson cooks up some spooky treats and year-round haunts that will bewitch horror fans and goths all over.
During our interview, Peterson opens up about the decades-long journey to release this book, as well as the origins of her love for the macabre. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of Vincent Price shoutouts during our chats. Check out the interview below…
Cassandra, I’m so excited to speak with you. This has been a long-standing goal of mine: to sit down and chat with you. I just saw Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and I always forget you’re in that movie. Your little cameo always surprises me. Tell me about working in the industry for so long and still finding new ways to stay fresh.
Well, thank you. I was just talking about that in my last interview, but I have a really great career where I get to do so many different things. I never get bored with it. It’s not just like an actor choosing this movie and then choosing the next movie. I get to write. I get to perform live. I get to record albums, appear on television, and be in film. I don’t know, just so many diverse things that it really makes my career very interesting and never boring for myself and always, always thinking of new and crazy things to come up with, you know.
So people say, Why don’t you retire? You’re like 100 years old. And I’m like, what would I do? I have fun doing this stuff.
I love that you said keep yourself from being bored. That’s important as well, because creators often feel like they get a little stagnant. We’re like, ‘ What else can I do? ‘ And like, you know, you said you’ve done movies, TV shows, and now you have a cookbook: Elvira’s Cookbook From Fell. Tell me about that. What inspired this idea to come to your kitchen?
When I hosted ‘Movie Macabre,’ my first television show, which I did for years, as a horror host, we used to do little segments. One of them was called ‘Cooking with Elvira.’ Mostly, the recipes were fake; mostly, it was stuff you really couldn’t eat. Like, you know, pork tartar that you leave in the trunk of your car overnight, things like that. Oh, and hollow weenies, which I would use a big power drill to drill a weenie and then fill it with cheese whiz. But I started kind of calling myself the Martha Stewart of the macabre.
And then I came up with this idea, which was probably three decades ago, saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to make a cookbook, more than a cookbook, like a lifestyle book?’ You know, teach people how to decorate the table, how to do the place settings, how to do floral arrangements, and all of that for a fun goth get together, whether it’s like a movie night, a formal dinner, or a picnic. I always wanted to do it.
And I have, over the years, taken it to publishers over and over again. And they just saw it as another Halloween cookbook, of which there are many, many. And I said, this is a whole different thing. It’s like the goth lifestyle. This is a 365-day-a-year book, not on Halloween. Yes, of course, Halloween would be great for this. But it’s for the goth crowd that’s out there that people rarely, maybe don’t see as much as I do. I see it every day.
So I just kept pushing and pushing until I finally got it done. And I had a fantastic team of people who worked with me. Damn, I tell you, making a cookbook is hard.
Is there a recipe in the book that you think sums up Cassandra? And do you think one that sums up Elvira? Is there any Cassandra in the book? Or is it just full Elvira madness in there?
Well, there, it’s funny, there is one that that I think of, it’s a little bit from my childhood, believe it or not. And that is the Adraka Kozorol, which I featured in my movie; that was the name of it in the film.
In the film, I’m taking magic potions from a shelf, I’m putting them all together into a casserole, and then bubbling it. And it looks, as I say in the movie, like cockadoodoo at the end. So I do what my mother did with almost everything we ate. And that is crunch up potato chips, I sit on them, which really works great. And then put cheese on top. That’s how my mom would get us to eat things at dinner. It’s essentially a green bean casserole, which we always had at Thanksgiving when I was a kid. Except I didn’t put in Campbell’s cream mushroom soup; I just covered it with these little potato chips and cheese. It certainly harkens back to Cassandra’s childhood. I’ll tell you that.
I love hearing that. I mean, I’ve always been so curious. Your love of horror and the macabre is so apparent. When did that start for you? Is there an early horror memory you have that led you down this path?
Oh, absolutely. That was when my cousin, when I was between second and third grades, took me to see House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. And I’d never even heard of or known there were horror movies, and suddenly I find myself in the theater watching this. At the time, it was incredibly scary. Now, you look back and it’s kind of funny in a way, but I was just obsessed with that movie. After I saw it, I was both frightened to death and couldn’t take my eyes off of it, like a car wreck or something.
And all I wanted to do was see more of those movies, the old Roger Corman or AIP [American International Pictures] films. Usually starring Vincent Price, and very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe. I mean, oh my god, those movies changed my life. I really got into horror. Instead of Barbies, I wanted my parents to buy me little model kits of Frankenstein and Dracula for my birthday, which I painted.
It happened like a lightning bolt in a minute. Vincent Price became my new hero. And I’m so happy to say I later met him and became friends with him, which was that kind of a dream come tru- a nightmare come true, I guess.
I love hearing that William Castle films are an inspiration, because you know, he loved a good gimmick, as do you. However, I love that this book doesn’t feel like a gimmick; it feels like you really wanted to create a cookbook. You know, like you said, like a lifestyle book. Not just looking at the hurdles, but what was some of the most fun you had whipping this together? Were you forcing people to taste-test whatever recipes you’re cooking up?
Yes, I had a great team of people. Oh, my goodness, I had the pleasure of working with Kim Laidlaw, who contributed to the Rocky Horror Cookbook, as well as Leslie Jonath, who has worked on many cookbooks, and a wonderful photographer, Eva Kalenko. They were fabulous. It’s a huge team of people… you can’t imagine the work that goes into a cookbook. I’m going to say it again.
Someone just told me to read Julia Child’s autobiography sometime because they said it captures years and years and years and years of work. Now, this wasn’t that many years, but it was about three years of work. And it took a team of people, including flying to different cities, conducting photo shoots, test-tasting, creating the recipe, tweaking it, deciding which ones to include in the book, and which ones were too difficult. We had this fabulous recipe for corn ribs, but you honestly needed a chainsaw to cut the damn corn. So it was like, don’t want anybody to lose a finger, you know, so we put the kibosh on that. But it was fun.
I loved working with these people and getting to create the little sets that we had where we shot all the photos. And it was just a fun time. It was a wonderful group of women and a couple prop guys. We had a blast doing it. And we spent so much time on Zoom, but then a lot of time together in various cities, because everybody lived all over the country.
So I have one last question for you. If you could cook dinner for one other horror icon, it could be Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, Jamie Lee Curtis, or anyone else; who would it be? And what would you serve from this book for this dinner party?
Okay, well, I already blew it, but it would be Vincent Price. I just adored and loved him. He was the funniest guy I’ve ever met. He was hilarious. I always told him he should have been a comedian instead of an actor.
Spooky people are so good at funny that it’s such an underrated thing. Just look at someone like Jordan Peele nowadays. The worlds are so close sometimes.
They really are. Look at something like What We Do In The Shadows. I mean, that is just so good. But yeah, it would be Vincent Price, and okay, this was a recipe we considered including in the book. But in the end, we decided not to. It’s a recipe Vincent taught me to make. And it was cooking fish in the dishwasher.
That is the most classic, like, you know, 50s 60s housewife recipe I could ever imagine
Isn’t that crazy? And it comes out fantastic. So steamed, so flaky. You put all the herbs, some lemon, and olive oil on a fish, then wrap it up really, really tight in aluminum foil. Put it in the dishwasher on like the high, the sanitary setting. I don’t think they even had the sanitary setting back then when he taught me this. But then you can wash your dishes from the last dinner and have your dinner prepared at the same time.
I’m upset that it’s not in the book, but I’m so happy you shared that with me, because, my goodness, that is exactly the madness I expected from this.
Thank you so much to Cassandra Peterson for speaking with us. Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell: Sexy, Spooky Soirées and Celebrations for Every Occasion is now available.
