During the mid 1950s there began a local television tradition that has continued in various forms to this day. As televisions became more common in the home, the movies studios, long hesitant to release movies to the small screen, finally relented and made available movies produced post 1948. As a result of this, hundreds of cheaply made mad scientist/werewolf/cheap rip-off Frankenstein monster type movies became late night filler. The relative in expense of the films made them very attractive to local stations looking to fill air time and commercial space. But just running the movie wasn't enough. These were films that couldn't possibly be taken seriously.
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, having 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 Theater 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. 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 I remember the most was Creature Features on WGN and Screaming Yellow Theater, aka The Svengoolie Show, on WFLD.
Creature Features was WGN-TV's entry into the horror show world. 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 poem.
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 (as 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 commercial 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 the vaguely familiar "Bela Lugosi" accent which had been popularized by the comic Lenny Bruce. (Lugosi's accent never sounded like the comic version.)
Jerry Bishop left the show in the mid 70's. Rich Koz took over the show as The Son of Svengoolie.
Today, Rich Koz continues the show on WCIU in Chicago as a grown-up Svengoolie.
There is one other host I wish to mention. I never had the pleasure of seeing this host on television, but I have the pleasure of knowing the lady who portrayed this character.
Legend states that Stella was "born in North Libido, New Jersey, a small village outside of Atlantic City." The only child of traveling hecklers, she was dropped in a plastic basket at Fifth and Skunk in front of Guido's Hair Weaving and Plumbing Supplies. Stella was the host of Saturday Night Dead, played by Karen Scioli on KYW-TV, Channel 3, which at that time was the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, PA.
"I actually auditioned for the role. It was sort of like Gone With The Wind only they were looking for the Man-Eater From Manayunk," Karen Scioli said in an interview, "I was living in New York and my mom in Philadelphia cut out the newspaper ad and sent it to me. I was doing stand up comedy at the time so I thought, 'What the heck,' so I auditioned and I got the part. I think there were 150 people that tried out for the role. They brought out every ghoul and vampire and crazy person that came out for it. I think also that because I was doing comedy they figured I could be helpful with the writing."
Many infamous personalities visited the show including John Zacherle, Jane "Pixanne" Norman, Bill "Wee Willie" Webber, Rip Taylor and Sally Starr. Each week, Stella introduced a "B" horror movie, and performed ultra dodgy skits with her sidekicks Hives the butler, Iggy the dungeon monster, and Beda Lugosi, her talking and vibrating bed
Scioli's slapstick "can't win" delivery is what made her series memorable. Using a combination of decadence, innuendo and shady-natured hijinks; she led the cast and viewers right into the flick of the night as only she could. Most of us relished the combination as did WKYW, the NBC affiliate that kept her on air and following Saturday Night Live for several gore filled years. And while Stella never became a national name like Vampira or Zacherley, she will always be remembered as the "Daughter Of Desire" in this genre of American folk art.
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| Stella in her disguise as a normal person named Karen Scioli |
Karen Scioli is listed in the Broadcast Pioneers of Philidelphia, but she may be known more as "Re Re DeNucci" from WOGL's "Breakfast Club" with Ross Brittain and Valerie Knight.
As the years went on, horror shows fell by the wayside. People went on with their lives and careers. Ratings fell, shows were canceled. More network shows became available for late night slots. In some instances, independent stations suddenly decided these type of shows were beneath them.
But horror shows enjoyed a resurgence via both Community (Public) access television stations and the Internet.
Across the country, hundreds of community groups, educators, artists, non-profit organizations and residents are reaching their community through one of the most powerful communications tools: cable television. They are creating programs for their communities with the help of their local "public access" channel.
In the United States, public access is an alternative system of television which originated as a response to disenchantment with the commercial broadcasting system, and in order to fulfil some of the social potential of cable television.
Public Access was created to provide a free-speech forum, open to all on a first-come, first-served basis without discrimination or favoritism based on content. It should be noted that the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is not public access television and has no official connection with PEG. PBS is funded publicly and by private grants and contributions, as well as an element of commercial sponsorship. PEG is funded by cable television companies through subscription fees, and also by private grants and contributions. PBS does not regularly provide free use of facilities to produce programming.
In 1968 the Dale City, Virginia Jaycees' Junior Chamber of Commerce operated the first community-operated closed-circuit television channel in the United States, when Cable TV Incorporated gave a channel to the public access center Dale City Television (DCTV), but the center failed two years later.
The FCC issued its Third Report and Order[citation needed] in 1972, which required all cable systems in the top 100 U.S. television markets to provide three access-channels, one each for educational, local government, and public use, where if there was insufficient demand for three in a particular market, the cable companies could offer fewer channels, but at least one, and any group or individual wishing to use the channels would be allowed to. Mostly, cable companies use the public access channels for the benefit of the local communites. Public access channels can allow programming that was produced outside of the municipality.
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.
The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's population uses the services of the Internet.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own standards. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely-affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.
Many horror hosts maintain a show on public access stations or the Internet. In some cases, both mediums are used. This community of hosts and fans have grown to the point that conventions have grown in different parts of the country.
Count Gore De Vol is a horror host who originally appeared on Washington, DC's WDCA from 1973 to 1987.
Count Gore De Vol
Originally named M. T. Graves, the character was played by announcer Dick Dyszel, and originated on the WDCA's version of the Bozo the Clown program. When the character got a positive reaction, he was given his own program called Creature Feature. The character's name is either a play on the name of acerbic author Gore Vidal or the name of a prominent Washington D.C. funeral home, "De Vol." Gore De Vol was the Washington/Baltimore area's longest running horror host. He returned to DC airwaves for a one-time special, Countdown with the Count, on New Year's Eve 1999/2000.
Count Gore De Vol's contribution to the American horror host tradition is significant in a number of ways. As Washington D.C.'s horror host throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s, Gore used the platform to satirize national politics from a local perspective. In the era of Watergate and Iran-Contra, Count Gore took frequent shots at the political folly with an ad lib, shoot-from-the-hip style that led local audiences to feel they were part of an Inside the Beltway private joke even when the subject was high profile.
Count Gore's Creature Feature also embraced the sexual revolution of the 1970s and his guests for the show included several Penthouse pets. Though he never had an official sidekick, he frequently employed the talents of writer and actress Eleanor Herman in the role of Countess von Stauffenberger. The two played off each other with a series of romantic near misses and sexual innuendos that made the show a success even when many horror hosts were losing their shows in the wake of the original Saturday Night Live.
Gore's iconoclastic style surfaced in a number of other ways. He was the first host in America to broadcast an unedited version of Night of the Living Dead. He also secretly began transmitting his own show in stereo a week before his station officially made the announcement, making Creature Feature Washington's first stereo broadcast.
In 1998, Count Gore De Vol became the first horror host to present a weekly show on the Internet, featuring streaming video of movies and shorts hosted by The Count, and interviews with celebrities. Other hosts from around the country also contribute to the program, providing reviews, contests, and other "strange and evil creations." There are also several regular features on the site, from movie and book reviews to monster model building and horror inspired music and video games.
Dick Dyzel,
the man behind Count Gore De Vol
Since Count De Vol's pioneering web site on the Internet, the numbers of horror hosts have grown. A quick sampling of hosts include:
Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers http://www.shillingshockers.com/
Alternative Realities with Dr. Sigmund Zoid http://www.alternativerealities.tv
Midnite Mausoleum http://midnitemausoleum.com
Fendred's Chamber http://www.myspace.com/fendreds.chamber
Sally the Zombie Cheerleader http://www.thezombiecheerleader.com
There are many, many more horror hosts on the Internet. A good place to start searching for horror hosts is http://www.horrorhostgraveyard.com/
Penny Dreadful the 13th
For Halloween of 2009, Tramp Studios, through its Firefly Television logo, launched the Movie Madness, its entry into the world of horror hosts.
The Cast of Movie Madness
Stromboli, Alice and Dr. Praxis
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| Dr. Mel Praxis |
Movie Madness is an animated show. The animation tends to make South Park appear to be a classically animated show. The cast consists of Dr. Praxis, Dr. Mel Praxis (that should give you a taste of the humor used), Alice and Stromboli. Dr. Praxis was originally conceived as a cross between Dr. Caligari and Dr. Demento. Alice was named after Alice in the Wonderland books. Stromboli is - yeah, well, he's Stromboli. He likes to think of himself as a musician, though the rest of the world tends to disagree.
The three characters introduce the movie, make jokes and perform some sketches during the program. Humor, usually bad jokes or bad puns, are almost as important to the Movie Madness as the movies are. The movies are drawn from the Internet Archive and are in the public domain.
Movie Madness bills itself as a place of "bad movies and worse jokes." The producer, Keenan Powell, fondly remembers watching the original Svengoolie on Friday Nights.
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| Alice |
"Svengoolie told jokes about a Chicago west side suburb called Berwyn. If you drive into Berwyn, you need to set your watch back twenty years. To this day, if I meet someone from Berwyn, my first impulse is to ask to see their passport and visa. Svengoolie is where I aquired my fondness for the rubber dead chickens."
Movie Madness is shown on Owensboro Time-Warner Public Access Channel 72. Friday nights @ 10:00 P.M., Saturday @ 1:00 P.M. and 10:00 P.M., Sunday at 1:00 P.M. Additionally, Movie Madness is available as on-demand video through madmov.blogspot.tv
If you would like to see Movie Madness on your local public access channel, e-mail us at producer@trampstudios.com. If you would like to comment on the show, write us at madmov1960@gmail.com
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| Stromboli |
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