Good evening...
Given that it is the spookiest time of the year, I thought we’d dive into the rich
tradition of the creature feature, specifically the impact they had on television.
To clarify, creature feature was the generic name for a horror movie, especially one featuring
a monster and a certain level of campiness, whether intentional or not.
Many films produced in the 1930s and 40s found a second life in TV syndication, presented
by hosts, usually assuming some sort of ghoulish character.
In this video, we will be looking at some of these films and personalities, their history,
as well as the lasting legacy of the midnight movie.
From the very beginning television has relied on certain programming anchors, be it situational
comedies, police dramas, sports, most of which had already established themselves as radio
staples.
Horror was no exception.
The genre of horror lends itself perfectly to radio because, imagination; everything
is scarier through the lens of our own experience and audio entertainment, like literature,
exploits this by giving just enough details, letting us fill in the rest.
A great example of this was Orson Welles’ reading of The War of Worlds. Welles created
and hosted the Mercury Theater on the Air, a weekly drama series that frequently adapted
classic literature into radio plays. For Halloween 1938, they chose to adapt H.G. Wells’ The
War of Worlds. Rather than simply perform the story, Welles framed it as if a broadcast
had been interrupted by reports on an alien invasion. Radio listeners were not ready to
have the fourth wall broken on them like that, and the broadcast caused widespread panic.
One of the most popular horror programs of the radio era was CBS’s Suspense.
Running from 1940 to 1962, Suspense presented thrilling stories, often concerning people’s
relationship with then modern technologies, like the automobile or the telephone. These
were plays, conveyed by actors, but a host plugged the sponsor and set up the program,
introducing listeners to the cast and setting.
In 1949, Suspense made the leap to television, along with much of the public’s interest.
Before we jump into TV I want to take a quick detour into the pages of EC Comics. EC was
known for their horror comics and every issue featured several, suspenseful stories tied
together by a host. Now the Crypt-Keeper is probably the most famous of these, he narrated
Tales from the Crypt, but EC actually had two other hosts depending on the series, with
The Vault-Keeper, holding down The Vault of Horror and The Witch hosting the less popular
The Haunt of Fear.
In terms of television though, everything starts with Vampira.
Actress Maila Nurmi won a Hollywood costume contest with a look inspired by Morticia from
Charles Addams’ comics, published in the New Yorker, and later adapted into the Addams
Family. Shortly after, she was approached by produced Hunt Stromberg, Jr. to host horror
movies on LA’s local ABC station.
The result was The Vampira Show. Initially airing at midnight, the time when most TV
channels signed off for the night, the show and Vampira became extremely popular. Unfortunately,
in that time television was broadcast live and not many kinescopes were made of Vampira’s show.
The show would also only last a year, as Nurmi refused to sell the station the rights to
the character.
However despite this and only airing in Los Angeles, media coverage allowed Vampira to
grow into a pop culture icon, a position she leveraged, appearing on talk shows and making
cameos in sitcoms and films, most notably as in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space.
In 1957, Screen Gems licensed the syndication rights to the horror films produced by Universal
Studios in the 1930s and 40s.
For more on them, you can check out our recent Monsters of Propaganda video, but to summarize, these
were adaptations of horror icons from literature and folklore. For many, these are
the definitive film versions of characters such as Dracula or Frankenstein’s Monster.
Packaged and released as Shock Theater, these aired mostly on weekends, either in the afternoon
or late at night, and were geared towards a younger audience. Given their relatively
short runtimes, anywhere between 58 and 99 minutes, networks needed padding to fill a
two-hour block.
Enter a host.
Shock Theater would air all over America, either under that name or Creature Features
or other generic names, with a different host depending on the region.
These hosts were sometimes plucked from the staff already working at the stations and
would fill the needed airtime with monologues and trivia about the film, as well as skits.
Now I’m not going to break down every host but there are a few I want to give some time
to, starting with Zacherley.
John Zacherle began his career as WCAU in Philadelphia, where he worked as a supporting
actor in a local western. In 1957, he became Philly’s host of Shock Theatre, with the
common gimmick of ghoul. His bits included talking to his coffin-bound wife as well as
his assistant who was strung up in a sack. A year later, he moved this act to New York,
retitling the show Zacherley at Large.
Zacherley embraced the emerging genre of rock music and would occasionally feature popular
musical acts and dance parties, similar to American Bandstand.
In Cleveland, Shock Theater was hosted by the hip Ghoulardi. Ghoulardi, portrayed by
Ernie Anderson, was modelled after the beatniks, and like Zacherley, he incorporated music
into his routine, leaning more towards experimental rock and jazz. Like Vampira, and a lot of
other early horror hosts, not that much footage exists of Ghoulardi. I’ve read, he frequently
disparaged local celebrities or politicians. Doing so, he attracted his fair share controversy
and frequently clashed with his producers. Anderson would retire the character in 1966
and returned to it only once, appearing on Joe Bob’s Drive in Theater in 1991.
The character Svengoolie first appeared on Chicago television in Screaming Yellow Theater
and was played by Jerry G. Bishop. This ran from 1970 to 1973. In 1979, the character
would be resurrected by Rich Koz with Son of Svengoolie. Under Koz, Svengoolie would
become one of the longest running horror hosts in history. His gimmick involved signing song
parodies of the films he was showcasing and conducting a running commentary, poking fun
of them, which inspired something coming up.
With the emergence of cable television, broadcast rights for these classic horror films became
increasingly expensive. Still, the horror hosts marched on, airing cheaper, low-budget
films, like those produced by Roger Corman, as well as localized kaiju.
Now we’ve seen the relationship between horror and music, specifically rock music,
and by the 1980s, with nostalgia for these films and even the hosts, bands were formed
under their influence; The Misfits, The Cramps, kids who grew up on horror and television,
who worked the aesthetics into their own brand.
The 1980s would also give us perhaps the most famous horror host in Elvira, Mistress of
the Dark.
After Sinister Seymour, host of LA’s Fright Night, passed away, he was briefly replaced
by Moona Lisa and Grimesly before the show went on hiatus. In 1980, producers attempted
to bring the show back with input from Vampira herself, Maila Nurmi, but Nurmi quit the project
when they refused to hire her choice of actors, Lola Falana. Putting out a casting call, they
found Cassandra Peterson, who was allowed to develop a character herself. Thus, Elvira
was born.
Donning a revealng black dress and wig, she would host Elvira’s Movie Macabre. The films
were a cut below even those shown by other hosts, intentionally, as the much of the show’s
humour revolved around her ridiculing the movie with ample jokes about her sex appeal
thrown in for good measure.
However, she bore a striking resemblance to Vampira, who delivered a cease and desist,
claiming copyright infringement. While admitting their were similarities in the characters
appearances and even catchphrases, the court ruled in favour of Peterson, as Elvira’s
personality differed from Vampira.
Similarly though, she became a pop culture icon, making many appearances on the Tonight
Show and was embraced by MTV at the peak of their popularity. She even got her own movie,
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, in 1988.
The last host, or hosts, we are going to be looking at are the cast of Mystery Science
Theater 3000. The show has undergone many changes throughout the years but the basic
premise remains the same: a human is forced into space and sentenced to watch B-movies.
He is joined by 3 robots, Crow, Tom Servo and Gypsy (oof) who help the human in providing
a running commentary. Unique to MST3K, is the fact that the hosts appear in silhouette
and, while some of the films they watch can be classified as horror, they also critique
educational and industrial films.
It began in 1988 on local television in Minneapolis before being picked up by Comedy Central where
it aired until 1996. It then ran on The Sci-Fi Channel for three seasons and was revived
on Netflix in 2017.
This shows that while the idea of a horror host is rooted in regional television, their
legacy lives on. Today, there are entire cable channels and even a streaming service dedicated
to horror and critics, commenters and enthusiasts, like myself, are plentiful here on YouTube,
for better or worse.
With the nature of airing regionally during the television era, it’s no wonder that
these hosts became local institutions, becoming part of the shared consciousness of the communities
they catered to. Many had extensive careers, some, like Svengoolie, continue to air to
this day.
Now before anyone says, well, what about Rod Serling or Alfred Hitchcock, I wanted to focus
on the format of hosts presenting classic horror films. And, if you want to see more
I will post links to relevant material in the description below. If you have a favourite
or local horror host, let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video please give
us a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven’t and share it. I cant stress how much that
helps.
We are entirely viewer-supported as well. I don’t believe in running ads so if you
want to support the channel and keep it going you can do so at Patreon.com/picsnportraits
and get a ton of exclusive content in return.
Anyway, thank you so much for watching and
Happy Halloween!