TV Horror Hosts… for the geezer-impaired

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Brad Guigar

In Friday’s post, I referenced a topic — TV Horror Hosts — that I was told some of you weren’t familiar with. I guess I’m getting old…

For you non-geezer-types… back in the day, they used to have late-night TV shows that would present re-runs of old sci-fi or horror movies. This American pop-culture craze was spawned in 1957, when Screen Gems released a bunch of old Universal Studios horror movies to  television stations and encouraged the concept of having hosts for the presentations.

As the concept evolved, these TV horror hosts would begin doing short sketches and bits as “bumpers” to the TV commercials. Pretty soon, people were tuning in to watch the hosts — not so much the movies these characters were hosting.

And keep in mind, this was the Golden Age of TV. Pre cable. So every major media market had its own TV horror host. For example, in Cleveland, it was the cult-favorite Ghoulardi…

… and there was Philly’s own Roland, who morphed into Zacherle. (He took his show to a national audience as Zacherley at WABC-TV in New York)…

The very first TV horror host was Vampira. You remember her from her role in the Ed Wood classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

…and her spiritual successor, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark…

For The Munsters star, “Grampa” Al Lewis, it was a chance to revive (resurrect?) his career…

And who could forget the brilliant send-up of TV horror hosts by Joe Flaherty as SCTV’s Count Floyd. “Ooooh! That’s scarey!”

Me? I was a faithful fan of Commander USA’s Groovy Movies in the 1980s. He is one of my all-time favorite TV Horror hosts.

In fact, the starburst design on Commander Heroic’s costume — heck, the name itself — is a direct homage to the good Commander.

A few of the classic horror hosts have tried to reproduce their early success by self-broadcasting on the Web. (Sound familiar webcomics fans?) I’m not sure how successful they’ve been, but I do know that pop culture’s cyclical nature promises a return… someday… somehow. So in true 1950s sci-fi fashion, I’ll just wrap this up like so:

THE END . . . ?