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Horror Hosts

Interview With Creature Features’
John Stanley

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John Stanley of Creature Features standing next to a guillotineHere’s an interview with Creature Features’ John Stanley I did in 2007, all freshly pressed for you.

Yeah, sure, I’ll tell you what you want to know. The whole…gasp…ungodly thing: I was a TV horror host. Yeah, me. The ordinary guy without a monster suit. I was one of those who introduced monster flicks on Saturday night. Horror classics and non-classics sixty minutes before the arrival of the Witching Hour. Yeah, let the truth be heard throughout the dungeon, throughout the castle of madmen: I was a “Creature Features” man (I Was a TV Horror Host: Memoirs of a Creature Features Man, John Stanley).

Creature Features was a popular television horror movie show that aired on KTVU Channel 2 in Oakland and San Francisco, California, from 1971 to 1984. Originally hosted by Bob Wilkins, John Stanley took over in 1979. Local station horror hosts would introduce, comment, and usually have fun with the evening’s movie fare, but Creature Features took things more seriously and included interviews with horror and sci fi notables. The Universal Studios classics, Roger Corman budget movies, Japanese terrors, and anything not nailed down under a coffin lid was fair game for airplay (you needed a rabbit ears antenna back then).

In New York City, one horror host was The Creep (Lou Steele) on Channel 5. Except for his sunglasses and sinister attitude, Steele  played The Creep without a dungeon backdrop or creepy make-up. I fondly recall spending a lot of time with The Creep and I’m a better person for it. I probably would be a much better person had I been lucky enough to watch John Stanley’s Creature Features. Although he sported the usual horror host trappings of a tomb-like set and outrageous throne chair, Stanley appeared as a normal nerdy guy who knew way too much about the movies he presented. He also had the most wonderful and interesting celebrity guests to chat with.

He wrote an enjoyable and informative book about his experiences called I Was a TV Horror Host. After I read it, I knew I had to ask him to step into the closet for a little chat. …

Interview With Creature Features’
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DVD Review: Shilling Shockers Season 8: The Silents

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Season8Threeshot
I croaked.

Zombos and Glenor Glenda, the maid, stared at me as I sat on my desk. Not at my desk, to be clear, but on top of it.

I croaked again. Glenor fainted.

Zombos reached long for the brandy. He gulped down two fingers worth and continued to stare down at me.  I tried to explain it wasn't my fault, but I could only keep croaking. In desperation I stuck out my long tongue, a weird feeling because it was rooted to the front of my mouth instead of the usual way, and snagged the paper under my right webbed foot. It stuck to the tip of my tongue as I held it up for him to read. He pulled it off, wiped the mucus off with his handkerchief, and read it out loud. What can I say, he was odd like that.

'Dear Zoc, it's been a dreadfully long time since we last sent you the DVDs for Season 8 of Shilling Shockers. Penny Dreadful is quite miffed and Garou is howling with annoyance. I'm sorry but we simply can't wait any longer for your review. And I don't know what Penny will do. Once she gets so worked up like this she zaps spells all over the place.  We lose more dreary ones and reviewers that way, which is so annoying, really. Yours Unruly, the Shilling Shockers Gang.'

Zombos finished reading and tucked the damp paper back under my foot. "So…you are telling me she turned you into a toad? Because you are tardy in reviewing Season 8 of Shilling Shockers?"

I croaked a yes, or something like that.

"I see." He paced back and forth. I continued croaking. Once you get the hang of it, it's kind of fun, actually. Zombos stopped pacing back and forth and devoted his energies to coaxing Glenor off the floor with a little brandy.

"Well, for one thing, we cannot let Chef Machiavelli see you like this, he will go for your legs," said Zombos.   

A fly landed on my desk. Before I realized what I was doing my tongue was out and back in, in a flash. Chewy buggers, but the wings melt in your mouth. Zombos steadied Glenor as she swooned again.

"I know! We will call your sister, Trixie," said Zombos. "She is a witch. She should know the counter spell to this. As witches go she is not all that competent. But, any port in the storm, so they say. Now, is there a review, or any part thereof, that we can post to appease Penny Dreadful's ire in the meanwhile?

I lifted my left webbed foot and was about to tongue the paper under it, but Zombos moved faster and grabbed it. "A less damp copy this time would be preferable. Thank you. I will post it now for you."

——Zoc's review of Shilling Shockers, Season 8——

I wish Garou would eat the muffin already. He keeps pawing it, sitting in a local coffee shop as Penny tells us what's what. Time itself is the featured what's what of Season 8's Shilling Shockers, with silent movies and Luna's time travels stitching the episodes together. Her TARDUS-like outhouse (called the RETARDIS) is pretty good at time-hopping, which creates a pickle for everyone else as they chase after her. Funny, but I always figured Garou as a croissant-kind of lupine.

How better to while away the moments when watching classics like Metropolis, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Phantom of the Opera, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, andThe Inspector General—wait a minute, The Inspector General? What's Danny Kaye and the flagon with the dragon doing here?–with Penny Dreadful and her motley crew of monster hunter Von Bulow, scooby garoo werewolf Garou, and straitjacket-needed Luna moving the shenanigans along. Shilling Shockers is surprising clever in its mixing up of budget cinematic fakery, slapstick, and alluring belly dancing from Tempest. Don't even ask me what a belly dancer is doing in all this, but the music (Kozai Resonance) and her hips will distract you long enough to wonder at how it works so entertainingly well. The extreme closeups of Dr. Von Bulow popping his monocle and Garou twitching those hairy brows at those hip gyrations is hilarious.

Oh, right, about those silent movies. Yes, they are in the public domain, but that's precisely why you need to spice them up with retro-manic horror hosting and humorous segues. It's a truly American art form that Penny, Garou, Dr. Manfred Von Bulow, and Luna maintain and easily execute in a classically wild style: Penny flying to Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's sleepy little town of Holstenwall to find a cure for her sleep deprivation; Penny fretting over the possibility that they've jumped the shark after Luna mixes up the movies and they wind up with the musical comedy, The Inspector General, instead of The Witchfinder General; Penny going for the easy-audience-grab by introducing Garou's younger werewolf cousin to attract the Nicklelodeon set; Penny flippantly drinking strange drinks, left unattended, for no reason other than she's thirsty and it's there.

It is all giddy fun and makes viewing each silent movie special, especially by incorporating their themes into the mayhem. Well, okay, maybe having Tempest dance isn't quite Metropolis, but it did the trick. For Nosferatu, Penny and cohorts visit Count Orlok's Nightmare Gallery, where we find out how special Dr. Manfred Von Bulow, monster hunter, really is while getting a tour of the monstrous displays. And if you've ever wondered how they survived high school, a glitch in time sends them back to horror high and all that high school angst.

Will they finally find Luna with the help of the Chronus Talisman? Will Shilling Shockers jump the shark or be eaten by it? Will Garou ever eat that damn muffin? Will we see more young cousins as the show goes after the family and kiddie horror audiences? Will Danny Kaye ever figure out if the poison's in the vessel with the pestle or the flagon with the dragon?  You will have to pick up the DVDs to find out. Enjoy those classic silents, too. It's good to know they are in great–albeit loony–company.

Book Review: Creatures of the Night
That We Loved So Well

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8741448f59df4ba18a2a025f77f6f45d9515e677Zombos Says: Good

James M. Fetters' Creatures of the Night That We Loved So Well: TV Horror Hosts of Southern California is an important and entertaining book, which makes it all the more disappointing to wade through its poor text-formatting and lazy page layout.

When I received my "Perfect Paperback" $24.95 copy from Amazon, my heart sunk when I saw the misprinted cover cutting off the title; it was a foreshadowing of the poor publishing standards overhwelming this book's otherwise welcomed contents. I recommend you don't buy the paperback version as it appears to be a print-on-demand book with no proofing to accomodate fixed page lengths or any common print sense for that matter. The sloppiness includes quotes appearing ad nauseum in italics, double-spaced paragraph blocks, and Fetters' overused exclamation marks! Photographs, full script pages and show production sheets, and newspaper clip advertisements are either improperly sized, or reproduced so faintly they're hard to read, a shame because they provide a wealth of information for the diehard horror host fan. Captions are out of alignment with photographs, and interviews are not properly referenced and vaguely introduced with a they can explain it better than me  so here you go attitude, so I'm not sure how they were conducted or when.

Ignore all this amateurish presentation and you'll find worthwhile reading that, when paired with Elena M. Watson's Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed, satisfyingly fills in the background for horror hosts Watson only briefly mentions. Fetter's meticulously provides show and channel information for each host, a superb timeline chart comparing national hosts to Southern California hosts, and he even lists what movies were shown, show by show; although the listing is unecessarily repeated in back of the book. More unnecessary page-filling is accomplished by providing capsule summaries for every Shock! and Son of Shock! movie, information easily found elsewhere.

What's really good here are the interviews, included scripts, and coverage for hosts like Ghoulita (Lietta Harvey) , Moona Lisa (Lisa Clark), Sinister Seymour (Larry Vincent), Grimsley (Robert Foster), and The Old Lady (Ottola Nesmith), who was sued by Mae Clark (Frankenstein) for wrongful impersonation. Grimsley takes you on a wild acid trip as he answers questions–I think those were answers, my head is still reeling–about his show, Moona Lisa's  own scripting ("Lisa wrote all of her scripts usually around 5 a.m.") is enlightening, and Sinister Seymour is vividly recollected by Douglas McEwan, who provides his complete, but unproduced, Octaman script for Sinister Seymour's Fright Night. While much of the reminiscenses are nostalgic, the ego-intrigue between Moona Lisa's appearance with Sinister Seymour (he was very ill with cancer at the time) at the Knott's Berry Farm Halloween Haunt provides a rare glimpse into the politics of hosting. 

The Famous Morris (Don Sherman) chapter provided a pleasant surprise for me. Back in the 1970s I was holed up in a motel room, flipping channels until I came across a horror movie. I was shocked (more like wow, this is neat, really, I was young) to see breasts bared. Now I know who's show it happened on, even if I don't remember the actual movie shown. This is one real "Urban Legend" I still remember. Famous Morris also explains how he became Andy the Bartender in the Rocky movies. 

Clarification in the lineage for Jeepers' Creepers Theatre (Jeepers, Ghoulita, Jeepers' Keeper, and The Creeper) cleared up the cobwebs for me regarding the hosting for this long running show. What's clear after reading Fetters' book is how much fun and work went into producing a horror host show, and how clearly American the phenomenon was and still is. We do love our schlocky horror hosts with our horror: they made the bad movies palatable and the good ones even better. 

Jeepers’ Keeper Recording

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Jeepers-keeperHere's an audio cassette tucked away in Professor Kinema's archive that's historically interesting. Jeepers Keeper (Fred Struthman) is the host, I believe. (The cassette listed 1963 as the date of the source recording, but E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts lists 1964 as Struthman's start on Jeepers Creepers.)

Click the link below the picture.

Jeepers' Keeper on KCOP TV CH13

My Halloween: Mr. Lobo

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LoboVictoryFive questions asked over a glowing Jack o’Lantern, under an Autumn moon obscured by passing clouds…in between mouthfuls of candy corn…with Mr. Lobo…up all night at Cinema Insomnia…

Why is Halloween important to you?

For the world it’s a time when adults can give themselves permission to act like kids. And kids are able to dabble in the adult arts of overindulgence and masochism. On a personal level, it’s more economic. Mr. Lobo tends to eat better around Halloween. As a working genre personality/ horror host, it’s our “bread and butter” time–Well, “brownie and peanut butter cup time”. Not only does Mr. Lobo have more work, we also like to hit the sales the Day After Halloween to do my yearly shopping for –Well-Everything…clothes, kitchen wares, pantry items, birthday-X-mas-Valentines-Mothers Day-bereavement gifts! It’s the only time I can buy amenities and necessities that suit Mr. Lobo’s demanding tastes and at deep discounts.

Describe your ideal Halloween.

The season begins with an experiment where we mutilate gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita and let them rot on my front stoop. Not having dental insurance, this is the time of year Mr. Lobo likes to prepare and eat Carmel Apples–to remove any loose are damaged teeth or inferior dental work. It’s always a hoot to make embarrassing or cumbersome costumes for my children out of recyclables. Mr. Lobo is a workaholic–so ideally we will host film shows, make misunderstood movies, and as a legal reverend, marry a Goth couple or two. And Finally, as Mr. Lobo does every “Devil’s Night”, we soap windows, TP the CVS, smash and destroy early Christmas decorations at major department stores, crank call my mother, and set fire to television stations and sponsors that have wronged Mr. Lobo or CINEMA INSOMNIA in the past 10 years of the show.

What Halloween collectibles do you cherish, or hate, or both?

The cheap 49 cent glow in the dark vampire teeth—the kind that come in a little sealed plastic bag and the tops and bottoms are connected with excess plastic: They make you drool like a teething Saint Bernard and they cut your gums so you’re leaving steamers of crimson slime at everyone’s front porch.

I’ve found that that a lot of Elvira dolls are badly made, it goes to prove how hard it is to capture her combination of sexy, silly, and scary…I have one with a witch hat and broom made by Figures Toy Co. that looks like a drag queen with Down Syndrome.

I also like to collect spooky Pez dispensers and those flimsy vintage Halloween treat bags that can maybe hold like 6 and a half pieces of penny candy. Even though they are maddeningly impractical—Mr. Lobo loves the kitschy artwork!

When was your very first Halloween, the one where you really knew it was Halloween, and how was it?

That would be three years ago. It was OK.

Just Kidding. Y’know, it was great when it all began. Mr. Lobo was a regular Frankie fan. I had a Don Post Frankenstein Mask when I was 5 or 6 and I remember wetting it in the sink to make the cut on his forehead look real.

Also, at a school contest I made a classic cardboard box/ tinfoil/ dryer hose robot costume and won a free ice cream at Baskin Robbins–or what I called it: “31 Flavors”. I also remember the belly aches and thinking I would die after consuming Pop Rocks and Coke.

What’s the one Halloween question you want to be asked and what’s your answer?

Great. Now I get to do YOUR JOB!

I have some novelty songs on iTunes including one called “HALLOWEEN CANDY” and I also have over 20 full length CINEMA INSOMNIA episodes on YOUTUBE on our “CINEMAINSOMNIATV” channel including several HALLOWEEN SPECIALS. So I suppose a question I wished someone would ask would be…

Q: Isn’t it amazing that your song “HALLOWEEN CANDY” is the most downloaded song in history, easily eclipsing THE MONSTER MASH and that more people watch CINEMA INSOMNIA episodes at HALLOWEEN than anything else in all of media?

A: Yes, it is amazing.