In the late-19^th Century, we find Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) as much in love with the idea of being a showgirl as she was in the original Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988). But given that Las Vegas doesn’t exist yet, she is on her way to Paris to be a can-can dancer. Elvira and her maid, Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith) take a detour through the Carpathians (naturally), where they wind up at the castle of Lord Vladimere Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien). It transpires that Elvira is the spitting image of Lord Hellsubus’s deceased first wife, and all kinds of scheming and counter-plotting begins on the part of the various factions in the spooky old castle.

This plot is, of course, little more than a means to the film’s real end: an endless parade of double-entendres and slapstick that would be considered dated and cheesy by Benny Hill. Naturally, not a single opportunity for a boob joke is passed up. Now, the gags are knowingly dated and cheesy, but that still doesn’t make them that funny. Elvira herself is rather difficult to warm up to this time around (being up against stuffy neighbours made her more sympathetic in the original). Here, she is a bit of the Bud Abbott to Zou Zou’s Lou Costello, but Abbott was never the centre of that comedy team’s films. The direction is rather pedestrian, too, never really building a good head of comic steam, and the film is rather dull to look at, despite its sets.