Elvira

Television horror film hostess Elvira will be sworn in as honorary mayor of West Hollywood for the Halloween weekend. Actress Cassandra Peterson, who plays the Elvira role, will be given a key to the city in a ceremony starting at 7 p.m. Monday at the City Council chambers, 8611 Santa Monica Blvd.

Ted Dougherty is an unassuming Glendale paralegal and classical musician with an overt dark side that reaches its monstrous zenith every October. Dougherty stumbled upon his twisted passion in 1987 during a visit to Knott's Scary Farm, which ultimately led to a fan website dedicated to the seasonal theme park event, an annual job as an undead werewolf and now a new book, "Knott's Halloween Haunt: A Picture History. " > Photos: The history of Halloween Haunt at Knott's Berry Farm The authorized but unofficial pictorial compendium traces the history of the "Scariest Place on Earth" and its expansion over the past four decades at Knott's Berry Farm into the "Granddaddy of Halloween Events.

With Halloween looming, horror hostess Elvira (a.k.a. Cassandra Peterson) is profitably haunting the airwaves in a Coors commercial, TV appearances, radio specials, et al. Although her syndicated TV show, "Movie Macabre," is no longer aired on KHJ Channel 9, where it originated, it's in about 72 other cities and destined for Australia. And there are a glut of other Elvira enterprises in the works. Meanwhile, former local TV personality Vampira (a.k.a.

EVENTS Fanboys and -girls will unite at the inaugural Comikaze Expo, a two-day celebration of pop culture, comic books, sci-fi, horror, anime and gaming. Comics icon Stan Lee and horror diva Elvira are set to open the event, which also offers screenings, panels, portfolio reviews, games and a masquerade ball. Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St., L.A. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun. $12 per day, $20 for two-day pass. http://www.comikazeexpo.com

EVENTS Fanboys and -girls will unite at the inaugural Comikaze Expo, a two-day celebration of pop culture, comic books, sci-fi, horror, anime and gaming. Comics icon Stan Lee and horror diva Elvira are set to open the event, which also offers screenings, panels, portfolio reviews, games and a masquerade ball. Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St., L.A. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sun. $12 per day, $20 for two-day pass. http://www.comikazeexpo.com

Let's face it, with Accolade/Horror Soft's new "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" you pretty much know before you start what you're in for: every horror movie convention since Igor first hooked up the electricity, plus the wise-cracking midnight movie madame. Art, as Elvira might say, this ain't. But what do you want for 60 bucks? Stephen King? If only for its self-mocking tone, "Elvira" is a canine tooth ahead of plenty of other role-playing fantasy games. But, like Elvira herself, this British-produced fright night has a couple of worth while points.

Regarding the Elvira photo above the letter about Vampira and King Charles II: Poor Vampira! Yet again, the shame, indignity and ignominy of being interchangeable with Elvira. JEFF MAYERS Reseda

Regarding Christine Ziaya's Outtakes article about Elvira and Vampira (Oct. 25), I must say that Maila Nurmi (a.k.a. Vampira) is totally insane if she expects us to believe that Elvira in any way, shape or form ripped off her character. Elvira is nothing short of a true American institution who deserves a lot better (to put it mildly) than what Nurmi is trying to give her. Wake up and smell the formaldehyde, Vampira! Elvira is here to stay and there isn't a thing you can do about it!

Regarding "The Watchdog Is on the Case," by Donald Liebenson (Dec. 4): Tim Lucas has some kind of nerve getting on Rhino Home Video's case because it released videos of horror movies with a lot of commentary by the lovely and talented Elvira. Can't he see that the Mistress of the Dark is the main reason people buy these videos? As far as I'm concerned, Elvira can talk through the entire movie and I'd love every second of it! Will this senseless Elvira-bashing ever end? ROGER HURST Glendale

The alleged pirating of Vampira's persona by Elvira is more than an issue of makeup (Outtakes item by Pat H. Broeske, Oct. 2). The TV studio props used by Elvira (Cassandra Petersen)--the candelabra, the Victorian-style sofa--these are the same things that Vampira (Maila Nurmi) used on television in 1954. Vampira opened her show by slinking through a mist-filled hallway. Now who else do we know who does that? What about the cleavage? The V-cut dress Vampira wore in 1954, Elvira has that, and she added a slit up the dress to expose her right leg. (I'm not complaining.

TIJUANA -- This city of broken immigrant dreams has rarely seen the likes of Elvira Arellano, the tough-talking deportee from Chicago. And rarely has Tijuana welcomed a deported immigrant the way it has embraced Arellano this week. Since Arellano was arrested in Los Angeles and returned to Mexico she's engaged in a whirlwind of public appearances where she's been heralded as a hero for defying U.S. authorities by taking sanctuary in a church.

Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who became a symbol in the nation's immigration wars after she took sanctuary in a Chicago church last year, was arrested Sunday by federal immigration agents outside Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Los Angeles. Arellano, 32, a single mother, moved into a Chicago church a year ago to prevent being separated from her 8-year-old U.S.-born son.

Home life for Cassandra Peterson is more "Leave It to Beaver" than "The Addams Family" since she sold her Los Feliz house to Brad Pitt a few years ago and moved next door. "We went Elvira-crazy in our old home," she said, referring to her role as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, star of the new gothic-horror comedy film "Elvira's Haunted Hills." Elvira products and memorabilia filled the Craftsman-style house Pitt bought in 1994.

Elvira A. Manning, a homemaker, nanny and longtime Ventura County resident, died Sunday at a convalescent home in Ojai. She was 90. She was born Dec. 5, 1910, in Nebraska, one of 15 children of Charles and Effie Cryder. In 1922, she and her family moved to Ventura County. In addition to caring for her own three children and later her grandchildren, Manning was a professional nanny in the Ventura and Oxnard areas.

A supernatural, quicksilver version of Carole Lombard, this is one ghost who can haunt the Greater Los Angeles area all she likes. Audiences will be the happier for it. The ghost--well, technically, the actress playing the ghost--is Kaitlin Hopkins, and at present she is proving herself an excellent Elvira, the "morally untidy" shade of novelist Charles Condomine's first wife, in the Pasadena Playhouse revival of Noel Coward's endlessly revisited "Blithe Spirit." It's not a memorable production.

So here I am, decorating the frontyard for Halloween, wishing I had a muse, a Halloween muse, a willowy someone in a diaphanous gown to inspire me to do great and wondrous work. Instead, there are only skeptics. Doubters. The anti-Muse. "Dad?" "Huh?" "Are you awake?" "No." I am lying here in the yard, taking a break on the freshly mowed lawn. The grass is cool now, just right for sleeping. Winter is coming up through the ground and into my shoulders. My neck. My bones.

Los Angeles' own Cassandra Peterson will co-write and star in the first movie to be made by NBC's new movie-production unit. Tentatively entitled "Elvira," the name of Peterson's campy vampire character, the film is being described as a "supernatural comedy." Michael Nesmith's Pacific Arts Pictures will distribute the NBC-made movie.

To fans, she is a voluptuous, vampy vixen who sweeps into Halloween in high heels, hellbent on fun. But to us fashion freaks from the dark side of designerville, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, is one glammed-up gothic goddess. You go, ghoul! Tattooed and too cool for words, Elvira--who appears at Knott's Scary Farm this weekend--knows how to work every detail of her wicked wardrobe, every strand of her jiffy-popped hair and every atomic inch of her exposed skin.

Playwright Howard Burman takes a nasty tumble off the current theatrical season's Puccini bandwagon with "The Puccini Project" at CalRep. Based on an actual incident, the play concerns a scandal involving Puccini (Patric Taylor), his jealous wife Elvira (Katie Johnson) and Doria (April Hall), a young serving girl who's dismissed and publicly humiliated by Elvira, who accuses her of having an affair with Puccini.