What was the name of your local channel horror guy? They names are usually very clever and I get a kick out of them.
I grew up in Indiana and channel 4 had two:
1. Sammy Terry
2. Baron Von Wolfstein and Robin Graves
Who were yours?
Back in the 70s there were a couple of guys locally. On KIRO channel 7 Joe Towey was the KIRO Count, host of Nightmare Theater, from 11:00 to 1AM. Towey also produced the local children's classic JP Patches (were you a Patches pal or a Boris buddy??)
http://trashfiend.bizland.com/nightmaretheatreschedule.chtml
Here is the entire show schedule from 1964-1978
Also we had the pleasure of Robert O Smith for a while, itenerant DJ, whose Dr ZinGRR ran on channel 13 before it became a FOX affiliate. He showed the worst flicks he could dredge up, and interrupted them every 15 minutes with commentary in costume, sometimes making blue-screen appearances within the films.
Ours was Edmus Scary in Phoenix AZ. I was a huge fan as a kid. Apparently he got busted for child molestation or something really awful and the show was canceled.
Other then out side product, like Larry "Seymore" Vincent, The Ghoul from Cleveland, and such, out locals were Fritz The nite owl, and for a short time, Zac with Fright Nite, on the old ch 8.
Fritz is cool. Knows his movies, and delivered his comments on the flicks with a low, warm jazz man's voice. Fritz does Jazz shows on radio, btw.
Zac was Mike Perkins, and he played a lawyer, who had to show bad movies to inherit his granpa Von Strolite's bucks.
The armchair ate people, the lawn did too! And he had problims with his neighbor, "Mel Dunger".
I thought he was realy funny, and clever. Maby too clever for the Saturday night crowd that he had. I wish he'd gotten a chance to work with Best Brains.
I thought he was that good.
The only one I recall from a local station was in the early 80s. She was Millie and was more of a bad movie host (there were some truly wretched movies) although there was a higher percentage of horror movies. The show would come on Saturday night following Saturday Night Live. Millie and her co-hosts were more of just a goofy intermission during commercial breaks and she seemed to take her dressing tips from Cindi Lauper.
Here we have the legend Rich Koz or as he is otherwise known Svengoolie
I don't think Eugene Oregon had one, if it did then I was too busy watching Joe Bob Brigs on Monster Vision and that was just fine for me.
We had one in the late 80s just as the horror host thing was dying out in bigger cities. Guess you know a trend is over when Huntsville AL finally picks up on it. It might have been a syndicated show for all I know. I just remember that the host dressed and acted like Robert Morley doing the Hunckback of Notre Dame. Don't remember his name but they kept the movies longer than they kept the host. At one time I thought it was the son of the channel's morning show host, who was quite popular here. BUt that was just a guess based on a vague resemblance I thought I noticed.
Years later we had a late night movie show (some horror, but also low budget and cult stuff, lots of AIP and Corman produced films) on the ABC station hosted and produced by the technical staff at the station. Mostly camera and sound people and news producers. The show was called "WAAY Too Late" after the call letters, there was also a "WAAY Too Early" morning show but it was really lame. Anyway, the host of the movie show would create little short films unrelated to the film or put up top 10 lists poking fun of the movie or mention fun facts about the movie. They had real fun with "Fast Charlie the Moonbeam Rider", apparently David Carradine hated Brenda Vaccaro so much he would punch her in the mouth if she tried to speak to him when they weren't filming a scene together. But the short films were the best part. They did spoofs of stuff like the "slow walk" from "Reservoir Dogs", a version of "My Friend Flicka" with a giant pet tick named "Ticka", treat a long delayed half completed local highway project like it was an ancient archaeology dig, and a film about a guy driving through neighborhoods in the early morning with a garage door opener opening all the doors with the whole thing synchronized to the "Blue Danube" waltz. It was funny but also kind of beautiful. Damn I miss that show.
We had 2:
The Bowman Body on WAVY Ch. 4 out of Norfolk, Virginia and when he quit he was replaced by Dr. Madblood from "Beautiful Downtown Pungo", Virginia.
This was late '60's/early '70's.
The Bowman Body was famous for his tuxedo & sneakers ensemble, his paisly-lined coffin, and a large bandaid on his forehead. Otherwise, sort of like Joe Flaherty's Count Floyd character. He came to William & Mary college once when I was there in '73, and he actually was a pretty good trumpet player. Catch line: "We have spared absolutely NO expense to bring you the most HORRIBLE motion pictures from Hollywood!!".
Dr. Madblood was a typical mad scientist with a huge bushy afro wig & numerous sidekicks that couldn't act worth a lick. One of the "Vampira" types was actually the local weather gal. God, she was awful! Couldn't deliver a straight line or a punch line. He ran a much more "kiddy"-oriented show, showing crayon drawings that 3rd & 4th grade fans had sent in to the show. This always confused the hell out of me, as most nights the show would START at 1am -- what the hell were young children DOING up at that hour?!?!?
peter johnson/denny crane
In Northern California in the late 70's and early 80's we had Bob Wilkins, who was the host of Creature Features on KTUV 2 from Oakland/SF. He was an unusual horror movie host in that he had no costume, he just dressed in regular clothes, sat in a rocking chair, smoking a cigar and would tell stories about the movie in a normal voice. He was great! A veritable font of information and (as the links will show) had some pretty good guests during his host segments. The movies tended to range from awful (The Creeping Terror) to the good (Horror Express), the inexplicable (The Brain that Wouldn't Die) and the underrated (The Asphyx). A show like his is definitely missed around here.
http://www.subcin.com/wilkins.html
http://www.comic-con.org/wc/wc_celebs_wilkins.shtml
I can't remember the name. All I remember was that he was an incredibly fat hillbilly who sat on a bale of hay and announced the show along with his friend, a skeleton.
I just realized that the closest thing we've had to that in my lifetime (besides Elvira) here is
Snarky the Clown of Darkness, a friend of mine who makes movies and puts them on public access.
Herodotus wrote:
>In Northern California in the late 70's and early 80's we had Bob Wilkins, who was the host of Creature Features on KTUV 2 from Oakland/SF.
Yeah, growing up in the SF bay area, I rememember watching him all the time as a kid. His show was great. Fond memories.
Back in the 70s (as many of these local hosts seem to be), we had Count Vesco and his sidekick Derf (one of the inspirations for my screen name). He was basically a cheesy vampire type like Count Floyd, and Derf was a hunchback. I don't really remember that much about him except that he put in an appearance at our local Boll Weevil Festival (a festival celebrating the conquering of the boll weevil in South Texas--yes, I live in cotton-growing territory, and yes, rednecks rule around here). He signed autographs and gave out 8X10 photos, also autographed. We are indeed easily impressed around here. . .
I grew up in the Finger Lakes region of New York state in the 70's and we had a great one every Saturday afternoon called MONSTER MOVIE MATINEE, but I don't know the host name of this mad doctor with the patch on one eye and his companion which I believe was a talking hand with a big ring on it's finger. Don't remember if the hand actually talked, but I know they both communicated always. The set was a dark foggy set with test tubes and all sorts of things. One year they cut the host head off and put it on a table and talked to the audience. I guess he became part of his own experiment. If anyone knows the name of this one let me know. Thanks.
Other than that we had CHILLER THEATER (http://21ca.com/chiller/) on WPIX with a great intro, but no host and our Sunday afternoon Giant Monster movies from WOR out of New York. Scroll to the bottom of this link to see the later claymation intro to CHILLER THEATER-2 (http://www.dvddrive-in.com/Chiller/chiller.htm)
In the 80's I moved to South Jersey where we had Stella the Maneater from Manayunk, Pa. Read the fun bio on this horror host of Saturday Night Dead (http://www.tvacres.com/horror_stella.htm).
Post Edited (08-03-05 10:49)
When I was a kid in the 70's I watched Dr. Dead on KMTC in Springfield MO. He later became Sammy B. Good on KSPR TV. I interviewed him for a class project. He told me that when Kathleen Turner and John Goodman were students at SMSU, they were on the Dr. Dead Nightmare Theater.
I worked for Count Norlock at KSPR during the three months or so it was on air. I wrote an article about it for Scary Monsters magazine about ten years ago and they published it a few months back. LOL.
Bob was my horror host too...I host a show called Cinema Insomnia and Bob mentored me alot in the begining. He holds a "Senior Consultant" credit on my show Cinema Insomnia. I did a convention side by side with Bob in SF's Wondercon earlier this year and we have plans to do Horror Host Palooza together and San Jose's SiliCon. Unfortunately Bobs ability to do Q & A or any kind of stage presentation has diminished quite a bit in these last couple years but he loves meeting with fans and signing autographs.
http://www.bobwilkins.net is his official site.
Cinema Insomnia has been picked up by KTEH and will air starting late Sat nights(12:30am Sun) in October. San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland will have Hosted Horror and Sci-Fi on broadcast TV once again!
Mr. Lobo
http://www.cinemainsomnia.com
Oh, that reminds me!
I was/am a character named "Bates" -- standard-issue mad scientist -- opposite this guy that looks like the professional wrestler, The Undertaker: "Digger", for a show that failed to get into syndication: "Movie Maesoleum".
It runs in perpetual reruns out here in Boulder County on CATV 54 -- as the guy who played "Digger" -- Bill Hammel -- is on the board of directors for the station.
My one brush with horror-movie-show-host fame . . .
I think there are 12 episodes, all shot around 10 years ago . . .
Bates helped transform Sonny Bono into The Fly (A real Sonny Bono doll head on one of those giant rubber fly bodies) and gave a Rorshach test to Godzilla to try to find out what made him so angry.
peter johnson/denny crane
I grew up in Wyoming and that was horrible enough (plus at that time, there was not much local TV, it was all out of Denver). But I did find this link:
http://www.geocities.com/horrorhostunderground/html/locate.htm
Pick your host!
-Ed
I didn't watch too much late night TV growing up, so the earliest local horror/bad movie host I remember was local-radio personality Whitey Gleason (originally on 93/98 Rock; now on Sports 1140-AM). He had a show on Channel 58 here in Sacramento for a few years during the '90s which was great. The most memorable of all the shows was when Abel Ferrara was the special guest back in 1993 (for the release of his version of 'The Body Snatchers'). I had never heard of Ferrara before, and was intrigued. Then after a few years, Whitey's show was cancelled, and it was years before there was another outlet for this kind of programming. Then came Cinema Insomnia on Channel 10. Holy crap, it was too funny! Especially Mr. Lobo! And Mr. Lobo - Will CI be shown in Sacramento again soon?
I know this is an old post, but mine was Mad Frank...up around the Grand Forks, ND area. I loved him.