Local TV Horror Hosts....any memories?

[cinemalover]

Seeing The Leopard Man on the schedule tonight happened to get me thinking about the local horror host that I grew up watching because The Leopard Man was one of the treasures I discovered there. With Halloween fast approaching what better time to test your memories about local horror hosts you may have grown up with. Living in Seattle I never saw some of the famous ones from back east (Zacherly comes to mind) but we did have "The Count", a campy vampire who resided in the basement of a castle where his coffin was kept. At the beginning of each show he would sit up from the coffin and discuss this week's entries (usually a double feature). He had the phoney accent down and dressed to the nines, including a black cape lined with red silk. He wasn't the best host in the world, but this was my first exposure to all the Universal packages as well as a variety of horror cheapies. This was just one more step in my fascination with movies and in particular ones that went bump in the night. On the Friday closest to Halloween they would always show four films back to back. The last one was always Dracula (1931), and if I was able to stay awake that long, in my room watching a 9 inch screen, while the rest of the house was "dead", so to speak, it was pretty creepy. I'd be lying if I said I didn't jump through the roof if there were any unexpected noises in the house (darn that cat, why isn't he sleeping?).

Anyone else have any similar memories?

[mrsl]

Hi cinemalover:

Never a big fan of scary movies, at least when I was a teenager, I did get a kick out of watching Elvira - She was soooooo . . .

I have mentioned in the past, that the summer following the viewing of 'Them', I was scared to be alone at night whenever I heard crickets. And I know, they were ants, but they sounded like crickets.

Anne

[MikeBSG]

I grew up in Cleveland Ohio. The only horror host I watched was the lamest: Super Host on Channel 43. He had a Saturday afternoon show. He wasn't scary or did anything gross. He just wore a lumpy superman costume.

I was too young for the era of Goulardi, but "The Ghoul," the late night host on Channel 61, set the standard in my era. (He came on after my bedtime.) He had a wig and goatee, wore broken sunglasses and apparently blew up toys and said "Zingy-Zingy" between segments of monster movies. He was seen as a Goulardi rip-off, and they both had a druggy-beatnik pesonna.

Channel 8 had Big Chuck and Houlihan, which later became Big Chuck and Little John after Houlihan moved to Florida. They did a lot of commercial parodies and hosted pizza and hot dog eating contests, which apparently became gross at times. Their parody of the "Mean Joe Greene and the little kid" commercial, in which "Greene" picked up the little kid and threw him against the wall, was the talk of the town for a while.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

In Houston, we had Captain Harold, Harold Gunn. He would hawk all kinds of local businesses. On Halloween there would always be a fright night double feature of some sort.

I had never seen The Leopard Man or I Walked With a Zombie and was happy to see parts of them it last night.

When I was younger, I was too afraid. And I'm not all that unaffected by horror movies now.

Spooky stuff is kind of scary.....

[cinemalover]

It was bothering me that I couldn't remember the name of the fright show so Mr. Google once again came to my rescue. It was called Nightmare Theatre and ran from 1968-1975 with a double feature every Friday late night. The Count was play by Joe Towey who was also the producer of the J.P. Patches Show. J.P. was a very popular kids show that ran for 30+ years locally.

[ken123]

In the 1950's Chicago Ch. 7 ran Horror Movies after 10 PM, on Saturaday Night, under the title Shock Theatre witha wild & funny host. I do not remember yhr name of the character. IMHO all attempts by local stations have failed to equal the quality of the first horror host .

[Moraldo Rubini]

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the host was the irreverent Bob Wilkins each Saturday night on Channel 2. He also had a show based on a Sacramento station. Always with a cigar, his very dry humor often cut the celluloid of the movie we were about to watch. This is where I first saw Night of the Living Dead, and I think I'm still scarred from the experience. Roger Corman films, American-International Pictures, Barbara Steel, House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler; yup, those made for some creepy Saturday nights...

[traceyk]

In Dayton, we had Dr Creep. I was too young to see him as the horror show host, but he actually hosted Clubhouse 22, a kid's show for a while. I was on it once--weird, but fun.
Everybody loved him. His sister lived just down the street from me and we were all so jealous because her kids had Dr. Creep for an uncle! LOL

http://www.geocities.com/horrorhostunde ... ts/129.htm

[inglis]

When I was a kid I loved Chiller Thriller .It was on Saturday nights and I saw Creature From The Black Lagoon for the first time .Rod Sterling was one of my favorite hosts .Twilight Zone ,Night Gallery the best !

[TalkieTime]

I used to watch Sinister Cinema on KATU in Portland Oregon. This was in the 1970s. Jimmy Hollister was "Ravenscroft," sort of an Igor, with Victor Ives as a comical caped Dracula, the main host. The series had been off the air for a number of years when there was a "reunion" show for Holloween in 1987. They featured a number of the Universal horror classics that night. Only a portion of that Sinister Cinema "reunion" survived in my videotape collection. I recently dubbed it onto DVD.

Hollister and Ives were long-time Portland radio personalities. Hollister passed away a few years back. Ives started White Springs TV, sort of a poor-man's TCM (uplinked via satellite out of Florida). The programming originates here in Portland. I understand that White Springs TV is also found on some TV stations. I have yet to find it, even though their website reports that it is seen, for at least part of the day, on one of our local cable access channels.

[jdb1]

Fellow New Yorkers, and former NY-ers:

I've been trying to think of local TV horror hosts, and I can't remember any other than Zacherly. We did have "Chiller," and another, similar one on Channell 11 or 9, but they didn't have hosts. Were there any besides Zach? I can't think of any. Maybe there were some and I just didn't stay up late enough to see them?