Cassandra Peterson is not necessarily an actress whose name is known by the masses, but when you tell them the name of her alter ego, then suddenly they’re all agog. This is because Peterson is better known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, the horror host who has, at various points during her career, been the woman behind Elvira’s Movie Macabre, Elvira’s Thriller Theater, Elvira’s Midnight Madness… You get the idea. She also starred in two feature-length motion pictures – Elvira: Mistress of the Dark and Elvira’s Haunted Hills – and has guest-starred in this guise on more TV series, TV specials, and films than we could possibly catalog. 

At the moment, Peterson is in the midst of promoting her new cookbook, entitled – what else? – Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell, and in her conversation with Decider, she discussed this latest endeavor, talked about the future of Elvira and whether or not you’ll be seeing her in that famous wig and bosomy attire again anytime soon, her friendships with Paul Reubens, Phil Hartman, and Cheech Marin, and her favorite acting gig where she wasn’t playing Elvira.

DECIDER: What made you decide to do a cookbook? Was it your idea, or did someone suggest it to you?

CASSANDRA PETERSON: Oh, it was my idea. I’ve actually wanted to do a cookbook since even before I did my memoir (Yours Cruelly, Elvira)! But I couldn’t talk anyone into letting me do it at the time.  I couldn’t get a bite from a publisher. They just weren’t having it. Even when I finally did sell it this time, it was a real hassle trying to get them talked into it. They go, “There’s a million Halloween cookbooks!” And I said, “Yeah, but this isn’t Halloween-specific. And it’s also for adults only. It’s not a kid-based book.” And there are a million of those out there. But, yeah, it was my idea, and…there you go!

Well, I can tell just from looking at your Instagram feed that you clearly do actually cook. 

I do cook, yeah! I like cooking. I enjoy it. I just cooked a giant dinner the other night for a bunch of friends for my birthday. 

And happy belated birthday, by the way.

Thank you so much! Yeah, it was fun. 

So how many of the recipes did you actually have on hand, and how many did you hunt up and adapt to match the format?

I had quite a few that I’d been collecting over the years when I’d seen them here and there. I have a little book that I bought… Oh, my God, I think it was published in the ’60s or something! But it had all these old Halloween recipes, all of which we adapted and changed. You know, you can’t just grab somebody’s recipe and use it! I had another little pamphlet that was sent out to all the press when I did Mistress of the Dark, and it was kind of a joke cookbook. Y’know, like, finger sandwiches with real fingers. It was, like, “Put two fingers between buns and you’ve got finger sandwiches, which can also be called a felony in some states.” [Laughs.] So it was a little joke cookbook, but I adapted some of the things in there. And then I worked with a whole team of people, and we researched the internet and magazines and whatever, and we saw recipes that we thought would work with Elvira, and then we kind of tweaked them and changed them up. So that’s how they all came about. We tried a lot of them that didn’t really work great, that didn’t taste great, or were too hard to make. There was an awesome corn one that was, like, ribs made out of corn, but you needed a friggin’ chainsaw to cut a corncob down the middle, so we just gave up on that. People would amputate their fingers. Oh, but then they could use them for the finger sandwiches! 

There you go.

We should’ve had that! [Laughs.]

Do you have any particular favorites from the cookbook? Maybe a favorite dish and a favorite beverage?

Well, yeah, definitely my favorite food from there is the “Adraka Kozarole,” which is a recipe that I supposedly did in my movie, Mistress of the Dark, and people love it because it turned out to be a spell that made people horny. [Laughs.] But it’s actually just from my childhood. It’s kind of a green bean casserole that one of my aunts used to make for Thanksgiving, but it has a thing that my mother did with everything, which is to top it with crumbled-up potato chips and Cheez Whiz. That was my mom’s specialty. She put that one everything. And I have a special way of crunching up the potato chips, which is to put the bag on a chair and then sit on it until they’re crunched up. So that’s important. So that’s kind of dear to my heart, because it’s kind of from my childhood, in a way. 

My favorite drink is… Oh, I’m blanking on the name, but it’s my favorite drink. Argh! Why can’t I remember it?! I’m 74, I can’t remember anything. 

If you tell me the ingredients, I’m sure I can find it.

It’s beer, tomato juice, and lime juice. It’s called a… What’s it called? Oh, it’s a michelada! It’s fantastic, with a ton of lime and then with Tajin, which is that spicy salt. I need to bookmark these things, because people keep quizzing me on this stuff, and I’m, like, “Dammit, I can’t remember all this! I can’t remember what I did last night!” 

I was just going to observe that I think the one I found most intriguing – and the one that would be perfect, not to mention easy to make, for a Halloween party – is the Toxic Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

Yeah! It really is. You add a little pureed spinach, and you’re ready to go! Oh, and you know one that you’d really, really love? And it’s easy to make. It’s the Green Slime Tatchos. You take tater tots, but you put guacamole and some sort of salsa on ’em, and they were so friggin’ good. When we were making all of the food, no one could stop eating them, and I’m not kidding. And they’re super easy! We tried to keep it so that everybody could easily make the things. I didn’t want to be Julia Child! [Laughs.] I love Julia Child, but I bought her book a million years ago, and I was, like, “I can’t make anything from this book! I don’t know how to do this stuff!” 

So we wanted it to be all levels of cooking ability, from really, really simple to a little more difficult, like for the wedding cake. I could never make that myself. I had to have somebody else make it. I’m not a baker. Baking is one thing I do not do! But like I said, we tried to make it so everybody could really make this stuff and not just go, “Oh, great, I have the recipes here, but I have no idea how to ever cook this stuff.” And we tried to make the ingredients things that you could get easily. There’s one ingredient that I think people are going to have a hard time finding, and that’s the… We have black squid ink pasta in one of the Pasta Spider Salad, and I don’t know, even when I went to get it not long ago and tried to make it, I couldn’t find that pasta anywhere! So there are a few things that might be hard to find, but not many!

I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the Paul Reubens documentary and your contributions to it. 

God, wasn’t that fantastic? 

It was. I will freely admit that I wept at a couple of points in there.

Me, too. At the very end, I was sobbing. I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying. When he’s flying? Oh, my God… And I was there from the very beginning, when he made [the Pee-Wee Herman] show at the Groundlings. It just stabbed me in the heart to see all this stuff. And now Lynne [Stewart], Miss Yvonne, is gone, and Jambi [John Paragon], who was my writing partner for 27 years, is gone, and Phil [Hartman], Captain Carl, is gone. They’re all gone! And nobody was that old! Paul was almost exactly a year behind me. So, man, it was very… Just the whole thing killed me. I thought the director did an amazing job on that movie, don’t you?

I do. 100%. 

And even I learned stuff about Paul that I didn’t know. Honest to God. There were a few things where I’m, like, “What?” I thought I knew everything there was to know about Paul. I really did. But there were a few things where I was, like, “In all my years with him, I never heard about that!” And I knew his mom and dad, I knew his sister…and his brother! He has a brother, but…the brother wasn’t mentioned in the documentary. Very odd. But anyway, I really thought I knew everything, but there were surprises for me. I’m glad you liked it!

[Writer’s note: Just about every article about Luke Rubenfeld, Paul’s brother, seems to be AI slop, but there are a few unquestioned facts. Born in 1958, Luke is the youngest of Paul’s two siblings, and he is a canine professional. Indeed, he’s actually credited as such on Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure., and per a 1987 interview with Milton Rubenfeld, a.k.a. his dad, Luke trained Doberman pinschers, preparing them for what he described as “a black belt in karate for dogs.” Luke had a run-in with the law in 2001 when he was accused of stealing a laptop computer while living in Sarasota, Florida, and he was apparently still living there in 2012, as that’s when Paul filed a lawsuit against him, but the case was disposed a few days later and the specifics have never been reported officially. Still, it’s enough to hint at a possible reason for his absence from the documentary.]

Do you have a favorite Phil Hartman story?

Oh, my God, I have so many great stories with Phil. Yeah, probably my favorite is… Well, you know, he and I were in The Groundlings, and we were both single, and we were doing a play together that we wrote, along with a couple of other Groundlings, called “Waco.” And Phil and I played boyfriend and girlfriend in the play, and I was, like, a dorky Southern girl that lived with my mom and dad, and he was this hot city slicker who was also smuggling drugs. Anyway, every night in the play we had to do a big romantic kiss, and finally when the play got over, we go, “Maybe we should go out on a date and see what happens!” So we went on a date, and when it was done, he walked me to my car. It was in the back alley of the Groundlings theater… God, I remember this like it was yesterday! But we started to kiss goodbye…and we both started laughing. [Laughs.] And you know how you start laughing and you just cannot stop laughing? And then we started trying to kiss again, and we started laughing again. And that went on and on until we finally said, “We have to give up!” It was too much like dating my brother or something. I just knew Phil too much and for too long as friends, and…it was creepy! 

Another one… Phil always came to my Christmas parties, and I still have people who write to me about them. Phil would sing Christmas carols. He’d always lead everybody in Christmas carols while somebody would play the piano. And people still say, “My God, I met Phil at one of your Christmas parties, and he was the most kind, down-to-earth, amazing person I’ve ever met. I mean, I felt like I was his best friend!” And that’s how Phil made you feel when he met everybody. A friend of mine who’s a teacher just wrote to me and said, “I remember meeting Phil. I had met him one time briefly at the Groundlings, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘Hey, Alan, how’s your teaching going?’ He was just one of the millions of people he met, and he still remembered him! So that’s the kind of guy he was. He was an amazing guy. That was a horrible, horrible loss. 

I’ve heard Conan O’Brien talk about how when they both worked at Saturday Night Live, and Phil would walk by the writers’ offices and go, ‘Hiya, fellas!’ And they’d go, ‘Hi, Phil!’ And he’d say, ‘Keep ’em flying, boys. Keep ’em flying!'”

[Laughs.] Yeah, that was his character. He was just awesome. An awesome freaking guy. Everybody will tell you that.

I’m curious what it was like for you to actually get to meet and kind of know Vincent Price.

Oh, well, first of all, it was like a dream come true – or a nightmare, maybe! I mean, I had worshipped him when I was a kid, and…you know how, when you’re a kid, these actors feel like they’re bigger than life, like they’re not even on the same planet. So finally getting to meet him… And he’s on my show! That’s how I met him. He came on my show, which was just such a rinky-dink little production. But he agreed to come on! And we didn’t pay any money. But he agreed to come on anyway, and…I could barely talk that day. I could barely breathe! I had a couple of lines with him, and I was having such a hard time getting them out. I was just… [Stammering.] “It’s Vincent Price!” And he could not have been kinder, sweeter, more generous, or funnier. I always said he should’ve been a comedian. I told him that a million times, because he was one of the funniest damned guys I ever met. And he taught me how to make fish in the dishwasher!

That’s…nice. Now there’s a recipe that should be in the book!

I know! You know ,we thought about it, but…it kind of wasn’t that Halloween-looking. Although your dishwasher would be, after you’re done. 

[In case you’re curious, you’re in luck: Price also showed Johnny Carson how to make it.]

When I interviewed you many years back, I remember that I referred to you as having worked with everyone from Fellini to Cheech and Chong, which – crazily enough – is actually true. But I noticed that you continued to work with Cheech Marin in several other projects, including Echo Park and even an episode of Nash Bridges.

Yeah, I was good friends with Cheech for a long time. Unfortunately, we’ve lost contact. You know what happens when… Well, I was friends with him and his wife Patti [Heid], and you know what happens when a divorce happens. And Patti was such a good friend that I kind of went in the Patti direction, and I kind of lost contact with Cheech. But he and I were really good friends for a long time. He also put me in his music video, “Born in East L.A.” He really helped my career. He gave me one of my first acting jobs in L.A. in his movie, Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie. He gave me a little part in that. 

Paul Reubens is in that, too, isn’t he?

Yeah! Paul has a great part in it. A lot of Groundlings are. They populated the movies with Groundlings. Also, I was one of three girls who were playing Charlie’s Angels, and one of the girls was another one of the Groundlings – Catherine Bergstrom – but the other girl was Rita Wilson, who’s married to Tom Hanks! But we were all starting out then, so I really have to hand it to Cheech. And him putting me in that video for “Born in East L.A.,” I honest to God think that it cemented me with my Latino fanbase throughout my life. I have such a huge Latino fanbase, you wouldn’t believe it, and I always wonder if that’s it. I mean, maybe it’s my hair. [Laughs.] But, honestly, I think it was “Born in East L.A.”! So I owe a lot to him.

I know you did the Shudder special in 2021, but has there been any talk of you doing any more Elvira, either as a movie host or for a film or a special?

No, y’know, I am working on a film, but as far as Elvira goes, I’m not dressing up as the character anymore. I’ve hung up the dress. I mean, I love it, but it gets to a point where you go, “Hmmm, I don’t know if anybody wants to see Elvira being 90 years old,” y’know what I mean? [Laughs.] So I don’t dress up as the character anymore. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not working on a bunch of Elvira projects! Because I am. I think Elvira has crossed the threshold into being bigger than me. She’s in comic books, animation… I think she can do all of that stuff, and I don’t have to get out there in drag and do it!

I know I’m going to have to wrap up shortly, but you actually appeared – albeit very briefly – in one of my favorite indie films of the last few years: Shoplifters of the World. 

[Uncertainly.] What was it?

Shoplifters of the World. 

Shoplifters of the… [Pauses.] I did?!

Didn’t you? It’s not just a Wikipedia thing, it’s also on IMDb. Maybe it wasn’t called that when you did it?

Yeah, maybe… [Pauses again.] I’ve done a lot of things I don’t remember, believe me. So it’s not that you’re wrong, because it could be possible! People tell me all the time, “Oh, you were at this,” and I’m, like, “I was?!” I’ve had a very busy life! So I can’t remember it all.

[After going back to the tape, as it were, she definitely was in the movie, but it’s no wonder she doesn’t remember it: she plays a clerk at a vintage store who has all of one line, and although you hear her voice, the camera doesn’t actually show her face for more than a second. But it sounds like her, and she is indeed credited, so…it’s her.]

Well, in that case, I’ll close by asking a semi-related question: do you have a favorite non-Elvira acting performance?

Oh, there you go! Non-Elvira performance… They’re all pretty bad! [Laughs.]  Oh, you know what? I think my best performance, and one where I like the movie, is…pretty obscure. Peaches Christ directed it. It’s called All About Evil? Have you seen it?

I’m aware of it, but I haven’t seen it. I know it’s a horror movie.

Yeah, it’s definitely a horror movie. [Laughs.] But it’s kind of in the John Waters vein, if John Waters did horror. But I like it because I play the only completely normal person in the entire movie! It’s so funny: everyone else are these completely bizarre characters, and I’m this down-to-earth nice mom. But it’s a really good movie, and it stars Natasha Lyonne, and I… Oh, no, never mind. Spoiler alert. I was going to tell you what I do, but that’s the end, and…I don’t want to blow it! 

Elvira’s Cookbook from Hell (Grand Central Publishing) is now available in bookstores everywhere, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Take a look at Cassandra Peterson’s Instagram, as she may be coming to a city near you on her book tour.

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He also collaborated on Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!, a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)