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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BER-wyn???
Apparently Captain Chesapeake moonlighted as “Ghost Host” on Saturday nights. Here’s a clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBgiO6WqEY
I was a huge Captain Chesapeake fan, but I don’t remember ever coming across Ghost Host. I think I was a bit too young to be allowed to stay up that late.
It would be nice to hear some heterosexual heckling of Valley of the Dolls, for a change.
Dorktales -That’s cool, I didn’t know about that, guess I was all grow’d up by then :-)
I’m KCMO born and raised.I vaguely remember Uncle Ed through promos of his show, but I don’t think I was old enough to watch it. I recently went down the Google rabbit hole for KC horror/TV hosts, and read about all that stuff he did. Wow. :pain:
Don’t think I’ve heard of Tom Leahy – gonna have to look him up. Thanks! :-)
I missed this topic the first time around, and I’m glad it’s made a comeback – I love horror hosts. ‘American Scary’ is well worth a watch. :-D
In Kansas City, we had Crematia Mortem, a ghostess with the mostess who lived in a weird basement dungeon covered in scary paraphanelia. She had two offscreen, unseen helpers: Rasputin and Dweeb. She used to scare the crap out of me with her echo-ey voice (still does), but I remember she showed ‘Gamera’, ‘The Tingler’, and other ‘classics’. I first saw ‘The Uninvited’ with Ray Milland on her show, and to this day it’s one of my favorite movies. Here’s an example of her humor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDVz30_AwxY
Another KC horror show was ‘Friday Fright Night’on KCTV 5 with the voice (and creepy laugh) of local broadcaster Hugh Bowman. Here’s a clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaTBXWwMPK4
I watched ‘Up All Night’, ‘MonsterVision’ (with Joe Bob Briggs) and ‘Commander USA’ on occasion, and Elvira, briefly, when she was syndicated. There was also a syndicated show hosted by the voice of John Carradine called ‘Haunted Hollywood’ that mostly showed creaky old B&W Poverty Row horrors. I’m sure ‘The Corpse Vanishes’ was one of them. Nowadays, I watch Svengoolie pretty regularly, and Count Gore DeVol (from Washington DC) and Mr Lobo are on Vimeo. Count Gore (aka Richard Dyszel) was the sleazy mayor in ‘The Alien Factor’, and recently the subject of his own documentary, ‘Every Other Day is Halloween’, which I highly recommend checking out.
sounds like a fun show. what ever happen to it?
In South Florida early 90s/late80s-ish there was a guy on channel 19 “The Night Creature Feature”. I remember seeing Robot Monster on it. Some guy in a grandpa munster type cheap vampire get up I think. Been a while.
On youtube there’s a bunch of episodes of “A Platicar A Su Casa”, which isn’t quite a horror host show but… I dunno. Seems familiar somehow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOBksjsfs6k
In the Virginia Creepers documentary, there was this Bowman Body clip that would have been at home on the MST3K Poopie Reel. In it, Bowman and the guy with him were talking about the Frightful Five, a horror host basketball team that did exhibition matches at area high schools. Anyway, Bowman had a basketball as a prop and at one point passed it to the other guy. He doesn’t catch it and it rolls off, but they keep going. One of the stage crew thinks that Bowman will be wanting the ball back and throws it over. However, Bowman doesn’t notice this and gets hit by the ball, loses his balance, and falls into his prop coffin.
I forgot he was on WVIA – channel 44 – until I found the you tube clips of him. I always associated him with WNEP as well.
Here in Columbus, Ohio, I grew up on Fritz the Nite Owl. Luckily, we have another horror host taking over the reins now – Dr. Bob Tesla! His show is a little … odd for a horror host. It’s a free live show at the Gateway Film Center on the second Saturday of the month.
Check him out here – http://www.midnightmonstermovies.com
WDCA Channel 20 and “Gore De Vol !!!”
This poor guy did everything on that station BEFORE it turned into a Fox affiliate.
He was Bozo, Captain 20 (for the after school kids program) hosted the evening movie, and on Saturday nights was the horror host. In my youth I could not figure out how he changed clothes so fast.
Cleveland MSTie here, member No. 35219, paper newsletter subscriber. Grew up on horror hosts, with Superhost, The Ghoul, Son of Ghoul, Elvira, and the ultimate, Big Chuck & Lil’ John, which is a direct descendant of the Ghoulardi show. BC&LJ are actually still on, in a skits-only version on Saturday afternoon (Couch Potato Theater). Also had various shows like ‘Scream Theater’ on channel 61. A note about Elvira – had a huge influence on my horror/cheesy movie love. To my knowledge she was the first, and the only, broadcast TV host who showed Cozzi’s “Alien Contamination” and the classic Spanish horror flick “Tombs of the Blind Dead” in uncut and unedited form.
Keep Circulating The Tapes.
1970’s Dr. Paul Bearer in Tampa, Fl.; he later was assistant to “the Undertaker” for WWE wrestling… I liked his props( One was a bucket of “Kentucky Fright Chicken”).
Mississippi in the early ’90s had Margali Morwentari hosting Thriller Theater. Can’t say I watched much, but I remember Margali (and her alter ego Niels) from area cons. She was pretty funny.