Before Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, became a familiar face at Halloween events and horror conventions, Cassandra Peterson took her famously sharp-tongued horror hostess to the world of The Fall Guy. She appeared in two episodes of the 1980s action series, joining Lee Majors’ stuntman Colt Seavers in stories involving a whole world of spooky fall season fun.
The first episode she appeared in, simply titled “October the 31st,” aired on, appropriatly enough, October 31, 1984, giving the episode a genuine Halloween-night premiere. Peterson’s Elvira is starring in a horror TV special, with Colt and his crew handling the stunt work. The production heads to a gothic mansion after the owner’s wife arranges for the house to be used as a filming location. Her husband, Preston Deauville, played by horror veteran John Carradine, is furious about the intrusion and warns that the crew could uncover the property’s secrets.
Things get considerably stranger after Preston apparently dies of a heart attack. The crew continues encountering eerie disturbances, and the supposed ghost of the dead homeowner seems determined to drive everyone away. Elvira eventually leads a séance, only for the frightening events to point toward a much more earthly explanation. The mystery leads Colt and the others to discover that Preston was murdered by his identical twin brother, who was working with Preston’s wife.
Peterson later explained why she was pleased with the episode. In a newspaper interview published around its original broadcast, she recalled that her character had been toned down for her earlier appearance on CHiPs. She was happier with The Fall Guy because, as she put it, the writers built the story around Elvira while keeping her risqué humor in tact. The episode also featured a real-life Carradine family reunion of sorts, with David, Keith and Robert Carradine appearing alongside their father, John.
Elvira returned the following year in “October the 32nd,” which aired on December 7, 1985. Despite its Halloween-inspired title, this adventure takes Colt and the film crew to a storm-battered English castle. They are there to shoot a horror movie, and the producers offer a cash prize to anyone willing to spend the night in the supposedly haunted building.
The guests soon have more to worry about than the castle’s ghost stories. An escaped asylum inmate named Phillip Croyden is on the loose, and the night turns into a dangerous mystery as strange apparitions and threatening incidents leave the group wondering what is real and who is responsible. Doug McClure, known to genre fans for films such as The Land That Time Forgot, also appears in the episode.
The second story gives Colt another puzzle to work through, while Elvira brings her usual irreverent attitude to a situation that would have most horror-movie characters screaming for the nearest exit. The two episodes use different settings and mysteries, but both put Peterson’s horror hostess right in the middle of the action.
For viewers revisiting The Fall Guy, these episodes offer a snapshot of Elvira’s 1980s television presence, when the character could move from horror-hosting duties into a prime-time adventure without losing the wisecracks that made her stand out.
