Elvira returns! Mistress of the Dark hosting macabre movie marathon to celebrate 40 years of small screen chills

There’s probably a joke in here somewhere about looking this good when you’re 40, especially if all four of those decades have been spent on the screen. But when you’re dealing with the Mistress of the Dark, you just naturally assume she’s keeping a few sinister secrets. Either way, the one and only Elvira is plotting her return to TV this month with a new Shudder special — one that commemorates the hallowed horror host’s 40th anniversary of staging scares on the small screen.

Shudder will soon summon up a one-night movie marathon where our favorite camp horror queen will slink back into her familiar role as humor-haunted host. Elvira’s 40th Anniversary, Very Scary, Very Special is set to debut later this month at the AMC-owned creepy streamer, and our mistress of ceremonies is even emerging from the darkness a little early — all to deliver fans both old and new a chilling invitation they can’t refuse.

Check out the teaser:

If that felt like a blast from the past, don’t let it get you down. While the decades take their toll on us mere mortals, time stands still for Elvira (Cassandra Peterson), perched like a devilishly undying diva on her red-velvet divan. “It’s always tough turning 40, but what better way to mark the occasion than a one-night stand with Shudder, the spookiest of streamers?” Elvira teased in the network’s big reveal. “It’s going to be the ultimate Hallow-anniversa-ween bash, and you don’t want to miss it.”

In between brand-new waves of on-brand camp banter from Elvira, Shudder will sandwich four feature films into all the anniversary fun. Call it a greatest-hits Elvira hall of fame, anchored by the wicked woman of the hour herself in Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988), along with House on Haunted Hill (the 1959 original, of course), The City of the Dead (1960), and Messiah of Evil (1973).

It’s all part of Shudder’s yearly “61 Days of Halloween” lineup, and it’ll follow the familiar format Elvira first debuted all the way back in 1981 in the cult classic late-night TV series Elvira’s Movie Macabre. In other words, expect tons of candy-corn wisecracks about the campy proceedings, as Elvira evinces plenty of evil observations every time there’s a break in the movie action.

Catch Elvira’s 40th Anniversary, Very Scary, Very Special on Saturday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. ET via the Shudder TV feed within the Shudder app, before it goes wide on Monday, Sept. 27 to all Shudder platforms and AMC+.