During the recent discussion of The Green Slime, much was made of the MST3K connection to local TV programming from days past as well as its modification of the horror host concept.
He brings up his local host, one Dr. Gruesome, a Richmond-based horror host from the ’80s, and recalled…
…his frequent abuse of his lackey Skeeter, which is rather similar to the relationship between Dr. Forrester and Frank.
Well, not every host was reminiscent of MST3K, but they’re all fun to talk about.
When I grew up in the Philadelphia, Dr. Shock was the man, very reminiscent of SCTV’s Count Floyd. As an immature teenager, I dearly loved that the name of his show was “FRIGHT FLICKS” and that the logo of the show, a tombstone with the name of the show on it, was shot at such an oblique angle that the second and third letters of the second word merged together. Think about it.
Tell us about your local host.
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Agree about Doctor Shock, though he sometimes was over the top (for the ’50s).
But many now classic ’50s scifi movies were presented in ahip (for the ’50s :) )
style with his bits, including The Thing and Beginning of the End. it’s notable
how much the flicks tended to follow the ’50s standard anti-Communist/Cold War
lines as a subplot, for example a line in The Thing from Another World “the Russians
are thick as flies around the Pole’—so Kenneth Tobey needs to rush up there (also
to meet his kinky girlfriend- a little -50s verrry light bondage action) :) .
Ofrten wonder, though, what Canadians thought of being a tripwire for nuclear
missile attack on the U.S.
My local Horror Host was Zacherley: The Cool Ghoul. He wore ghoulish make and a long, undertaker type coat. He would often flip the lid of a large laundry basket and speak to his wife, who happened to live inside.
Here in Tampa we had Dr. Paul Bearer with the generically titled Creature Feature on channel 44. Lots of amusingly gruesome fake product ads, and he would often “play” piano while lip syncing to Tom Lehrer’s “Poisoning Pigeons In The Park”. Introduced every flick as “our horrible old movie.”
Bob Wilkins, who operated both in Sacramento and the Bay Area. (I grew up in Davis, and my grandparents lived in the Bay Area, so I watched him in both locales, which was a little confusing for my child’s brain.)
I loved — and love — Bob Wilkins! He introduced me to cool movies like Night of the Living Dead (which I was originally too scared to watch), and he interviewed people like Christopher Lee. He had a classic wax-encrusted skull on the table next to him, and he liked to smoke huge cigars. And the combination of his blonde hair and horn-rimmed glasses was too cool for words.
I am convinced that Bob Wilkins helped me “get” INSTANTLY MST3K. Thank you, Bob Wilkins! And thank you MST3K, because you have helped keep the flame of my childhood burning brightly (because a huge part of it revolved around cheesy monster movies)! :-)
By the time I was around, Zacherley wasn’t on the air too much, so we really didn’t have a horror host for the NY/NJ/CT tri-state area. We still had kiddie show hosts, though. On WPIX (Channel 11), Jack McCarthy hosted the Popeye cartoons and Officer Joe Bolton hosted the Our Gang movies. And we could occasionally tune in Wee Willy Webber on WPHL (Channel 17). And, of course, there was the almighty Uncle Floyd.
Sorry, off-topic, there.
Anyway, the closest I came to a local horror movie host growing up was when we were on vacation in PA, and we could watch “Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School” on WNEP (Channel 16).
Oh, and I’d recommend the DVD “American Scary”. It’s a fun documentary about local horror movie hosts, past & present, and includes some good comments from Joel. The downside is that it has no clips from the KTMA shows, and I wish it had more clips of the other hosts. I’d love for there to be a special edition with a whole disc devoted to classic clips.
Over the years in my area I’ve had:
The Bone Jangler – More of an adult theme take on the horror host theme.
Svengoolie (Rich Koz) – The classic type.
Madd Frank – Interesting, but seem to use most of his host segments to try to sell random items like that sound effect gun with the settings for vomiting, farting, and something else that I can’t recall.
Igor’s Morbid Cooking Lessons- A cooking show where each episode the host, Igor, shows you how to prepare a certain dishs or give cooking tips while showing various failed sci-fi/horror/fantasy T.V. pilots and short films.
I also use to have a friend that would send me vhs of different episodes of “Son of Ghoul” and “The Ghoul.” from Ohio.
I recall on one of the cable access channels for a while being a Elvira ripoff who seemed like she couldn’t get a job at Hot Topic so she got a job as a horror host.
Plus, from time to time one of suppositive local celebrities has had in himself and his sons sitting on their back deck in what is suppose to be zombie make up but looks like really cheap K.I.S.S. showing various PD movies like Beast of the Haunted Sea, Night of the Living Dead, and Carnival of Souls. The sons always looked very uninterested and the father 95% of the time got his trivia wrong when it came to the movies. He also hosted what he called Zombie Fest, which was more like a local business farms market mixed with cheap children’s party games with a thin zombie theme.
From the late 60s to early 70s the quad cities station(that covered E Iowa and W Illinois) we had Chuck Acri,s creature feature every sat night at 10:30 He sold aluminum siding, sold a ton of it because everyone knew his face and name and he pitched siding during the commercials. He had a bumbling vampire who did many skits during the breaks of the horror movies, and sometimes a werewolf and caveman. He distributed it to other tv stations in IA, ILL, and Wis and is thought to be one of the most widly seen local creature features in the county. He was quite a pitchman, I remember as a kid going to see him and the monsters doing a benefit at the local bowlling alley in Burlington IA, the monsters entered by coming in through the end of the alleys by knocking over pins and crawling in. They did things like that all around and he dominated the siding business for a huge area.He tried to revive it for a few weeks in the 90s but the rights to all the movies were owned by turner and other corporations so it didnt last.
Detroit had Sir Graves Ghastly…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6MFP_LCdkE
The one I remember best from childhood is Simon’s Sanctorum. Even on early Saturday afternoons (which is when he aired in mid-Michigan) he was creepy as hell – far scarier than most of the movies he showed. I realize now it’s because he was clearly patterned after The Master from Manos! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bqDiVtyr_o
We had Ned the Dead on Chiller Theater up here in Northern Wisconsin.
Growing up in NJ in the 60’s, I also watched Zacherley. I remember he had a blob of Jello in a plastic bag that he called the amoeba. There was also a couple named Joe & Gloria, who I think were stuffed dummies. Zach sometimes popped up into the movie with a sight gag. He was and is the Cool Ghoul. And of course I also remember Officer Joe Bolton and Captain Jack and Eddie Lawrence and Soupy Sales and Sonny Fox and more.
Here in south Louisiana our equivalent was the legendary Dr. Morgus the Magnificent. His show was broadcast out of New Orleans and he was a sort of benevolent mad scientist with an executioner-looking sidekick. He performed well-intentioned experiments that inevitably went awry at the end.
My area did not have a local horror host, sadly. With my love of cheesy films and mountain of mental movie trivia it’s something I’d have actually liked to try my own hand at (and who knows? Thanks to YouTube maybe one day I will). But I agree with Kenneth back at 6, “American Scary” is a wonderful and entertaining documentary and I’d recommend it for anyone who enjoys the subject – or TV history in general. I know it used to be available for streaming on Netflix, but seems like it’s no longer available. Keep your eyes peeled though, it may pop back up on the rotation soon…
As Wes said above (9), in Detroit we had Sir Graves Ghastly on Saturday afternoons. Sometimes I had to fight my sister for the TV because it came on at the same time as American Bandstand. Sir Graves showed dozens of the movies that would eventually show up on MST3K. We also had The Ghoul on late night out of Ohio (and eventually Detroit).
We even had a couple more. We could pick up Canadian TV on CBC so we got to see Count Floyd on SCTV when it was first run. And there was local DJ Tom Ryan who performed as Count Scary and hosted a number of TV specials and the occasional movie.
Dr. Shock was the man! I’d say about 30% of the movies I’ve seen on MST3K I saw first in my childhood thanks to Dr Shock.
And he was a great magician too.
Kansas City had Crematia Mortem hosting Creature Feature on Friday night. I was terrified of her until I was eleven, then I watched the show and loved it. She was goofy and had an offscreen lackey named Dweeb. Every week she’d ask a question about the movie for a chance to win a Creature Feature t-shirt. I would kill for one of those today. The show only lasted until the late 80’s, but recently she made an appearance at a local horror convention.
Nowadays I watch Svengoolie, who is syndicated, and Mr Lobo, who you can find online. Mr Lobo is a protege of the late Bob Wilkins.
#6, Kenneth Morgan- I LOVE American Scary. Truly a wonderful documentary about the weird phenomenon of grown adults dressing up to introduce monster movies. And they talk to the man himself, Joel Hodgson! :D
West Palm Beach, Florida, late 80s, early 90s or so.
I remember “The Night Creature Feature”, the usual old guy from the UHF station with the cheap vampire gear.
Other than that I don’t remember much of him and info seems very hard to come by about him. It was a small station and I’m pretty sure it was a local show.
In Green Bay/Northeastern Wisconsin we had Ned the Dead on Chiller Theater as was mentioned earlier. Pretty much a typical monster/horror show with a cheap set which essentially consisted of a plank of wood with a matte covering the screen to make it look like a theater ticket window with the plank being the counter top. He had a couple of prop sidekicks: Red the Dead his dog which was essentially a carpet covered wooden appliance, and Edna the dead, his wife, which was a skull atop a sheet covered mannequin, which looked a lot like the early Dr Forrester. He still does promo ads for a local supermarket, but not in his makeup. Can’t forget his voice, however, it is still Ned the Dead.
Prior to Ned, we had T.J. and the A.N.T (All Night Theater) which ran from midnight to about 6 a.m. on Friday nights. He would show primarily B movies, many of which were later riffed by MST3k, but not do any real goofy commentary during the commercial breaks – just be a host and introduce the movies. He also did the occasional good movie as well, and it was not limited to Sci-Fi or Horror, but all kinds of genres, again like MST3k. Joel recognized T.J. (really Doug Heim) as an early influence when Cinematic Titanic came to Green Bay a couple of years ago. Joel actually was encouraged by Doug to come down to the station one evening with his ventriloquist dummies and props and do a bit on the show, but Joel claims he chickened out.
Fond memories!
One more thing: while there wasn’t an actual host, WPIX (Channel 11) had an absolutely great opening title sequence for “Chiller Theater” on Saturday afternoons. It’s on YouTube (I don’t know how to paste in links), and I’m sure anyone who’s seen it has never forgotten it.
BER-wyn???
The part of MN I live in is covered by media stations from Fargo ND. Mad Frank was the host from there. Another vampire/undead host.
I didn’t have one that I know of when I grew up in New Jersey (in the New York media market) mostly in the 80s. Maybe there were ones on the local TV then and I just missed them, like if they were on Channel 9, because who would watch that except my grandparents?
I remember running across one some Saturday afternoon, surrounding some movie with a title like Escape From DS 3 or something like that (I remember one string of host sketches was about turning himself into a ghost, and then the turning-back part didn’t work), but I was never able to catch that again. Escape From DS 3 was some 80s-ish thing about wrongly convicted prisoners in orbit of one of Saturn’s moons or something using tech to tech and tech their way into, well, it’s right there in the title. If I have the title wrong, probably someone can figure it out from there.
Really, my first Horror Host would’ve been Count Floyd on SCTV, so I had that weird experience of seeing something that was mocking/homaging something I knew existed at one point but had never encountered directly.
Well, I can’t remember anyone in the classic Svengoolie/Zacherley mold as a horror host when I growing up, although I do have fond memories of Count Floyd too. The host that I grew up with was Rhoda Shear on USA’s Up All Night. Now the movies aired were just as bad as any local cable access station to be sure. But she definitely was enough of a…distraction shall we say from the awful movies shown. Just the way she would host heavily edited late entries in the Friday the 13th series and their kin helped one get through the experience.
Then Gilbert Gottfried would be an alternate host for a while and that was a channel changer.
Here in Pittsburgh our Chiller Theater host was local weather man “Chilly” Billy Cardille. He even had a cameo in the original ‘Night of the Living Dead’ as a TV reporter.
There’s also “The It’s Alive Show” which may or may not still be on. It’s unriffed MST quality movies hosted by various “comedic” monster characters who do skits during the commercial bumpers.
Growing up in Omaha during the ’70s, we had Dr. San Guinary hosting Creature Feature KMTV. He was a mad scientist/ghoul/vampire conducting his experiments in, I believe, a basement somewhere, only even more homemade looking than Deep 13. The only part of his assistant (Igor, of course) we ever saw was a rubber glove poking in from offscreen. Goofy and kinda dumb–great entertainment when you’re 10-17–I still remember it fondly. And Youtube has a bunch of clips.
My folks apparently didn’t go for “creature feature” shows, because I don’t think I ever really saw any when I was a kid in New Jersey. That would have been in the early- to mid-80s, so perhaps I just came along too late. The closest I ever came was “Super Scary Saturday” on TBS, hosted by Al Lewis in the late 80s. It wasn’t exactly a local show, since it was made for cable, but it was produced not far away in New York (Lewis lived there and even ran for office at the state level a few times), so it “felt” local. It was on “Super Scary Saturday” that I first saw “Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster”, and that probably played a part in getting me hooked on MST3K, since it featured a movie I had seen before.
Here in Colorado Springs we had Shock Theater on KRDO 13 at 10:30, after the local news. Shock Theater had sort of a quasi-horror host who typically appeared as the magic mirror guy from Snow White. But he didn’t have a real spiel. that I can recall. He would just say “Don’t be scared, Shock Theater will be right back!”- that sort of thing. I tracked down the host’s name and everything online over a decade ago, but I’ve since forgotten. I used to love the intro theme for Shock Theater which I discovered several years ago was Rachmaninoff’s Opus 3 No. 2. Saw a lot of good and bad horror movies on Shock Theater, including some MST3K favorites like Incredibly Strange Creatures and The Thing that Couldn’t Die. The only thing I’ve found to prove the existence of Shock Theater is this newspaper ad from the ’70s: http://greggorysshocktheater.tumblr.com/post/83665672406/shock-theater-ad-for-krdo-13-colorado-springs
In the Columbus, Ohio area we had Fritz The Nite Owl. He wasn’t exactly a “horror movie host” in the classic sense –He didn’t dress up like a monster or perform skits– but he did introduce the movies, make comments before the commercial breaks, etc. while wearing an ornate pair of ‘owl’ sunglasses and was superimposed over weird, far-out artwork and such. Usually, odd instrumentals were playing in the background as he talked; years later, I recognized one of his regular ‘themes’ when I found a copy of the lounge album PROJECT COMSTOCK at the local cool used CD shop. My favorite comment: “We’re watching BEN. I’m getting paid for it, you have your own reasons…”
I grew up in South Jersey and remember Dr Shock too. He was a very nice man who died far too young but the horror host I really remember was Stella from Saturday Night Dead which was on channel 3 right after SNL. She Vampira type bombshell, big red hair and a low cut dress, and her cast of characters included Bed.
She showed a fair number of 30s movies and some Vincent Price and Hammer horror among other things.
Started a year or two after Dr Shock died, I think, around 1980 and aired in Philadelphia for most of the 80s.
I remember a local mad-scientist host on our upstate Syracuse, NY station, but must not have been of the legends, since I can’t even remember the name. Those were the days when stations owned their own movies. :(
So, since I didn’t remember any of that, I had to settle for USA Network showing the last of Commander USA’s Groovie Movies at 12 noon, right after the 10am Comedy Channel rerun of S1-2 MST3K….Whoa-hoahhh, holy CATS!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8wllw0nvXs
@6 – American Scary’s a great documentary for the basics: Among other factoids, I wasn’t aware that Tim Conway started out as a local horror-host sidekick in the 50’s, or that Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson later retired from hosting and got a job as network spot announcer at ABC in the 70’s, where he became the iconic voice of a decade. (“Next on the LOOOOVVE Boat…”)
Growing up in Cleveland in the 60’s we had one of the best early horror hosts Ghoulardi.(Ernie Anderson). Then Houlihan and Big Chuck and Big Chuck and Little John that took over when he went to Hollywood. Tim Conway used to be on the show with Ghoulardi.
Plus the area had The Ghoul and The Son of Ghoul. Ghoulardi showed all the Roger Corman movies MST3K did and other 50’s Sci-Fi and Japanese monster movies.
The Ghoul Really hated the Gamera movies he had to show and made a big cardboard replica of Gamera that would “fly” across the studio on a string while The Ghoul bashed it with a baseball bat or blew it up with firecrackers.
LOL Littleaimishboy!
Those of us who grew up in the Chicagoland area remember Svengoolie and later Son of Svengoolie. In the early ’80s, they did a live TV 3D broadcast of The Creature, the prior film to Revenge of the Creature. And he’s still on the air today! Good times!
The only horror show host I could find for the St Louis area was Baron Von Crypt who appeared on channel 30 in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, I was too young to remember him.
I do remember channel 11 in St Louis had the ‘Saturday Night Shocker’ during the 1980s. There was no host but they played some pretty good/bad films.
The New Orleans area had Dr Morgus, a mad scientist with his assistant Chopsley. I loved the hell out of that show when I was a kid in the late 80s. According to Wikipedia, not only did the show date back to the 50s, but is back on the air today!
I stumbled across The It’s Alive Show too when I lived in Pittsburgh around 2005-06. I remember finding the low-rent channel airing reruns of “The Streets of San Francisco” and deciding to see just how they filled the rest of their air time.
For those unfamiliar “It’s Alive” was hosted by Professor Emcee Square, a Svengoolie-esque guy, aided by Stiffy the Dead Clown, with occasional appearances by the Mummy Girl. As Travis said, the movies were of the MST3K grade, including “The Horror of Party Beach.” While the skits between movie segments weren’t laugh-out-loud funny, they did occasionally go on location to shoot, to places such as Kennywood Amusement Park.
They seem to be well tied into the George Romero zombie fandom Pittsburgh is known for, turning up at annual Zombie Fests and the like. They did one episode, showing “Night of the Living Dead,” from one of the festivals.
And, just as there are extant clips of Trace and Josh hawking a local pizza parlor during the KTMA days, “It’s Alive” also plugged one of their sponsors during the show, Straub beer. (“And while you’re enjoying tonight’s movie, why not crack open a nice, cold Straub!”
I thought the show was quite cool at the time, with it’s local flavor and such. Apparently it’s still going too: http://www.theitsaliveshow.com/
Early Rhino box sets for sale ** sorry fellow Mysties for off topic post **
Just wanted to let fellow Deep 13-ers know that I am in a sticky situation and am currently selling a lot of the MST3K sets on eBay.
Here’s a link to Box set #1 and I’m sure you can find the rest from there if any of you fine MST fans are interested.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/221472534015?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1558.l2649
Milwaukee in the 80s had Toulouse No-Neck from Shock Theater. I remember the theme song was Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” which I have my doubts they had the rights to.
I grew up on Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Theater on The Movie Channel.
Now, I’m the late night movie host. Here in Tucson, AZ, Sunday nights at 4am, my friends and I do a bang up job of attempting to riff movies on my public access show called Pondo Theater. If you really want to see it (and we do it to amuse ourselves more than anyone), you can find it on the web if you look around enough. I started it up because of a lack of local host, and I always wanted to give that format a shot. Now, at last count, we’re 75 episodes in.
Fargo also had a show inspired by MST3k for a brief time. Instead of riffing they used croma key to add themselves into the poor public domain films they showed. It came on after SNL for about a year, cannot recall it’s name.
I come from Arkansas and if I ever had any local horror hosts growing up I’ve never heard of them. Apparently there’s something called Fright Nights that started showing public domain horror in 2007, but I have no idea where one would go to see that. We do have a MeTV station that plays Svengoolie every Saturday night, but that’s not local.
Dr. Shock rings a bell, however faintly. Lived most of my life in Southern California since 1980, so Elvira and Movie Macabre is what I remember best.
I lived in Virgina for a while in the 70’s, and there was a fellow hosting weekday afternoon cartoons that MST3K often reminds me of. He looked like Mr. Spock’s cousin, (even hinted at being Vulcan) and “broadcast” from a spaceship orbiting Earth that looked like a bunch of AMT Star Trek model kits bashed together. The main detail of his spaceship set was one of those cool old Philco Predicta tv sets with the swivel picture tube. (My grandmother had one.) This fellow read letters and showed drawings sent in just like Joel did.
Hopefully, somebody else remembers who I’m talking about?
Chilly Billy in Pittsburgh. A sort of “dad” figure with lots of comedy host segs. Great memories. As Travis mentioned, was in Night of the Living Dead as a reporter. Search Chilly Billy memories and you’ll find a website with a list of all the movies shown. So many that were MSTed.
Chilly Billy Cardille was the man. For almost 20 years, his Chiller Theater was an institution in the ‘burgh. He also had a castle and a supporting cast including Terminal Stare and the Pittsburgh midget. Another Pittsburgher, Joe Flaherty said his Count Floyd character was influenced by Chilly Billy, and like Count Floyd who was also an SCTV news anchor, Cardille also was the WIIC weather man on the Evening news. I was introduced to many of the MST3K movies on Chiller Theater, including Night of the Blood Beast, Killer Shrews, Attack of the Giant Leeches and Track of the Moonbeast among others.
Hey Prof. Gunther:I enjoyed Zacherle in NYC. My partner no fan of MST,alas, sang in the Oakland Youth Chorus and appeared with them in ghoulish attire on A Bob Wilkins Halloween special!Someone once showed me the photo-Have no idea where it is now-
In early 1970s San Diego we had Moona Lisa (Lisa Clark) for a few years. I got to see the set during a tour of the KOGO studios during that time.
Around 10 years later, XETV broadcast Disasterpiece Theater. This was the first time I saw First Spaceship on Venus. This was a very low budget production and they apparently would tape over earlier shows and reuse the videotape. Around this time we could also watch Elvira, but only if you had a way to receive KHJ from Los Angeles (antenna + luck or cable).
We had LA Connection live shows at the Ken Cinema in the late 80s. I went to 2-3 shows, they tended to use the Mexican masked wrestler movies as material. The LA Connection also had a syndicated TV show, and the title sequence showed the Ken Cinema marquee.
#45 (erasmus hall): that is SO cool! I would love to see that photo! :-)
And Zacherley must have been something else!
#42, that was Dick Dyszel as “Count Gore de Vol” on WDCA channel 20! I came just to mention him. He did the sci-fi stuff as “Captain 20,” a kiddie show host. He was on from ’73 to ’87. He was still active on the internet and cons. My sister got a pic of him biting her on the neck at San Diego Comicon. She said it was creepy in a bad way. But I remember him fondly and it was his show that MST reminded me of when I first saw and loved it.
In Indianapolis we had “Nightmare Theater with Sammy Terry” I found this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Terry
I just remember him talking to his spider George between the horror movie segments.
In the mid 70s I’d seen the Universal Monster movies, plus z-grade stuff like Creeping Terror, on a show in Georgia, could have been on an Atlanta station, I can’t remember much of much less a host. I just remember it starting with a cheesy skull against a red background that scared me to death the first time I saw it. I told mom I was afraid but she told me the movies weren’t all that scary and I should watch them. So I did. The Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, Invisible man all scared me but I loved them anyway. Ma was right. She laughs at herself for being scared of those when she was little too. :)
A very short time later, I was fighting to stay up to watch Shock Theater on WRDW in Augusta GA in the late 1970s and into the 80s. It was hosted by the “beloved” Count Justin Sane, a pudgy fella dressed in a cape. Some cheap echo was used for his voice, it set the tone just right. He’d say “…pull up a tombstone and relax…as-much-as-you-can….” So much fun at the time. Great memories. That’s where I first saw stuff like Lets Scare Jessica to Death, rewatched all the Universals, stuff like Mole People, and tons of obscure b-movies I can’t recall now. Many MST3K episodes remind me of those times and that’s a huge reason I love it so much. MST3K has it’s own nostalgia for me, but my memories of watching old movies on those 2 shows as a kid gets tied to it too. Unbeatable.
One heavy blow against those memories of Shock Theater happened a few years back. The guy who played Count Justin was arrested, along with his wife, for child molestation that dated back to the 70s when he was doing the show. I understand he attempted suicide and even made a joked online about the failure saying “Rumors of my death were premature”. The real guy was way way WAY scarier than his character. But it’s easy for me to get over that. I feel very bad for his victim/s. :(