Remembrances of a T.V. Horror Host...
THE T.V. HORROR HOST PHENOMENA
A short Ghost-Host history lesson
A exclusive TheHorrorDrunx.com article
by
EL VAMPIRO
Where did all the Ghost-Hosts Go? From their first appearance with Vampira, to their heyday throughout the 60's and 70's, even during their waning days in the 1990's, they were some of the most important and influential personalities on television for Horror movie lovers everywhere. Sure, there are a couple spotty appearances left in a few television markets of the United States, but largely us Ghost-Hosts have gone the way of the dodo bird, slipping steadily toward an almost sure extinction.
Why did this wonderful and popular television sub-genre largely die? What were the reasons? We'll
get to that, plus I'll tell you a little about my own dubious history as a TV Horror host.
ABOVE: The first and most original
Ghost-Host, Maila Nurmi as "VAMPIRA".
Television Horror Hosts, or "Ghost Hosts" were a popular mainstay in this country for most of the last half of the last century. At one time
there was a Horror movie ghost-hosted show in every major city and television "territory" in this country. To understand just how popular and
important they were (not just to Horror fans, but the world at large), you have take a small step back in time and realize some crucial
things...
In the days before cable TV movie channels and home video/DVD (not really that long ago in the late 1970s), if you missed your favorite Horror movie on TV it could be a wait of MANY YEARS before you had another chance to see it. When they showed on TV people scheduled that time to stay home and watch it. It became a MAJOR EVENT in popular culture. Often people would have TV parties just to view a movie. If you were a Horror fan, you really had to work hard at it, getting the new TV guide and checking off the movies you wanted to see, then scheduling your time to be home watching them to be sure you didn't miss it. This also often meant staying up until ungodly hours, since most of the best stuff was scheduled late-late at night into the early morning. Many a time at school or work the next day, Horror fans would be fighting to stay awake, sleep deprived from a Horror movie hangover.
Because there was no cable television you had to rely on local television stations in your area. They, like the radio stations on your car radio, were only accessible to you if you lived close enough to the TV transmitter and the TV antenna on the top of your house was good enough. Again, there was NO home video, because it hadn't been invented yet.
.The first host of a show dedicated strictly to Horror films, its originator, was the groundbreaking VAMPIRA (played by Maila Nurmi) who transmitted in the Los Angeles area. Her show was so fanatically and madly popular, creating such excitement, that she was given a feature story in LIFE magazine. An amazing achievement when you consider that most of the readership of LIFE lived outside of the 100 miles or so of the Los Angeles area that her stations transmitter signal reached, so they were unable to even watch the show! Pretty astounding for a little local station at that time to get national (and international) magazine coverage! Vampira was HUGELY popular overnight.
Taking a cue from The Vampira Show, every TV territory in the country soon scrambled to get their own Horror Host show and the craze spread like an unchecked forest fire.
I was incredibly lucky. Though I was later a friend of Maila's, I'd never had the pleasure to
watch her show (it was off the air due to her being blacklisted long before I was born) but I did get the benefit of seeing many of her contemporaries,
some of which were the best Horror hosts in the country...
Being an East coast kid, first there was ZACKERLEY (real name John Zackerley) on CHILLER THEATER
broadcast out of first Philadelphia, then New York City. Always doing laboratory experiments and chopping up "brains" (actually dyed
cauliflower) and Ectoplasmic Blobs (Green Jell-O) he was literally a cut-up. Zackerley would also be the first Horror host to put out music on records
and even appeared on some early covers of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.
ABOVE: "ZACKERLEY" played by
John Zackerley, on CHILLER THEATER.
Awhile after my family moved near Los Angeles California I was lucky enough to see Zackerley's West
coast contemporary, SEYMOUR (real name Larry Vincent) on the show FRIGHT NIGHT. L.A. was Seymour-crazy in those days, with Seymour making live guest
appearances at locations all over the Los Angeles area. In fact, the first Knotts Scary Farm nights around Halloween-time were originated and hosted by
Seymour.
When Seymour's show switched stations, as he shot his final show he not only accused the old stations programing executives of pot smoking and drug
use, but also trashed his set on the way out, then shot remote footage of him leaving the studio to hitchhike to the new studio down the street and
brazenly storm the gates! Larry Vincent also appeared in a few Horror films (including WITCHMAKER, THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT, DOCTOR DEATH:
SEEKER OF SOULS) and kept busy right up until his death from cancer in 1975.
The somber realization that Seymour's gaunt creepy looks and sunken cheeks were due to his cancer, was a sad thought to the many that would miss him
and his "Slimy green wall". His fans were legion and he was paid perhaps the ultimate posthumous tribute when writer/director Tom Holland made
the vampire film FRIGHT NIGHT (the same title as Seymour's show) with Roddy McDowell playing a Horror host named "Peter Vincent" who was
based on Larry Vincent and the program his Seymour character appeared on.
When my family moved again to Northern California, there was THE GHOUL (real name Ron Sweet)
rebroadcast on channel 44, who was more of a insane/cool beatnik with a goatee, in the mold of Big Daddy Roth than a horror character. The show actually
originated in Cleveland Ohio and they sent video tapes to the San Francisco station for re-broadcast.
ABOVE: Larry Sweet as "THE GHOUL"
The Ghoul was crazy. Some favorite bits I can remember from his show, featured The Ghoul committing many random bizarro delinquent acts. He blew up model
car kits with firecrackers (what young boy wouldn't love that?!), concocted home-made wine by pummeling grapes with a sledge hammer (the stuff The
Horror Drunx spring from?), destroyed a bust of himself (containing a tape recorder of his own voice) with cherry bombs and a hammer, and once I can
recall him even throwing a brick directly at the TV camera breaking the lens and sending the studio crew into a panic as they tried to find another to
replace it. "Hey-hey-hey it's The cool Ghoul all the way!" was his oft repeated catch phrase.
There were also Svenghoolie, Mr. Mephisto, The Dancing White Gorilla from MONSTER MOVIE MATINEE and several other Horror hosts whose shows originated in other cities, but via the miracle of video tape were rebroadcast on stations in the San Francisco bay area.
But perhaps the greatest of all the Horror hosts, was a guy who never had to wear a costume or a face
full of fright make-up. It was BOB WILKINS, the host of CREATURE FEATURES, broadcast out of Oakland / San Francisco's KTVU channel 2. ..Though he
also had Horror host shows on channel 40 out of the Sacramento / Stockton area, as well as a short stint earlier in his career on channel 3. He got his
start as a Horror host (on channel 3) in 1966 with ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE and being probably the only truthful person on television, Wilkins told
his audience "Tonight's movie is a real stinker. I wouldn't watch it if I was you.", then proceeded to tell them what was showing on
competing channels that night. His ratings soared and his popularity grew for the next 13 years.
ABOVE: The great Bob Wilkins of CREATURE FEATURES
Probably the greatest thing about Bob Wilkins's show (in the golden days of Horror fandom before the internet) is that it was also an information
center for the local Horror and Science-Fiction community. If an actor was making and appearance or there was going to be a convention, if there was a
great movie memorabilia store or book shop, if there was a sneak preview of a new film at a movie theater, you would hear about it in advance and how to
attend it yourself in person, by watching Creature Features. Not just that, but you didn't get one movie, you got a double-feature AND a weekly
serial AND trailers AND short subjects, amateur films, everything in one. This in the days before you could see films on demand from home video and might
have to wait years to see a movie again! So Creature Features was a must-see family event in my household.
Add to that, he would also have interviews on his show from Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price...all the living greats of Horror. Bob Wilkins
show was in prime time and would often beat out the major networks in the Nielsen ratings, THAT is how big Creature Features and the Horror host movement
really was in the days of limited broadcast stations. It was also the first program in the world to ever televise NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and showed
many of the Hammer horror films UNCUT with all of the nudity intact-an important consideration if you were a developing teenage boy. CREATURE FEATURES
was an absolute godsend to those in the Horror community. As the story goes, after STAR WARS was a big success in 1977, even George Lucas sought Bob
Wilkins out and said that he grew up watching his show and it gave his life direction to become a film maker. Heady stuff for a local Horror host on a
small station to hear.
In about 1979 Bob left Creature Features on channel 2, though he continued his BOB WILKINS HORROR DOUBLE FEATURE show on Channel 40 until 1981. All in all, on one station or another, he had been a Horror movie host for 15 straight years, most of them on more than one channel on different shows during the same period. That my friends is a record. Though Bonanza is listed in the record books as the longest running TV show, it only ran for 14 years and that was on a major network. Wilkins had done more separate episodes, doing them on low budget local station. His estimated number of films shown just during his nine years on channel 2's Creature Features alone was nearly 700.
Wilkins had also appeared in a couple Horror films as an actor. THE MILPITAS MONSTER, and NIGHTMARE IN BLOOD written and directed by John Stanley. In 1979 when Bob Wilkins left CREATURE FEATURES, John Stanley would be the one to replace him, inheriting the Ghost-Host duties.
Stanley's take was a bit different. John Stanley was a book author and a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, a film expert and historian with several movie guide books to his credit. He would continue with Creature Features from 1979 until its final episode in 1984. His special guest on his final episode would be, who else, Bob Wilkins the man who started it all.
Without all the influences I had growing up, of the Horror hosts listed above, I never would have had the desire and drive to also become a Horror host myself in late 1988.
I got involved with the Horror Host phenomena co-Horror hosting my own television show called THE VIDEO
ASYLUM. The show was taped in Los Angeles, running locally at first, then was quickly picked up in almost every major television market in the U.S., even
spreading its disease overseas being re-run on the BBC in England and in Australia.
One thing that attracted me to the project was that the premise of The Video Asylum was a radical
departure from the usual TV Horror shows with a fresh approach. It took place in the "Hollywoodland Asylum for The Criminally Insane" where the
inmates / patients were treated with the revolutionary new Cathode-Ray Therapy! (NOTE: Of course, the cathode-ray tube is the scientific name for the
picture tube in television sets). The main patients in the asylum (and co-hosts of the show) were none other than myself EL VAMPIRO "The greatest
masked and caped Mexican wrestler in all of Transylvania" and POGO WITZMACHER who was a sicko tattooed and leather-clad clown with a huge red Elvis
pompadour.
ABOVE: THE VIDEO ASYLUM'S hosts
Vampiro and Pogo Witzmacher.
I've never admitted this before in print, but the name "VAMPIRO" was a homage to the first and most famous Horror Host "VAMPIRA"
who I had known from my introduction through Sid. In the best tradition of the masked Lucha Libre wrestler, I've always kept my name, face and true
identity a secret to this day, never having my real name used in the host credits of the show. The name for the character "POGO WITZMACHER"
conversely, was a homage to "Pogo" the clown that real life serial-killer John Wayne Gacy would play at kids parties, and
"Witzmacher" (German for "Smart Maker" or "Wise-cracker") which was the brand name of the camera The Joker held on the
cover of The Killing Joke BATMAN graphic novel.
Pogo and Vampiro were both locked in their padded cell / studio fitted with a television and VCR, only
armed with a TV Guide and a television remote... Once in awhile they would be visited by either "Twinkle" the sexy elf girl that only they
could see, or Nurse Cindy Bottle a sexy nurse at the asylum.
Musical guests (many of whom would perform in the padded cell studio) included everyone from The Ramones, The Damned and Ice-T, to up and coming local
bands... Which Twinkle and Nurse Cindy would be go-go dancers for. Lots of celebrity Horror movie guests would appear from time to time too.
ABOVE: A print ad for THE VIDEO ASYLUM
featuring Vampiro, Pogo, and Twinkle.
The total and complete ride (including re-runs) lasted from 1988 to 1992. In fact, you may be surprised to hear that our own Horror Drunx online magazine
editor-in-chief Sid Terror (using another of his many guises and alter-egos) was the writer & director of THE VIDEO ASYLUM for most of its run! Truth
be known, he should have been a TV Horror host himself, one of the most knowledgeable film expert / historians and best interviewers I've ever known.
Fortunately, he DOES Horror host for live events and screenings fairly often. I own him a major debt of gratitude for putting the words in my mouth that
enabled me to pull off my own host duties!
After we'd hit our stride and had a number of episodes under our
belt, the production workload was a show every week, with a "best of" collection of clips from previous shows (and entire segments that were
unused due to our limited running time) shown the last week of every month. Sadly, only a handful of episodes exist today. The story that I got is that
it is because the storage facility where the master tapes were housed got flooded at some point. I think I may still have about 15-20 episodes on VHS
tape that I recorded myself off the air when it was first broadcast. But that is it. If anyone else out there recorded episodes, contact me.
It was a show with a solid, more than cult following, considered very cutting edge and cool. Rob Zombie (while he was still in the band White Zombie) was
a huge fan of the show that would always be trying to crash our wrap parties and other events. He was such a big fan in fact, that you may notice some
similarities between his character "EL SUPERBEASTO" and my character "EL VAMPIRO". Ah, once an unoriginal thief, always an unoriginal
thief, eh Rob?
THE VIDEO ASYLUM was cool, cutting edge, alternative, and we were always pushing the boundries of what we could get away with on the air. At one time we
were being courted by both MTV and the then new Paramount Pictures Network. MTV was taking forever trying to decide between picking up our show and
another program.
Then tragedy hit and it was all over. I know why The Video Asylum died... At a party for a Paramount
executive, a producer of The Video Asylum caused a bit of an embarassing scene. Sid Terror, whose contacts in the entertainment business were the ones
that had gotten us that far, quit immediately on the spot rather than be connected professionally to that producer anymore and be tainted by association.
I guess I can't say as I blame him for leaving. I never did another episode again either, mostly because I supported Sid's decision. With the
main creative power behind the show gone (Sid was the writer and director of the show) that producer, was never able to get it together enough to ever
film another episode. The chemestry that made it work was gone.
With us out of the running, the other show that we were up against in the MTV matter ended up being green-lighted and put into production... BEAVIS AND
BUTTHEAD became a huge hit in fact. That is how close we were to having a regular time slot and the massive backing of a National (and International)
network! Would it have helped revive the Horror host genre had we continued on MTV or The Paramount network... Who can say?
The only shows that did do something similar to that around the same time were hosted by Joe Bob Briggs and Commander USA, neither of which were particularly a Horror personality.
My guess would be that no, in the final wash the Horror host TV show genre would still have all but died out, which is a shame considering what a unique slice of Americana has been lost or forgotten by a large segment of the public. I can personally blame the home video as the main culprit for the demise of the Horror host. If the public can easily pop in a DVD from Netflix and watch it any time of the night or day they chose, there is no reason to stay up late an watch the same movie interrupted by a ghost host and numerous commercials. But those segments were a huge part of the fun of it all.
What is the future of the genre? Well, some people have tried doing a similar thing with streaming internet shows and YouTube clips, but truthfully they just don't hit the mark. Watching in an office during lunch break just doesn't have the same ambiance as watching a creepy old film in the middle of the night in a dark still house when you are the only one on the block that is awake.
In conversations with other vintage TV Horror hosts, what we find disturbing are how many people say they are Horror hosts, but really aren't. Sorry to be a purest, but it's pretty much a lie if you were never actually on TV in a weekly time slot, isn't it now?
By way of the Iceman, The Milk man, the dodo bird and the dinosaur, we true Ghost Hosts pretty much don't exist anymore. We're extinct. If you weren't around to see us, you missed a great time.
Speaking for myself, fortunately I act as well as write on occasion and am still a part of the motion-picture industry. People in the business don't know I'm a part of The Horror Drunx invisible infiltrating army in the entertainment industry, so I can continue to try and change the Horror genre for the better from inside the evil machine. There was a reason I never took off the mask and let my true face be seen in public. As EL VAMPIRO my secret identity is still a secret.
"My name is Vampiro and I am a Horror Drunx and former TV Horror host."
EL VAMPIRO
Possibly still haunting the Hollywoodland Asylum for the criminally insane somewhere on video tape or DVD.
Parts Unknown
November 2009
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