I don't know the provenance of this photograph, but I do know that its awesomeness is undeniable. I stumbled upon it online recently and immediately lost my mind. It may wind up as my phone's wallpaper before the day is out. In this single photo lies the convergence of two of the most 1980s of all 1980s pop culture touchstones: Elvira and J. R. Ewing, or as they're also known, Cassandra Peterson and Larry Hagman. Elvira was very important to young 1980s geeks like me, acting as our gateway into the weird world of horror. Larry Hagman played J. R. on Dallas, a show we were only occasionally allowed to watch (I can hear today's helicopter parents disapproving already), but a character we knew was a big deal to our parents—"Who shot J. R.?" was referenced often back then. The fact that these two once hung out at a party, where Hagman was dressed as some sort of maniacally grinning island-themed cult leader/martial artist, would have been enough to make twelve-year old me squint with confusion and disbelief: "What's with that guy from Dallas groping my girl, Elvira?" When worlds collide, indeed.

Elvira's popularity might have begun and surged in the 1980s, but she's endured as an icon for a certain set of people who love her shtick as the horror hostess with the mostess. She's had a long and illustrious career, having become synonymous with movie horror over the years. Since 1981 when she began her career as Elvira on local TV in Southern California, she's been the campy queen curator of many young people's earliest forays into cult movies; she was certainly my guide into that weird world. She's easily one of the most recognizable icons of the last several decades, such that even people who don't pay attention to horror still know who Elvira is. Then there are those of us who love horror and simply can't imagine the genre without her being a part of it. For children of the 1980s, Elvira was always there, and now all these years later she's still there. Elvira's two most appealing assets - no, not those two assets, but I can't fault your mind for going there - that have kept her popular and relevant for all of these years are her disarmingly charming and humorous approach to horror and herself, plus her ability to make you, the viewer, believe she's talking directly to you. Granted, most of us youngsters back then didn't need her to do much to feel like she was addressing us directly; wish fulfillment handled that just fine. We couldn't have dreamed her up in our heads any better than she was in reality: an attractive and funny woman dressed in classic horror style chatting to us about cult movies; in other words, Kryptonite for geeks.