When you were all growing up (this one is for mainly our older residents but you young’uns can post too), what was your local creature feature host/show.By the time I was old enough to stay up late (also had my own TV in my room), the local creature feature had gone the way of the DuMont Television Network. There are however some local public access shows on where I live that does creature features (even showed “Space Travellers” of all things) which I watch off and on. So with that in mind, what was your local host?
If you want to know more about the old horror hosts, I recommend a terrific documentary called “American Scary.” Joel is in it, briefly, by the way.
I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and the one I remember best was the great Dr. Shock. But there was also a show in our area when I was a kid called “FRIGHT FLICKS” which was notorious because the graphic for the show was a tombstone with those two words, in capital letters, written on it, shot at just that right angle so that the L and I in the word FLICKS kind of… never mind.
Who was your favorite host?
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The only one I can remember is Grandpa Munster on the old Superstation TBS back when they played Godzilla movies. :-)
I know that’s not technically “local”, but those shows were basically dead when I was a kid.
my local horror host was Zacherly, the Cool Ghoul. His wife lived in a big canvas laundry basket.
Zacherley was the local horror host when I was a kid. He still does personal appearances.
PROJECT TERROR – Where the Scientific and the Terrifying Emerge!!
Out of San Antonio in the sixties came a show on Friday nights that either sent us kids under the covers in fright or put us to sleep with the very same cheezy movies we would later get to “enjoy” on MST3k. Things always began with a blaring klaxon horn, Bwaah!, Bwaah!, Bwahh!, and a faceless voiceover announcing “Project Terrorrrrr!!”.
In Albuquerque, we had the Creepy Creature Feature which had no host but a basic graphics card. Now, my husband insists that it aired Saturday nights, but since he remembers it as being on after SNL, that’s well into the ’70s. But I remember watching it on Sunday afternoons when I got to see Teenagers from Outer Space, and Attack of the the Eye Creatures, the two movies I recall most clearly. I was maybe 7 or 8, and the woman being skeletonized in her pool by the outer-space “teenager” really scared me. However, the crawling hand trying to attack big-haired Suzy in Eye Creatures just seemed lame, even to my little-kid self.
We’ve done this one — but it’s a good one! I grew up with Creature Features, hosted by Bob Wilkins, who was absolutely wonderful. He was the master of the deadpan delivery (there are clips of him on youtube), and he interviewed such greats as Christopher Lee. (Wilkins’ moved from Sacramento to San Francisco, and I grew up in Davis, but my grandparents lived in Marin County, so my memories get a little mixed up.)
My MST3K link involves watching TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000 on his show, and it scared the living daylights out of me (which I am going to attribute to Hedges’ crew cut, because the movie isn’t scary on any level).
As far as local Horror Hosts.
Rick Koz both as the Son of Svengoolie and the current Svengoolie.
The BoneJangler
Through Cable and some local cable access
Commander USA
Mad Frank
Elvira
Grampa Munster
Joe Bob Briggs
Through some tape trading:
Old Ghoulardi skits
Son of Ghoul
The Ghoul
Jerry G. Bishop original Svengoolie segments
Via the Internet:
Mr. Lobo
I grew up and still live around the central Jersey shore area. We got both Philadelphia and New York stations. I remember Dr. Shock and little girl on UHF back in the 70’s-80’s. Years later on WKYW 3 there was Saturday Night Dead with that man-eater from Manayunk “Stella”. WPIX 11 from NY had Chiller Theater with the six fingered hand poking up out of the lake of blood. WNEW 5 a had man wearing sunglasses seating on a stool talking about the movie in a deep scary voice. Can’t remember his name. I believe he was really a news or weather reporter, does anyone know? Was the show Creature Feature?
Say!
We just did an interview with Michael Monahan for our podcast! ( http://obeythedna.com if you’re curious…. but the interview won’t be going up until October. Still; there’s other good stuff there….) He’s a funny guy, and knows everything there is to know about horror hosts.
….including the Ghoul; bestest host ever.
Don C.
hmmm, In Baltimore I don’t think any local station had a creature feature personality, at least not when I was young, but WDCA 20 in Washington had Count Gore de Vol (sp?). Very corny, had horrible make-up, but I watched fairly often in my early teens.
Also, not a horror host, but in Baltimore we had Captain Chesapeake and his sidekick Mondy the sea monster to show us our afternoon cartoons>
I need to make it clear that Bob Wilkins played an enormous role in helping me find my tastes when I was a kid. When I first saw MST3K (and pathetically I came to the show rather late in the game) I instantly got it, and I know Wilkins had a hand in that.
I will never forget a spot he did on his show about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. He didn’t actually show the film, but rather discussed it, showing various clips along the way. This would have been around 1974, and I was only nine, and I can still feel what I felt then. It was like I wanted maybe one day to watch the film, but I also knew I might be too scared to watch it. I still think the first fifteen minutes or so of that film are amazingly effective (well, duh!).
@#1: I also remember the “Super Scary Saturday” features on TBS, hosted by Al “Grandpa” Lewis in the late 80s and early 90s. Among other movies, this is how I first saw “Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster.” It may not have been truly local, but since I was living near the New York area (where those shows were produced) at the time, it felt local. If there were any “real” local creature feature hosts still on the air at the time, I wasn’t aware of them.
I grew up in Houston, and on Saturday mornings at 11 am the station KHOU Channel 11 had a weekly sci-fi movie show, and typically show some of the ’50s B&W sci-fi movies. There was no host, just an eerie intro. I distinctly remember seeing Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Mole People, Them! and Attack of the Giant Leeches. Some of the 50s space movies were shown too, but I can’t remember which ones. That was where I grew to love those old movies.
WTTV, Channel 4, Indianapolis-Bloomington, Indiana.
“Nightmare Theater,” hosted by everyone’s favorite ghoul, Sammy Terry. Sammy would rise from his coffin to introduce sometimes the classic horror films, but also a number of later MST3K targets were offered as well.
http://sammyterrynightmares.com/
Oh, dear, I still remember that hand. And it’s still scary.
By the time I was around, a lot of the NY/NJ/CT area horror hosts had moved on. We still had kiddie show hosts (Wee Willie Webber from WPHL in Philly, Capt. Jack McCarthy & Officer Joe Bolton on WPIX in NY, and the one & only Uncle Floyd), but no horror hosts. I never got around to watching Doctor Shock, and I’d occasionally see “Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School” on WNEP from Scranton when I was on vacation.
Later on, when we got cable, I remember watching Phantom of the Opry on the old Nashville Network, with Commander USA and Joe Bob Briggs later on. I haven’t watched the on-line hosts yet, but they sound good. And, since they added MeTV to the lineup, I watch Svengoolie every Saturday.
By the way, I recently got a copy of the companion book to “American Scary” from my local public library (where, incidentally, I’m employed). It features some more in-depth interviews with the hosts (though not Joel, unfortunately). And, if the “American Scary” producers are reading this, I’m still waiting for a special edition of the DVD, with one disc featuring an expanded version of the documentary and a second disc with loads of classic clips.
Detroit had Sir Graves Ghastly…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai5qktbixuA
There was a horror host in St Louis called Baron Von Crypt, but I was too young to remember him. He was on KDNL channel 30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O_jJ3fqmeU
We actually did this topic a couple of years ago. It even had the same title.
All we got in mid-Michigan was Simon’s Sanctorum. He actually looked a lot like The Master in Manos. The whole shtick was kind of more creepy than fun.
I don’t remember watching- but my older Brother liked Christopher Coffin- out of Flint, MI
Some topics (like this one) are always good for a re-visit.
Dr. Shock had some classic 50s sci-fi, including The Thing (much better than the remakes).
His watcher interactions foreshadowed mst3000.
Totally OT, but did you also enjoy as a kid writing out the F*** word and then adding a few lines to disguise your curse word as “FLYERS”? That was a Philly elementary school trick.
From about 2007-2012 ish in the Detroit area we also had wolfman Mac who hosted nightmare sinema/ chiller drive inn. A lot of mst overlap in pd films. They had host segments and random riffs throughout. They were even syndicated on retro tv for a bit. They would do live in theater shows called attack of the killer b’s. All props welcome.
It harkened to the ktma era in that they ran self produced local commercials during their own show, like that pizza bit with forrester and erdhart.
this local show did Manos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AEEgg2MzwA
Being from the bay area in California, I watched Creature Features every friday and saturday nights hosted by the late great Bob Wilkins in the early 70s. I first saw Horror of Party Beach on it
, perhaps the only film other than Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster before I got into MST3K. This show in 1971 premiered with Horror of Party Beach.
Off topic:
10 minute interview with Joel and Jonah on the reboot (from Comic Con):
http://www.ign.com/videos/2016/07/25/what-to-expect-from-mystery-science-theater-3000s-return-comic-con-2016?abthid=579c42c76895def51200001d
While I’m too young to remember him, my dad recalls the Bowman Body, a Virginia-based horror host whose career spanned the Seventies and Eighties in three different cities (Petersburg, Charlottesville, and Alexandria IIRC). He appeared in the documentary Virginia Creepers and even got his own feature from the same production company. I’m currently at work so can’t dig up any Youtube clips at the moment. Maybe later.
Like Kenneth Morgan said in comment #21, some topics are worth revisiting. Not only that, but sometimes, there are fans who haven’t weighed on in this topic before, so we get some brand new insights (and maybe even new perspectives from the previous topic’s commentators), which are always welcome.
“Shock Theater” and Count Justin Sane of Augusta Georgia. Horror show host…child molester. :( That show meant a great deal to me and it was quite a shock.
I had Superhost who was on WUAB 43 in Cleveland.
This man’s show ran for 4 hours! From Noon until 4 on Saturdays.
He had Supes on from noon till 1 where he would run The Three Stooges.
And from 1 till 4 he would play two horror or sci-fi films.
His show ran from 1969 to 1989.. Really miss those days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7H_Bp4Jhrc
Growing up in Dayton Ohio our horror host was Dr.Creep. This was on the independent channel 22 He ran for about ten years starting in 1972 so he predates Svengoolie by about 7 years.So this is where I got my first taste of what would become those classic bad monster films that MST3K would use 20 years later.There are some clips of Dr. creep on YouTube if you like. He was quite risque and bawdy for his time and my mother didn’t quite approve. The funny thing is that Barry Hobart ( Dr creep) also hosted an afternoon show for little kids called Clubhouse 22.
Lots of great horror hosts already mentioned here.
I misremembered Vincent Price as being a TV horror host. It turns out that he was actually the host of PBS’s Mystery. Still, how cool would it have been if Vincent Price joined the horror host game?
What I’m hoping will happen is that the revival of MST3K – along with the ongoing work of other contemporary horror hosts – will continue to inspire future generations of horror hosts.
Back in the 60s in Bangor, Maine we had Eddie Driscoll. He hosted a local show (WLBZ-TV) on Saturday nights called Weird, his character being Uncle Gory or Krandel, depending on what type of show it was (SciFi or horror). The show was aimed at kids but many adults regularly tuned in, mainly because of Eddie’s contagious enthusiasm.
I could be wrong, but I checked around on Wikipedia, and I think the guy you’re talking about is Lou Steele as “The Creep” for Creature Features. Apparently, he used to be a TV announcer and anchor.
Here in Chicago, we’ve had some iteration of Svengoolie since probably around the mid-70s. I slightly remember the original Svengoolie – a very thin, spooky man in a striped shirt, with a wide mustache, black makeup around his eyes, and a black top hat.
He left around 1980, and was replaced by Rich Koz, who is still going strong today as Son of Svengoolie. He has a similar costume, but he is totally about making it fun. There are many rubber chickens thrown, and he does much of the show peering out of the top half of a coffin.
There are songs, letters from fans and he’ll have segments at spooky locations around the city. Like the others, he played a lot of the 50s and 60s MST movies, but not the random, low budget ones like Manos.
I distinctly remember It Conquered the World and Lost Continent (which I loved as a kid :-D).
Even though the shows has moved around channels and times a million times, it’s still somewhat popular, and the host attends all the SCI-Fi/comic book conventions in the Chicagoland area.
I agree, this is a great topic to revisit.
Another Virginia-based horror host is Dr. Sarcofiguy, who I believe is the first black horror host. He even has an MST3K connection, as he’s done some stand-up with Patton Oswalt.
Grandpa Fred from “Gremlins 2: The new Batch”.
I grew up on Commander USA and Elvira, then in my teen years discovered Joe Bob Briggs (who is still my be-all, end-all). None of these shows were local, but Elvira did air every Saturday night on my local channel 40 in the 80s.
A few years ago, Saturday Fright Special hosted by Scarewolf appeared on public access here in Tucson, AZ, then disappeared again.
Then, five years ago, I became the late night movie host! Since Scarewolf and the recently syndicated version of Elvira left my local airwaves, I took to a 4am, 1 hour time slot on Sunday nights, where for 4 years I hosted and riffed movies with my friends. “Pondo Theater,” we called it. It was a blast. The public access station closed last year, so the show is no more, but it was a good time while it lasted. We did 96 episodes. No plans to YouTube any of that show; it was done KTMA style (off the top of our heads), and really was meant to be watched at 4am when you were hopefully so out of it you’d think we were funny.
When I was growing up outside Boston in the mid-70s, channel 56’s “Creature Double Feature” on Saturday afternoons was “must-see TV” amongst my friends and family, although it seemed like they showed “Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster” at least once a month. “The Amazing Colossal Man” and “War of the Colossal Beast” were also big (as it were). It didn’t have a host per se, but a series of announcers, the only one of whom I recall was Dale Dorman, only because he was also a popular radio DJ. “CDF” had what I thought was a cool theme song; years later, when I was in high school and I first played Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Brain Salad Surgery” and “Toccata” came on, I said “Hey, that’s the ‘Creature Double Feature’ theme!” To this day, I can’t play that track without thinking of Godzilla.
Like many proto-MSTies, we would occasionally “riff” on the movies, although we certainly didn’t call it that back then. Ah, bad movies, good times.
I only just now, looking it up, discovered it was a syndicated show (and was also shown in Philadelphia). It was apparently revived about 10 years ago, although I no longer live near Boston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creature_Double_Feature?wprov=sfsi1
Growing up in the Sacramento in the early 90’s when everybody else had cable, we had Whitey Gleason, aka. “Creepmeister Maximus,” and Frightnite Theater.
Whitey never dressed up himself, but did maintain several of the standard horror host tropes by having a “crypt” set, a mostly silent Igor/Frankenstein character operating the camera who communicated by shaking up and down or left and right, and (if I remember correctly) a talking skull and some sort of killer rabbit puppet.
Here’s the only video reference I can find at all, a short commercial for Blackula: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGaK3I0Kyng
I’m not sure how long he was on the air, a few years at least. The movies tended to be a mix of public domain horror classics and schlock from the 70’s/80’s (with emphasis on the schlock). I swear they showed Hell Comes to Frog Town whenever nobody could be bothered to go over and pull another tape out of the bin.
Not technically a ‘horror movie host’ but our Columbus, Ohio CBS affiliate had Fritz The Nite Owl, a guy in elaborately-framed sunglasses who’d superimpose his head onto various bits of often avant-garde artwork and talk about the movie while classic jazz played in the background. He was often quite clever. My favorite line of his: “We’re watching WILLARD. I’m getting paid for it, you have your own reasons…”
I grew up in Cleveland, we had a number of Horror Hosts but the best known from the 60’s was Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson who became the long time announcer for the ABC network in the 70’s and 80’s. Some of the skits between movie segments had his friend Tim Conway in them. He showed a number of movies that were MST3K episodes. That’s where I first saw these movies.
Although I’m certainly old enough, I don’t recall ever seeing any horror/scifi movies hosted by one of these characters. I heard of Elvira, but never saw her show.
On the other hand, I do remember very well a short-lived precursor to MST3K called “Disasterpiece Theater”, hosted by Sal U. Lloyd. Instead of spoken riffs, he had scrolling text making jokes about the movie. Occasionally he’d also cut in a short clip from some other old PD movie or cartoon. For instance, when some mad scientist was rambling on about his insane plot, there would suddenly be clip of an old cartoon character saying, “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
It was a local San Diego show, and I think it was on from 1979 into early 1980. Unfortunately the only TV my brother and I had at the time was a portable with a 3″ screen, which made it really tough to keep up with the text riffs.
In the early 1960’s in Shreveport LA we had a Saturday night show called Shock Theatre. They had several ghoul hosts (both male and female) presenting the horror films. Mostly they played the old Universal Studio classics like Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Dracula and The Wolfman. They were all great. They also showed some films like Murder in the Rue Morgue that I didn’t care to much about.
Well, same thing, basically–The specifically roman a clef anti-Ted Turner/TBS jokes in Gremlins 2 were laid on just with the right amount of thickness (“Casablanca, now in color with new happy ending!”) If you watched cable in 1990, you were the Right People Who Got It.
And I had to go and squander my Commander USA clip and reminiscences of the local Syracuse NY host on the last thread.
All that leaves me with is the days when Boston WLVI-56 used to air the classic Toho Godzilla movies on Saturday afternoon, and always had that opening with weird electronic music video-posterizing the clip of Godzilla throwing “you and me, c’mon ya wimp!” trash-talk punches at Ebirah from GvSea Monster.
Wasn’t a host, per se, but oh, how I miss the ability to watch random movies for free again. :(
(Er, oops, guess I wasn’t the only one sentimental for WLVI-56. :)
And Dale Dorman, that was the hyperactive voice I remembered from the afternoon cartoon days–Became such a fixture of the afternoon-toon slot, he started identifying with the viewer cult: “Tom & Jerry coming up at 4 o’clock, and they’re showing one of the Tex Avery House of Tomorrow cartoons!”)
We had 2 where I lived. I the 70’s there was Creature Feature and that was this eye ball with a scary voice saying “Welcome to the Creature Feature!” followed by maniacal laughing, I don’t remember much because I was hiding since I was scared.
Then in the mid 80’s we had Dr. Morbius. He was sort of Count Floyd but funnier. I remember him showing Mole People and him saying something like “Imagine I’d they called it Beaver People.” then did dialogue like Jerry Mathers
I grew up in Green Bay and we had two distinct late night hosts when I was kid. The first was Doug Heim, AKA TJ (Television Jockey) who had a show called T.J. and the A.N.T. (All night theater) which showed on Friday nights – i think it came on at midnight but it may have come on earlier. He showed all kinds of movies but did a lot of Sci-Fi and Horror. He also played a lot of Corman films and other B movie stuff. His show, as its name implies, aired all night from 12 to 5 or 6 in the morning. He would usually get in 3 or 4 movies. It was here I first saw Attack of the Giant Leeches, The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, and a bunch of other MST3k films.
Doug went off the air in the early 80s but I think he was almost immediately replaced with Ned the Dead, who ran on Saturday night, on the same station – WLUK – at the time the ABC affiliate, now the FOX affiliate. Ned was on for quite a while, his show was called Chiller Theater, I would say almost 10 years (the Wikipedia page says it aired until 2009, but there were huge gaps where there was no show – I am referring to the original run), and still appears from time to time around town. He still does voice over work for local commercials, and was a morning radio jock for a number of years. His show was more the classic Horror host as he would show one movie a week, and make wisecracks on the acting, poor production, and otherwise cheezy nature of the films he was showing. He repeated a lot of the stuff that Doug Heim would have shown but added a few gems that I never saw Like The Killer Shrews, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (this one was definitely not horror, but he always showed it around Christmas time) Good memories!
“Chilly Billy” Cardille in Pittsburgh. Fun show and great guy. Just recently passed away.