Late-night horror hosts

Inspired by the thread on local kid show TV hosts and also in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd start a thread on late-night horror hosts. I grew up in central IL in the 70s and 80s so am actually too young and was in the wrong location to experience watching Creature Features, Chiller Theatre, or other similar shows but I'm still fascinated by the phenomenon nonetheless. It would be great to have others share their childhood memories of watching these and other local horror shows. Here in the Bay Area I hear about Bob Wilkins and what a great host he was but not growing up here I can't relate to watching the show as a kid. The closest I can come is religiously watching Saturday Nightmares on the USA Network at my dad's house every other Saturday night (my mom didn't have cable) in the mid-late 80s. It didn't have a live host but I have fond memories of being introducted to such cheesy flicks such as Vampire Circus, Squirm, and Demon Wind.

 

Here in the South Texas, the local CBS affiliate ran their spookshow, BOO for about 20 something years from the '60's to the mid to late 80's. After they stopped that they still showed genre pics like Robot Monster and Creature from the Black Lagoon until they disappeared in the early 90's in a wave of infomercials and sports.

 

It was on Saturdays in your area? I remember down here it was on Sundays.

 

USA had Commander USA's Groovy Videos and for a period of time, TBS had "Grandpa" Al Lewis' Super Scary Saturday.

Of Course, there was Elvira also.

 

Back in the 1960s, we had "Shock Armstrong, The All-American Ghoul" in Tampa at WTVT. This was on Shock Theater, which was Friday nights from 11:30PM to about 2AM. Great show. I saw all the Universal classics during that period, from 1964-1968 or so.



The horror host was played by Paul Reynolds, a sports broadcaster (and former Top 40 DJ) who also worked for the station. Shock's gimmick was that he lived up in the attic of an old house, and whenever his "mother" would bother him, he'd get her to come up the stairs and dump an entire vat of boiling oil on her (or some other hideous substance). Of course, that always happened off-camera. Hey, it was funny in 1964. This was also the heyday of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, which was a huge fan favorite for horror buffs during the 1960s.

After Reynolds left the station in 1968, the show continued without a host for another six years, but finally went off the air in 1974. My old pal Mike Clark has a great write-up on Shock Theater at this link on his excellent Big 13 website.

 

Lived there, watched that. Dry tongue-in-cheek host. It was a funny show not spooky at all.

 

In Portland, there was a woman named "Tarantula Ghoul" presenting horror films in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and she was quite attractive. In the 1970s, a couple of local radio guys (Victor Ives and Jimmy Hollister) presented "Sinister Cinema" on TV.

 

What about Elvira? She was always a funny scary host. Does anyone remember her?

 

Round here we had Sir Graves Ghastly , though
he was on in the afternoon i think , and of course
the Ghoul

 

Closest I can remember growing up is when Irv Weinstein used to say, "Stay tuned for our Fright Night feature" at 11.30 Fridays on Channel 7 in Buffalo. Always liked Irv.

 

Sir Graves was Saturday afternoon. No one beats the Ghoul. Especially with the sound effects. Froggy says "Hi-ya, hi-ya, hi-ya!"

 

Sammy Terry, host of WTTV/Bloomington IN's Midnite Theater




Now playing on Ariel Stream: Supreme Beings Of Leisure - Never The Same

 

She's back, in a syndicated show.

 

Zacherle in NYC!

Paul


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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=42.351318,-83.059930

 

In the '60s and '70s, Cincinnati had its own Cool Ghoul too, portrayed by Dick Von Hoene.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cool_Ghoul

Used to watch as a kid:

 

You should share some of those stories. A friend of mine met him a few times. Seymour was a real character.

 

For two decades, starting in the 1970s, Tampa had a sort of cheap, imitation Zacherle with "Dr. Paul Bearer" on WTOG, Channel 44's "Creature Feature":



He did the show on a tiny, tiny set, like maybe 15' across, but they used very wide-angle lenses to make it look much bigger on TV. I was astonished to visit the station and see how small that studio was (and I was actually a camera operator at the time). He was a very nice man, and I think Creature Feature might have been one of the longest-running hosted horror-movie shows in America, from 1973-1995.

And who could forget the great Ernie Anderson as horror-host "Ghoulardi" in Cleveland?