Growing up in Florida meant being treated to a Saturday afternoon with Dr. Paul Bearer. He was on for over 20 years.
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She’s a new one on me. Nice that hosts are still coming along! She seems to have some commonality with Elvira, which is a good thing.
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I miss Noble Roman’s. Great pizza.
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As I’ve read his name on numerous occasions, I’ve checked for him on YouTube but not found much. What I’ve seen, I like.
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I forgot about that one! The whole Don Dohler collection has been a mainstay for a lot of us Baltimore folks for years. My crew is even considering doing a reunion screening some time in the next year or so.
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Dr. Paul Bearer was wonderful. Always had a cigarette going. I met him at a miniature golf place in Dunedin.
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My favorite is one I never got to watch. His name is Bert Potts. He and a friend were the local horror hosts in some town in… Indiana, I think? In the 70s? He’s lived a lot of places and I’ve lost track of which amazing story about a random job is from where. But he had a late-night show and a place of pride in the local Halloween parade. He’s a family friend and a real cut-up.
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Here’s a B movie trivia challenge held at the Virginia Science Museum several years back with four horror hosts competing.
In the documentary Virginia Creepers (about Virginia-based horror hosts), there was this Bowman Body clip that would have been at home on the MST3K Poopie Reel. In it, Bowman and the guy with him were talking about the Frightful Five, a horror host basketball team that did exhibition matches at area high schools. Anyway, Bowman had a basketball as a prop and at one point passed it to the other guy. He doesn’t catch it and it rolls off, but they keep going. One of the stage crew thinks that Bowman will be wanting the ball back and throws it over. However, Bowman doesn’t notice this and gets hit by the ball, loses his balance, and falls into his prop coffin.
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That’s awesome! Do you know anywhere that is still selling the DVD for Virginia Creepers? I can only find used copies and the streaming version.
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In the 70s, Victor Ives hosted Sinister Cinema in Portland, OR. It was a double feature, late at night. My mom used to wake us up for the 11:30 show and my brother and I would sit on the couch covered in blankets and watch the first movie. We were only allowed to watch the first one, which made seven-year-old me think that the second one had to be too gory and intense for seven-year-olds. Sinister Cinema, early 70's episode - YouTube
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Just yesterday I discovered and watched my first episode of The Late Dr. Lady Show (out of Ohio in the early 2000s), and today, in a wild coincidence, I found his (very active) monster mask review channel on YouTube.
I recommend it for fans of horror hosts, corny jokes, and monster masks!
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Before my time, but my mother used to enjoy Zacherley (NYC & Philly local host). I have been enjoying Svengoolie on MeTV - not strictly local, but has that feel. Growing up we had USA up all night & Elvira.
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Grew up on the same hosts trdsf mentioned:
Super Host
Big Chuck and Lil John (or Hoolihan)
Son of Ghoul & Cool Ghoul
Now:
Svengoolie
Big Bad B Movie Show (favorite)
Really Spooky Movie
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Thanks!
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We have a guy named Zomboo who airs early Sunday morning because his shows aren’t closed captioned. If they were, he’d be on 11:30. Great news for DVR fans, though
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Growing up in the greater Sacramento area, I’m afraid I missed out on the late great Bob Wilkins, who got his start at our local KCRA 3 and KTXL 40 stations back in the 80’s, when I was too little to stay up late watching scary movies.
My first horror host was actually Whitey Gleason, a local radio DJ who hosted Fritenite Theater on UHF channel 58 from 1990 to about 1994. Fritenite Theater was nothing to write home about in terms of funny horror host shtick, but it was my first exposure to bad horror movies as an art form. (And once I pulled an old TV out of a yard sale pile and clandestinely set it up in my closet, it meant I could watch bad horror movies late at night in my room with the sound turned down low, defying bedtime as as all rebellious 12 year-olds are wont to do.)
Of course, I lost interest in Fritenite Theater as soon as we got cable and I could watch shows like MST3K, Joe Bob Briggs, and whatever else was playing late at night on TNT, USA, or AMC. (It didn’t help that Fritenite only had a handful of movies that they showed in rotation, and there are only so many times anyone can sit through Hell Comes to Frogtown or Night of the Creeps, which I swear got shown roughly once a month)
Then in the early 2000’s a proper local horror host showed up; the esteemed Mr. Lobo, who ran Cinema Insomnia for a couple of years on KXTV channel 10, before moving to public access, and more recently starting the Roku Channel OSI-74 which is now a sort of nature preserve for the critically endangered horror host.
Mr. Lobo was very much the spiritual successor to Bob Wilkins (even adopting the signature rocking chair), frequently intercutting his “misunderstood” movies with short skits and other odd comedy bits, somewhat in keeping with the ultra low budget KTMA era of MST3K. Oddly enough, I went to high school with his producer (who was recording really really weird stuff even back then), and ended up rediscovered my love for the show more than 15 years after it vanished off the local airwaves and miraculously rose from the dead on the internet.
While I caught a good chunk of his early 2000 run on KXTV, I was going to college during the years he was active on public access, so I didn’t get a chance to see much of the period of the show most fans are familiar with. But Mr. Lobo was also extremely active in local events, and the face of local Horror during the 2000’s, frequently introducing movies and other special events at The Crest and Colonial theater, which is where I mainly know him from. Always a class act and a true connoisseur of the cheesy movie, I’m proud to have him representing the home team… and now pretty much the international team, since other than Joe Bob Briggs, who’s sadly getting on in years, he’s one of the few local horror hosts who’s still actively releasing new stuff and keeping the sacred flame burning.
If you aren’t familiar with Mr. Lobo, you can watch Cinema Insomnia over on https://www.osi74.com/, their Roku channel, or on YouTube.
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Mr. Lobo’s the best! he has a podcast, too (Sleepless Knights, where podcasts are found).
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Hush your mouth! Joe Bob, like the Drive-In, will never die!
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Syracuse, New York here, and WSYR Channel 3’s Saturday afternoon Monster Movie Matinee, hosted by Epal (William Lape aka Bill Everett) and Dr. Witty (Alan Milair), was my first exposure to cheesy SF movies!
Bill Everett was also one of WSYR’s weathermen, host of the local Bowling for Dollars, and also played “Salty Sam” on their afternoon kid’s cartoon show! Truly a Renaissance man.
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