Elvira and the Party Monsters

Elvira and the Party Monsters is a sought-after pinball machine from 1989, produced under the Bally trade name by Midway Manufacturing on the Williams System 11B platform. It was the first pinball machine featuring Cassandra Peterson's iconic character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and Peterson herself provided character voices for the game alongside Mark Ritchie. The game was designed by Dennis Nordman and Jim Patla; when Nordman was injured in a motorcycle accident during development, Patla, Steve Ritchie, and Mark Ritchie helped finish and refine the nearly complete design, with artist Greg Freres taking on team-leader duties.

The gameplay centers on a 3-ball multiball, with two flippers, three jumper bumpers, two slingshots, a 3-bank of drop targets, two flip-up targets, and two ramps rewarding skillful play. The playfield features the "Dancing Boogie Men" toys, with a boogie monster mechanism built by Irv Grabel, plus a skull cave sculpted by Jack Haegar.

Greg Freres's art and Chris Granner's music and sound capture the campy humor of Elvira's late-night horror-host persona. The artwork is full of inside jokes: the "broken bones" on the plastics reference Nordman's motorcycle accident, and Freres used photos of Nordman and Patla as models for the backglass Wolfman and Dracula, with artist Tim Elliot posing as the Frankenstein pizza delivery guy. Midway built a confirmed 4,000 units between September and November 1989, and the game remains a favorite among collectors.