John Paragon – Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! This Thursday, I will be reviewing the unaired pilot for The Elvira Show, which was produced in 1993. The show can be found on YouTube!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Peter Bonerz, never aired)

Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark (Cassandra Peterson), is living in the small town of Manhattan, Kansas. She lives with her eccentric aunt Minerva (Katherine Helmond) and their black cat, Renfield (voice of John Paragon). Renfield can speak, but only witches like Elvira and Minerva can hear him. Renfield has a sarcastic personality, as all cats do. Elvira makes her living by telling fortunes and selling love potions. No one in the small town ever seems to notice anything strange about her, despite the fact that she’s… well, she’s Elvira. She’s the Mistress of the Dark. She’s also very funny. Though this pilot never even aired, it’s a wonderful showcase for Peterson’s comedic timing. She’s one of those performers who can make even a weak or predictable joke funny.

Over the course of the pilot, Elvira’s niece Paige (Phoebe Augustine, who later had a small but pivotal role on Twin Peaks) shows up on her doorstep and explains that she’s been sent to live with Aunt Elvira and Great-Aunt Minerva. At first, Elvira and Minerva worry that Paige appears to be “normal.” She says that she likes to clean and study. But when Paige overhears Renfield talking, they realize she’s a witch as well. They’re definitely going to need Paige’s powers because Elvira has accidentally cast a spell on an undercover police officer and now the rest of the cops are coming. “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!” Minerva shouts, just because she’s always wanted to say it.

The show, with its talking cat and its two eccentric aunts, definitely brought to mind Sabrina the Teenage Witch, which would go into production three years after the Elvira pilot was filmed. That said, the presence of Elvira and her unapologetic way with a double entendre definitely gave this pilot a feel of its own. It was a good pilot, even if it seemed like the frantic pace would be difficult to maintain over an entire season. I’m surprised it didn’t lead to a series.

The pilot may not have led to a television series, but it’s now on YouTube for everyone to watch and enjoy.

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

President Skroob (Mel Brooks), the evil and incompetent leader of Planet Spaceball, has squandered all of the air on his planet and is planning on stealing the atmosphere of the planet Druida. To pull this off, he arranges for the idiotic Prince Valium (Jim J. Bullock) to marry Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), the princess of Druida. (All together now: “She doesn’t look Druish.”) Vespa and her droid, Dot Matrix (voice by Joan Rivers), flee Druida with Lord Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) in pursuit.

In debt to the intergalactic gangster, Pizza the Hut (voiced by Dom DeLuise), a mercenary named Lone Star (Bill Pullman) and his associate, the man-dog hypbrid Barf (John Candy), accept a contract from Vespa’s father (Dick Van Patten) to track down his daughter. They take off in their space Winnebago to bring Vespa home. Though they start only interested in money, Lone Star and Barf come to learn about love, freedom, and a mystical power known as the Schwartz. (“No, the Schwartz!”)

Back when I was growing up and just being able to have HBO made you the coolest guy on the block, Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies. I watched it every time that it came on cable. As usual with Mel Brooks, there were a lot of double entendres that went over my young head but there was also enough goofy humor that I could laugh at what was going on. I could quote all the lines. I laughed whenever Rick Moranis showed up in his Darth Vader-costume. I laughed at John Candy’s facial expressions. I laughed when Mel Brooks showed up as Yogurt, the Spaceballs version of Yoda. Pizza the Hut? That’s hilarious when you’re a kid!

I recently rewatched the film. Revisiting it was a lesson in how your memory can trick you. I could still quote most of the lines with reasonable accuracy but nothing was quite the way I remembered it. Rick Moranis and John Candy were still hilarious and, being older, I could better appreciated the frustration felt by George Wyner’s Colonel Sandurz. I also realized what a good performance Bill Pullman gave as Lone Star. While everyone else mugged for the camera, Pullman played his role straight.

I also discovered that a lot of the scenes that I remembered as being hilarious were actually just mildly amusing. Mel Brooks was always hit-and-miss as a director, the type who would toss everything and the kitchen sink into his films. Spaceballs has a lot of hilarious scenes but it’s obvious that Brooks didn’t have the same affection for the source material as he did with Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles or even High Anxiety. Brooks is poking fun at Star Wars because it’s popular but he doesn’t seem to have any strong feelings, one way or the other, about George Lucas’s space epic.

I still laughed, though. Even if Spaceballs wasn’t the masterpiece that I remembered it being, I still enjoyed rewatching it. The jokes that hit were funny enough to make up for the ones that missed. Even with his weaker films, Mel Brooks is a national treasure.