The show needed a host. Again to keep costs down, use someone already on staff, add some cheap greasepaint, maybe a small set, and just sit back and watch the fun- during the commercial breaks!
The idea caught on and soon local stations all over the country were airing their own version. In Chicago, it seems like almost every station had some horror movie show on the air at least sometime during their broadcast existence. Many consisted of nothing more than a slide (and maybe some strange music) with the name of the show. WMAQ-TV ran Thrillerama, WSNS had Monster Rally. For a while, WLS-TV ran horror movies during their "The 3:30 Movie" timeslot.
But there are certain shows that to this day are remembered with good times, a lot of laughs, and maybe just a scare or two- though maybe you probably still wouldn't admit it!
There are literally hundreds of horror hosts who deserve to be listed here. Unfortunately, we only have room for a few.
The very first hosted horror show was the Vampira Show is a 1950s Emmy-nominated television show hosted by Vampira. The series aired on the Los Angeles ABC television affiliate KABC-TV from April 30, 1954 through April 2, 1955. The series was produced and created by Hunt Stromberg, Jr. and featured the Vampira character created by Maila Nurmi. The costume of Nurmi's Vampira character was inspired by the spooky The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, later adapted for the TV series The Addams Family in 1964. As Nurmi told Box office in a 1994 interview, she had dressed as Addams' at-the-time nameless ghoul-woman to attend Lester Horton's annual Hollywood costume ball the Bal Caribe in 1953. Nurmi's ghoul woman beat out over 2,000 attendees to win the evening's prize for best costume, and drew Stromberg's attention. When Stromberg approached Nurmi about doing the character for television, Nurmi then re-imagined the character and costume as a buxom and glamorous single vampire instead of the mother of a family, and she named her creation Vampira. Nurmi told Box office that her intention was to invent a unique creation of her own that was "campier and sexier" than the mute and flat-chested Addams character, in part to avoid plagiarizing Addams' intellectual property.
Vampira's personality was based on elements of several silent film actresses including Theda Bara and Gloria Swanson as well as the Evil Queen from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In Vampira: The Movie, Nurmi reveals she appropriated the long cigarette holder and extra-long fingernails from the Dragon Lady character in the Terry and the Pirates comics. The new costume was inspired by the artwork of John Willie featured in the fetish magazine Bizarre. Each show began with the spectral image of the wasp-waist Vampira gliding through knee-deep fog down a dark corridor toward the viewer. At the end of her trance-like walk she would suddenly let out a long, piercing scream as the camera zoomed in on her face. She would then smile and coyly remark, "Screaming relaxes me so." After that Nurmi would sit on a Victorian double-ended sofa decorated with skulls and introduce the movie of the night, sometimes pausing to play with her pet spider Rolo, talk with off-camera ghosts, torment her advertiser, Fletcher Jones in amusing commercials, or drink a Vampira Cocktail at her poison bar. The show's theme music was from the Adagio movement in Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bela Bartok and excerpts from Uranus from The Planets by Gustav Holst.
The show's concept of having a host introduce films was fresh at the time and had never been done before. In later years, stations all over the world would duplicate its format with similar hosts. The Vampira Show was seen in the Los Angeles area only but was featured in articles and photo spreads in Newsweek, TV Guide and Life within weeks of its first broadcast. The show and its bizarre hostess were an instant success and led to Nurmi's appearance on numerous 1950s television shows including The Red Skelton Show and Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town.
Ghoulardi was portrayed by disc jockey, voice announcer, and actor Ernie Anderson as the horror host of late night Shock Theater at WJW-TV, Channel 8, in Cleveland, Ohio.Shock Theater featured grade-"B" science fiction films and horror films. Shock Theater was aired in a Friday late-night time slot, but at the peak of Ghoulardi's popularity, Anderson also hosted the Saturday afternoon Masterpiece Theater, and the weekday children's program Laurel, Ghoulardi and Hardy.
His irreverent and influential host character was a hipster, unlike the horror character prototype. Ghoulardi's costume was a long lab coat covered with "slogan" buttons, horn-rimmed sunglasses with a missing lens, a fake Van Dyke beard and moustache, and various messy, awkwardly-perched wigs. Ghoulardi's stage name was devised by Cleveland restaurateur Ralph Gulko, who was making a pun of the word "ghoul," and his own similar last name, with a generic "ethnic" ending.
During breaks in the movies, Anderson addressed the camera live in a part-Beat, part-ethnic accented commentary, peppered with catchphrases: "Hey, group!," "Stay sick, knif" ("fink"), "Cool it," "Turn blue" and "Ova-dey." Anderson improvised because of his difficulty memorizing lines. He played novelty and offbeat rock and roll tunes, plus jazz and rhythm and blues songs under his live performance. He frequently played the Rivingtons' "Papa-Oo-Mow-Mow" over a clip of a toothless old man gumming.
Shock Theater drew both a black and white cult audience, who loved Ghoulardi's beatnik costume, the music, and his hip talk, which was a nod to black jazz and R&B artists. More mainstream viewers enjoyed his broad, unpretentious ethnic humor.
Ghoulardi spared no unhip targets: the bedroom communities Parma, Ohio, ("Par-ma?!") which he often called "Amrap" (Parma backwards) and Oxnard, California, ("Remember...Oxnard!"), bandleader Lawrence Welk and polka music, Cleveland television personalities Mike Douglas and Dorothy Fuldheim ("Dorothy Baby"), plus other public figures. In particular, Ghoulardi unmercifully jeered Parma for its ethnic, working-class, "white socks" sensibility, creating a series of taped skits called Parma Place. He adopted a crow and named him "Oxnard."
He frequently mocked the poor quality films he was hosting: "If you want to watch a movie, don't watch this one," or "This movie is so bad, you should just go to bed." He had his crew comically insert random stock footage or his own image at climactic moments. In movies with chase scenes, for example, they might superimpose a shot of Ghoulardi running away, as if it was Ghoulardi being pursued.
More than 40 years after Ghoulardi signed off, his legacy endures: Residents of Cleveland still associate polka music, white socks, and pink plastic flamingo and yard globe lawn ornaments with Parma, Ohio.
In the mid-1960s, Ghoulardi's irreverence overtook the rarefied Severance Hall, where Cleveland Orchestra conductor George Szell introduced one of his musicians as being from Parma, Ohio. According to Tim Conway, the concert audience replied: "Par-ma?!"
Ron Sweed went on to fame of his own under the name "The Ghoul," which ran in the Cleveland, Detroit areas and had a limited national syndication.
Chicago's first horror show was WBKB's "Shock Theater." Shock Theater was hosted by Marvin, played by WBKB kid show host Terry Bennett. Marvin could best be described as a demented beatnik type, dressed all in black and sporting a pair of thick lensed black horn rim glasses. He spoke with a voice that was a cross between Peter Lorre and Renfield, the hapless sap that unsuccessfully tries to secure a real estate deal with Count Dracula in the 1931 Universal classic "Dracula." Many viewers referred to him as "Mad Marvin."
"Marvin" wasn't alone down there in the cellar. He was kept company by his wife who he only called "Dear." "Dear" was played by Bennett's wife, Joy, who also appeared on Bennett's daytime kid show as "Pamela Puppet." You never saw "Dear's" face as the camera was always behind her or her face would be obscured. One was never sure just who or what "Dear" was as it was common for "Marvin" to ask "Dear" to lend him a hand only to get the entire arm instead!There were other characters on the show including "Orville" the hunchback servant and "Shorty," who bore more than a passing resemblance to the Frankenstein monster. The show even had its own "shocktale" house band called "The Deadbeats." usually a five piece combo variously consisting of bass fiddle, bongos, guitar, woodwinds, and squeeze box. Dressed all in black, they provided background music while "Marvin" read some offbeat poem or performed hilarious musical parodies.
On the last telecast of "Shock Theatre" viewers finally got to see what "Dear" looked like. The show was being cancelled to make way for ABC-TV's "Fight Of The Week." As the show was winding to a close, "Marvin" turned to his companion and said "Dear, why don't you say good-bye to our friends?" "Dear" then turned around and faced the camera for the first time ever and said "Goodnight! Talk to you soon!" The final half hour, normally the Shocktale segment, featured Terry and Joy, out of character, just chatting about the past shows. Many fans of the show thought it to be the perfect ending. It was August of 1959. Interestingly a similar gimmick would be used on the final telecast of NBC's "Howdy Doody Show" one year later as the always mute Clarabell The Clown said good-bye to all the kids at home and in the Peanut Gallery as that series passed into television history.
The two shows remember the most was Creature Features on WGN and Screaming Yellow Theater.
Creature Features was WGN-TV's entry. Known for it's main title vignettes of Universal Studios classic horror movies set to the haunting guitars of Henry Mancini's theme from the film "Experiment In Terror," and the dark sinister voice of WGN-TV announcer Marty McNeely reading a poemCreature Features amounted to nothing more than a slide shown between commercials with an off camera voice.
WFLD offered "Screaming Yellow Theater" which in the beginning was very similar to WGN-TV's entry in that it was a slide on air between commercial breaks with off camera announcer Jerry G. Bishop. Instead of Mancini, WFLD had Link Wray's classic "Rumble" (covered by The Dave Clark Five) playing in the background. The addition of a woman belting out a blood curdling scream every 15 seconds added to the "suspense."
Eventually Bishop, ad-libbing, began to add some humor to the commer- cial wrap arounds. The single "Screaming Yellow Theater" slide gave way to still shots of Bishop, now dressed as a burned out 60's-ish hippie named "Svengoolie." The show was slowly becoming a hit and before long, the "Screaming Yellow Theater" concept was dropped and replaced with live action comedy bits performed by Bishop and written by him and staff writer Rich Koz.During the show's heyday, it was not unusual to hear and see odd things during the movie that were not there originally. This was the kind of humor Bishop and Koz gave their series and it made the show a huge hit. Sven would appear during the commercial breaks hawking products in commercial parodies (through Sven's exclusive distributor S.T.D.- Sham, Trickery, & Deceit- though most of the time the "D" was changed), welcome local guests, sing songs, and tell stories all with a vaguely familiar "Bela Lugosi" accent.
Tramp Studios is pleased to announce its entry into the world of hosted horror shows with its own creation, Movie Madness with Dr. Praxis.
Movie Madness features a host, Dr. Praxis, and two sidekicks Stromboli and Alice. Each episode will feature bad movies and even worse jokes. Movie Madness will be an animated show of a type that, quite frankly, will make South Park look like a classically animated show. It would be better to have live hosts with a show of this type, therefore we could also have guests on our show, but we do what we can with what we have.
Starting Oct. 30th, 2009, Movie Madness will be seen on a bi-weekly basis on Owensboro Public Access, Owensboro Time-Warner Channel 72, through our friends at Open Door TV as well as being online through Watch Evansville and here at trampstudios.blogspot.com. We're hoping to expand that list shortly, but more on that as the situation develops.
