Cassandra Peterson, the actress behind Elvira, once left The Exorcist halfway through because it scared her so much. In a 2011 interview, she said it “still scares the living hell out of me.”
Her taste for horror centers on fantasy. In that same interview, Peterson described herself as “very, very anti-slasher.” In 2020, she explained what made The Exorcist so disturbing to her: a child, someone everyone thinks of as innocent, becomes the monster.
Asked to choose her favorite horror movie in a clip GalaxyCon posted on October 24, 2026, Peterson put The Exorcist alongside Rosemary’s Baby among the films she loves. “There’s a kind of vibe I like, you know, scary babies and children,” she said.
Her other picks depended on the kind of horror. House on Haunted Hill got her hooked, while Night of the Living Dead “might be” her all-time classic favorite. For schlock, she chose Plan 9 from Outer Space.
That first encounter with House on Haunted Hill stayed with her, too. Peterson said her cousin took her to see it, and she spent weeks afterward waking her parents up screaming.
