Sad news…Vampira has died. She was very young for a vampire, only 86, and there's no word on whether it was a stake or sunlight that ended her long career as one of the rare Finnish vampires (real name: Maila Syrjäniemi). You may recall her from her important role in Plan 9 from Outer Space.
It's the last sad whimper to the lingering death of an old tradition. When I was a young'un, there were horror hosts everywhere—you knew that if you turned on the TV anywhere at about 11 on a Friday or Saturday night, there'd be somebody in a Halloween costume introducing some old black-and-white horror movie. It was campy, it was predictable, the movies tended to be awful (although when one of the old Universal classics with Karloff or Chaney, or anything with Vincent Price, was scheduled, I made a special effort to watch it), and it was always fun. Rmember those cheap Japanese monster movies? Roger Corman's low-budget rip-offs of Edgar Allen Poe titles, with content completely divorced from anything Poe ever wrote? That phenomenal wave of British horror coming out of Hammer Studios? Them, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Blob—all that 50s paranoia about nuclear bombs?
Many of us godless people still identify as cultural Christians because that was the background of our upbringing, but I think my late night inoculations with classic horror and sci-fi movies had a deeper, more long-lasting influence on my life than those boring, unentertaining, unengaging Sunday mornings spent in church pews. I am a cultural Frankenstein, Jekyll, Moreau, Morbius, Pretorius, Phibes, and even Vampira — and they were all the more important as shapers of my perspective because there was no pretense that they were real, and because their portrayals were open to criticism and mockery.
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Our local horror host was known as Sir Graves Ghastly. I was terrified of him as a young child and would run out of the room when he came on.
The actor who portrayed him, Lawson Deming, also passed away recently. Luckily, some fans have setup a website to preserve his contributions to this genre.
Count Gore de Vol is still doing his horror-host stuff, online. (Those who grew up in the D.C. area will remember that he was also Captain 20 and Bozo.)
What I remember about Roger Corman films are the MST3K rips. "Careful, you're walking off the side of the building!" Beginning of the End.
I thought that Vampira's real last name was "Nurni" and that she was a daughter of Olympic athlete Paavo Nurni, the "Flying Finn."
"When I was a young'un, there were horror hosts everywhere--you knew that if you turned on the TV anywhere at about 11 on a Friday or Saturday night, there'd be somebody in a Halloween costume introducing some old black-and-white horror movie."
The tradition still goes on, at least in Chicago: Svengoolie is back and still going strong; I used to watch him some 25 years ago as "Son of Svengoolie".
One of the Japanese horror movies from back then gave me the creeps - Attack of the Mushroom People, about a group of people who, stranded on a small island, must eat the local fungi and are slowly turned into horrible , well, mushroom people. It's based on a classic William Hope Hodgson story, so it had an advantage over all the other trash...
Excuse me? No pretence that they were real? You philistine!
I'm still trying to find Collinwood, and Angelique ... ah, my Angelique!
"but I think my late night inoculations with classic horror and sci-fi movies had a deeper, more long-lasting influence on my life than those boring, unentertaining, unengaging Sunday mornings spent in church pews"--That is is exactly what parents, teachers, preachers, and scout leaders were afraid of. Oh the lectures we heard!
I loved all the Japanese monster films - Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra... But one of my favorites was a movie where all of humanity was turned into mutant zombies except some people who lived in a small valley that, somehow, escaped the dangers of radiation. Mankind was saved, ultimately, by a rainstorm that was fatal to the zombie-humans.
Totally cheesy. Especially the Adam-and-Eve ending as the young virile man and the nubile woman ended up being the only breeding age survivors and they left the valley hand-in-hand to rebuild humanity.
Man, that makes me really sad. A lot of those people were still on when I was a kid in the 70's. Later, when I went to film school, there were quite a few others there who had gotten their love of the craft from the campy enthusiasm of low-grade films. Ed Wood was considered something of a patron saint, and when Tim Burton's film about his life came out, we were totally geeked out for it.
If you haven't read it already (it was the source for most of Buton's film), I highly recommend Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.. Vampira has some of the best stories.
Vampira starred next to a dead guy (Bela Lugosi) in "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Bela Lugosi's part was mostly archival shots.
I thought that Vampira's real last name was "Nurni"
It's Nurmi, and it wasn't her original name, but it's likely she adopted that name so that it would be easier for Americans (ironically, in this case ;)
My horror host was Elvira.
Vampira was also honored in a song on the Misfits' Walk Among Us album.
Locally, we had Dr. Bela Zarbo...
Jeff D.: Actually it's Nurmi with an m and he was not "the" Flying Finn, he was "a" Flying Finn. Btw, Finnish vampires are not *that* rare, you encounter them mostly during winter times when the sun shines only a few hours a day. During summer they migrate to the southern hemisphere. /nitpick
She brought cleavage to vampirism.
When I was a kid I would sneak downstairs and turn on "Friday Night Fright Night" or sometimes, "Simon's Sanctorum" and watch all great old horror movies. My mother would sometimes hear the TV and come down and get me. I did not get into trouble much as, by 9-10 years old, I was able to fake a rather convincing snore. My mother decided it was better not to wake me just to yell at me, especially when she was not sure when I came down and fell asleep. Maybe I fell asleep at 9 pm and not at 3 am. Who knew?
I became such a fan of those shows that I felt like I knew the hosts, even though you could not see them. One would wear makeup and talk to you through a trap door, and another talked to you in silhouette and wore an Ol' Cowboy hat.
One day my mother took the family to see my aunt who had been divorced a few years before to see how she was doing. She had a new boyfriend who worked at the local channel 5 station. I started to play with my cousins oblivious to the adults as most kids are at that age, only to be stopped in my tracks by a sound that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It was Simon. I would know that voice anywhere. I had heard my mother mention my aunts new boyfriend did some odd late night show when she was talking with my aunt, but I had paid little attention. The fact that the guy was wearing a cowboy hat 20 miles outside of Boston MA. when I first met him coming into the house had not even phased me.
So there I was, a kid standing next to one of my heroes and I could not say a word. To tell him I was a huge fan was to admit that I was actually awake at 12-3 in the morning on Fridays and Saturdays, and this would get banned for life from watching the downstairs TV. So there I sat, watching a guy whose face I was seeing for the first time wishing I could talk to him about all those great Ol' movies. I admit I was surprised that I was such a huge fan of this guy, as he was so old. I mean really, he was like 40!
Good comment. Maybe "The Golden Compass" really WILL draw children away from church.
I shall raise my jug of Moose Milk to you Vampira.
I dig low budget Campy Flickers.
Oh yeah, man, me too. The ol' Creature Feature was a key part of my childhood.
For a musical meditation on such subjects, I highly recommend Frank Zappa's "Cheepnis," off of Roxy & Elsewhere.
OK, who remembers the title of the one with aliens shaped like 5-pointed stars with one big eye in the middle (you could see the wrinkles of the cloth stretched over the wire frame of the costumes--classic cheepnis)? I believe this is a direct quote from one of the aliens: "We must kill the Earthmen for their blunders."
I wasn't allowed to watch this sort of thing when I was young, not very christian ya know. So I was first introduced to a lot of these watching MST3K. Wish I had had a chance to view them when I was younger. Oh well.
The horror host of my youth was Savad. Not sure what station/network he was on, but it was probably a station in Memphis, Tennessee. He was a cheesy Dracula clone (there may be some redundancy of terms here) and I still remember him fondly. Those were the good old days -- when nightmares starred rubber-suited, fanged, fire-breathing monsters seen on late night horror shows and not missed exams, mortgages, terrorists or the latest killer virus....
This post and Acantho's comment brought back lots of good memories -- thanks!
Sven, that was Warning From Space, which I happen to have on a compilation of obscure sci-fi films. It was a badly-dubbed Japanese film, I believe.
My family has this strange obsession with the kaiju flick War of the Gargantuas. On the rare occasions it shows up on TV, we'll phone each other up and stay up 'til 3am to watch it. The highlights are one of the gargantuas eating a woman, then spitting out her clothes like a cherry pit, and of course, Kipp Hamilton's performance of "The Words Get Stuck in My Throat".
In fact, I'd try to eulogize Vampira, but the words get stuck in my throat.
There was nothing like sitting up half the night watching horror movies. Even the cheesy Roger Corman ones.
The Hammer Horror movies were fun, in a spooky sometimes sexy way.
When I was a young lad growing up in the Windsor/Detroit area, we had an embarassment of riches. There was an actual competition between Sir Graves Ghastly as a horror host on one station and The Ghoul on another station. Those were the days (sigh).
Here we had Fritz the Nite Owl
late at night in Columbus town
On weekends at night
with humor and fright
we rarely went to bed with a frown.
Recently we watched Plan 9.
It was so bad, it's divine!
But Vampirella has passed.
I hope she and her cast
are in that great Horror Show in the Sky.
Dammit! Vampira!
Would have made the timing fit, too.
Ha!! Thanks, Laser Potato, that's the one! I've been wondering for years.
Here's a plot summary from an Amazon review of the DVD:
Didn't Sir Edmund Hillary claim to be the first horror host on TV?
Let's also not forget SCTV's Joe Flaherty as Count Floyd in Monster Chiller Horror Theater ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Floyd
If this were to actually happen, she'd get asked to join The Discovery Institute. Not because she's really an alien, but because they need to reach out to that untapped female tap-dancer demographic.
#22When I was a young lad growing up in the Windsor/Detroit area, we had an embarassment of riches. There was an actual competition between Sir Graves Ghastly as a horror host on one station and The Ghoul on another station. Those were the days (sigh).
I'm another Detroiter who grew up in the late 70s/early 80s. IIRC, Sir Graves Ghastly was on during Saturday afternoons, and was more kid-friendly, whereas The Ghoul was a late-night guy, and did a lot more off-color humor. My Mom used to get disgusted with me and my Dad when watched the Ghoul Show: "I don't understand why you two think that idiot is so funny." Good times.
What'dya know, The Ghoul lives on on the interwebs.
"Oberday! Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!"
http://www.theghoul.com/
Great point about the influence of horror/ sci-fi. #13- Great anecdote about Simon! He was *our* horror host. I must be a few years older than you, as I was in my mid-teens. My friends and I would partake of our own psychoactive version of the *elixir*, and take our place among the "Devoted" many saturday nights in the early 70s.
A good source for horror host info:
http://myweb.wvnet.edu/e-gor/tvhorrorhosts/hostss.html
Good stuff. The only host that was still on in my area was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who introduced me to the (heavily edited) wonders of scream queen Linnea Quigley.
There was also a Saturday afternoon Creature Feature on the local independent station which showed plenty of the Corman films(the guiltiest pleasure ever) Godzilla flicks, Hammer films (Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were two of my heroes) and old monster movies, but had no host.
Seems to me some cable station could bring back the tradition. Joe Bob Briggs(John Bloom) and the Dinner and a Movie duo did alright on USA, maybe now it's time for the next big horror host. I nominate Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley as Sir Simon Milligan and Hecubus. And with today's looser standards, I could see Linnea's wonders all over again, unedited.
In dead of night
When the moon is high
And the ill winds blow
And the banshees cry
And the moonlight casts an unearthly glow
Arise, my love, with tales of woe!
Sammy Terry, WTTV-4 in Indianapolis, was my horror host.
Sammy Terry was unique among 70s horror hosts, in that, while cheap and cheesy, he was rarely funny, but was often genuinely creepy. Apparently his alter-ego, Bob Carter, ran a Christian music store as his day job. So there you go.
*runs off to google*
Oh, look! He's on the YouTube now.
I also saw a little bit of Dr. Cadaverino when we lived in Milwaukee, but I was a bit too young to stay up late much.
Have you ever noticed how grown-up Monster Kids always refer to the local horror host as "my horror host"? You don't find that sense of ownership among old Trekkies.
[PZ, you might want to revisit the old Corman Poe movies if you haven't seen them recently. It's true that they don't have much to do with Poe, but Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont are pretty decent writers on their own. And the restored DVD prints in the original aspect ratio look great. Corman's Poe pictures have been reappraised by film critics and historians in recent years, and I for one prefer them to the Hammer films.]
Until then, many... pleasant... nightmares!
Be that as it may. In the case of The Blob, its co-producer, director, and writer, the late Irvin S. Yeaworth and his wife Jean, were and remained born again Christians, though they went on to make The 4-D Man and Dinosaurus. They were/are anything but boring and unengaging :-) ...and I'm no christian, either.
Neil:
the Corman films(the guiltiest pleasure ever)
I could not agree more.
Ah, the suspension of disbelief...
"Plan nine from Outer Space" truly was the "worst film ever made". In the beginning, the actors seem committed and you can tell that they're trying, but then as the film progresses you can see the ennui develop, and by the end they don't even care anymore. They had figured out that what they're doing was a joke.
But even so, Vampira was great! Those shots of her in the graveyard are classics.
Here's a nice little interview with Maila Nurmi
We never had 'horror hosts' here in Britain. I'm not sure what there is to admire about them, they sound like an embarrassment...
I agree about the Corman films. My favorite, (inexpert that I am) is the "the Raven" with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff. It's campy and cheesy and classic. Watching those stars have fun is a blast.
#33:
While your Ghoul may have used this line, it was originated by Smilin' Ed McConnell of The Buster Brown Show. When Smilin' Ed died in 1954, Andy Devine was brought in as host and the show was renamed to Andy's Gang. ("I've got a gang, you've got a gang, everybody ought to have a gang." Probably not the sort of message today's parents want their kids to hear.)
If we're going to talk hosts. Our local host was Bob Wilkins who hosted Creature Features on KTVU. It, eventually, started alternating with Kung Fu Theatre. So I got the best of both worlds... There's still a fan site devoted to him:
http://www.bobwilkins.net/index.html
And a great video clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMQt9LUP5I&eurl=http://www.bobwilkins.n…
PZ - if you are from the Seattle area you would know that the BEST of all late night horror hosts was Joe Tooey - who was also a producer on the JP Patches show and a riot as the 'Count'. i too have been hugely influenced by horror movies of the sat afternoon and late night kind - i would watch them RELIGIOUSLY (yes it was better than church) every sat - then be up for the rest of the night with nightmares - but was back again for more the next week. Influenced every aspect of my life not the least of which is my visual art. Love THEM (had a huge crush on Stewart Whitmore - he was SO BRAVE an everyman!), The Giant Behemoth, It Came from Beneath the Sea, The Amazing Colossal Man - whoa that giant hypodermic scewering that army guy (War of the Colossal Beast scared the crap outta me) and for pure beauty watch the segment in The Creature from the Black Lagoon where the creature swims upside down underneath the heroine mirroring her every move - SHEER VISUAL POETRY! Caligari and Nosferatu (original) are also favs.Man i LOVE this stuff!!!!!!!
Yup, my horror host was Elvira as well, never missed the show and it instilled in me a lifelong love for bad horror and sci-fi films that lasts to this day.
ASMODIUS! That was his name. It was "Shock Theatre" where I grew up. He dressed like a dark eyed vampire, and in the early days he was all scary and serious and his theme music was Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Oooooo...scary!
I LOVE Hammer Horror! They discovered Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed! way fab.
Roger Corman's low-budget rip-offs of Edgar AllAn Poe titles, with content completely divorced from anything Poe ever wrote.
I think you're giving him short shrift here. Corman knew how to stretch a dime; many of his movies looked splendid. His adaptations of Poe are mostly excellent--particularly "Pit and the Pendulum" with the glorious Barbara Steele, and "Masque of the Red Death," with Price as one of the most Sadean characters in movie history. He may not have adapted the stories as Poe wrote them, but I think he got the underlying pathology correct. Many of cinema's greats got started under his wing: Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Robert Towne, John Sayles, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, etc. Perhaps a re-watch is in order!
What, no Seymour fans?
"Many of us godless people still identify as cultural Christians because that was the background of our upbringing, but I think my late night inoculations with classic horror and sci-fi movies had a deeper, more long-lasting influence on my life than those boring, unentertaining, unengaging Sunday mornings spent in church pews."
Didn't classic horror, like atheism, grow out of cultural Christianity?
It's so nice to see so many Sir Graves fans. Growing up in Detroit, he was my Saturday afternoon entertainment. I was sad when he went off the air; I've corrupted my kids into liking Vernors, (unheard of on the East Coast) but never was able to turn them on to Sir Graves as he was gone before they were born.
For New York City during the early sixties, it was the fabulous John Zacherle (Chiller Theatre in New York City, WPIX) who had me in stitches while he was dissecting and stitching up some cauliflower brain during the pauses between horror movie scenes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zacherle
If you grew up in the tri-state area of Western Pa/Eastern Ohio/North Central West Virginia, then Bill "Chilly Billy" Cardille, was your man. His "Chiller Theater" was a Saturday night staple for over 20 years, from the early 60's to the early 80's on Pittsburgh's WIIC, Channel 11.
Thanks, Moses #43, for remembering the name for me. I also cut my horror teeth with Bob Wilkins and Creature Features on KTVU. Loved it, never missed it. We had sleepovers explicitly so we could stay up late and watch. Then that little twerp who wrote for the Chronicle took over. He was so full of himself it was never quite as fun.
Hammer was always the classiest. Must be the accents. For self-aware horror camp I'd recomend Theatre of Blood where Vincent Price is a bad actor who kills his critics using Shakespearian themes. Has Diana Rigg too!
#43 Creature features! Bay area! Late 60's-Early 70"s
Channel-2 Far Fuckin-Out! Man that brings Back
memories,that cat with the cigar.....boy Iam gettin Drunk
Later.
Central Florida, mid 70s, our guy was Dr. Paul Bearer, hosting Creature Feature. "I'll be lurking for you."
http://www.big13.net/Other%20Hosts/wtog_paul_bearer.htm
All those great guy-in-a-rubber-suit and atomic-mutant movies were a weekly staple. Gamera (and those meddling kids), THEM, Tarantula, Mothra, etc. I will always recall the day I saw "The Giant Claw". I was afraid to go outside!
In the Omaha/Lincoln area it was Dr. Sanguinary. He was the best.
phat
Sorry,
Dr. San Guinary.
http://www.drsanguinary.com/
phat
While we're getting all nostalgic, may I recommend Randy Mulholland's Midnight Macabre, a webcomic about a novice Creature Features host at a small independent station in the early 80s? (link goes to the first strip in the series)
Dr. Cadaverino was particularly cool because his 'day job' was as a sock puppet, er, a puppeteer, Albert the Alley Cat being his most enduring one.
Ahh yes, Son of Svengoolie, and Creature Features...good times! One of my favs is "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks". If you like really bad but humorous horror flicks, check that one out.
Madison's creature feature was Ferdie's, then Lennie's, Inferno, the longest lasting host was Mr. Mephisto. One of the amazing parts of the show was Lenny Mattioli yelling his ad copy for American TV. As I recall, and as Johnny Carson so amply demonstrated, even a Roger Corman reject can look good when the advertising is done by the business owner who has no clue what a good ad looks or sounds like.
Cue: Night on Bald Mountain.
Sven at #19, I was on my way to post a rec of Zappa's "Cheepnis" myself! so I'll just second yours.
Frank's introduction is as good as the song itself.
they always have a little revolver that they're gonna shoot the monster with. and there is always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle. hey hey! of course there is! you know how they are, the weaker sex and everything, twisting their ankle on behalf of a little ice-cream cone.
What you say about Friday and Saturday nights rings a bell. As a young'un, I used to sneak down the stairs at home to watch these programs over my parents shoulders. Really, because I had only to go half-way down them from where I could look into the living room to see the tv my parents were watching.
As far as I know, they never caught me. At least they never confronted me. It was much more fun than Sunday school.
The horror movie host of my 50's childhood was Vampira herself, picked up on our black-and-white TV in San Diego from a broadcast in LA. Often, her little skits were better than the movies she showed.
She will be missed.
Of all the Corman/Poe adaptations, Masque of the Red Death is probably the closest to the original story, and it is still way off...of course, the original story is less than 10 pages long, as were many of Poe's best. You certainly have to pad it out a bit to get a 70-90 minute movie. If I recall correctly, Masque of the Red Death and The Pit and the Pendulum have elements from more than one Poe story. The original Pit&Pendulum is a great few minutes of reading, but watching a large axe swing back and forth for 20 minutes only to get to a sudden and implausible rescue scene at the end would NOT make a good movie. For all his obvious faults, Corman could deliver some deliciously malevolent cheese. Like Limberger with a sprinkling of Fumunda on top.
Might just have to break out the old vhs tapes and give Ed Wood another watch in memory of Vampira. I have access to real Ed Wood movie rentals at a great store called Insomniac Video a few towns north, but I'm not driving 25 miles for Plan 9. I doubt Vampira would have, either.
Sad news indeed. For those of you near the Boston area, you may enjoy this post.
Is "The Ghoul" to whom you are referring, Ghoulardi out of Cleveland?
Hurrah #51 for Roland! And after him, Dr. Shock! Oh, my (lack of) god! Ah, the formative days of my youth!
ABR at 21 mentions the horror host in Memphis, but misspelled the name. It was Sivad, with an I, not two a's. Article with pics at http://www.mlcsmith.com/people/sivad/ .
I'm too young to have seen Sivad, but did hear about him while growing up. I am old enough to remember when channel, uhm, 13 I think, ran monster movies after school. All children should learn monster sign language, in case they ever wind up on Monster Island.
Vampira starred next to a dead guy (Bela Lugosi) in "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Bela Lugosi's part was mostly archival shots.
We didn't know that, because none of us ever saw Ed Woods.
Er, Ed Wood. (beats self mercilessly)
Thats sad, but funny because I just watched Ed Woods last night... I Probably wouldn't have any idea what you were talking about otherwise!
Thanks, MikeJ. I'm old enough to remember Sivad, but too old it seems to remember how he spelled it! Thanks also for the link.
The one who was/is on hereabouts was/is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, same as some of the other commenters here. Well, there was always Elwy Yost of Saturday Night at the Movies fame to scare the crap out of me as a kid, but that's a little different...
A lot of those old movies are in the public domain nowadays. One site I'm fond of is Public Domain Torrents
Maniac (1934) is particularly hilarious.
In San Diego when I was growing up it was Science Fiction Theater on Saturdays at 2, with first Moonalisa then later Galaxina. Moona was the smaller of the two, more gracile you might say. She had the show for the first year, then left to have a kid (or something). Gal took over for the rest of the run, until the station, KFMB replaced it with CBS sports on SFT's time slot, followed by the just syndicated Star Trek.
One of my favorite episodes was the one where the two ladies co-hosted the show. Don't remember what the movie was, but I do remember that the two of them had a blast shooting the intro, ending, and interstitial footage. It was obvious they were long time friends and enjoyed being with each other.
Saw the usual crap on Science Fiction Theater. Also saw Them and Forbidden Planet. Add that to my mom's science fiction and Scientific American collection, and you can see a large part of how I turned out the way I did.
The original Pit&Pendulum is a great few minutes of reading, but watching a large axe swing back and forth for 20 minutes only to get to a sudden and implausible rescue scene at the end would NOT make a good movie.
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's version is faithful to Poe; he kept it to 15 minutes of first person POV, with an appropriately chilling ending.
Nice Topic!
It was Sinister Cinema in Portland Oregon in the 1970's! The host (Victor Ives) looked like that arrogant, bearded guy on the 'Master Mind' game box. The only time we were permitted to watch TV was Friday night, and we would watch Sinester Cinema until about 3 AM.
Actually, because Bela Lugosi died part way through Plan 9, Ed Wood used his dentist, who bore a slight resemblance, for the rest of the shots. You can always tell because those are the shots where he's got the cape up over his face.
Ed Wood was nothing if not inventive. And a cross-dresser. :)
In Dayton, Ohio, we had our own Dr. Creep, who has both a wiki entry and Official Website. Now, he started out late at night, too late for this youngster, but eventually moved to Saturday afternoons, after cartoons. I know I watched him, but remember only a few films, the rat extravaganza, Willard, one about killer bees, and another with the line, "When is rains when the sun is shining, it means the devil is kissing his wife."
Ah, to still be a kid.
[geekpick] Actually, Tom Mason was Wood's wife's chiropractor. [/geekpick]
Actually, because Bela Lugosi died part way through Plan 9, Ed Wood used his dentist, who bore a slight resemblance, for the rest of the shots. You can always tell because those are the shots where he's got the cape up over his face.
Was the theatre empty when you saw the movie? Was it the only copy in existence? No? Then why act as if it were so?
Actually, Tom Mason was Wood's wife's chiropractor.
What?? Do you mean to say Ed Wood wasn't a documentary??
We French horror fans happen to have had such a horror host, or rather hostess, on TV. Her name was Sangria and, in the late eighties, she used to introduce horror movies in her TV show. It was drive-in fare, mostly Italian and US movies from the 70s and 80s. Nothing Japanese or British (alas), and no B&W. Her avowed model was Elvira, but she never went as far in the cleavage, hairstyle and vulgarity department. I've learned that she currently does teleshopping programs and is married with the CEO of the biggest French private TV channel...
Now there was a pick-me-up I needed on Monday morning. I remember our local host, Stella of Saturday Night Dead (right after Saturday Night Live) very fondly. The Man-Eater from Manayunk.
She was clearly inspired by Elvira, but did manage to add an animated bed and a muttering butler to the mix.
Just a note on some of the japanese monster films. Some of these are much more coherent and better looking when you see good prints, and thankfully great prints of many of these films have been released on DVD. A film like "Attack Of The Mushroom People" (Matango) is virtually a different film when seen in all it's widescreen, unmangled glory. "The Mysterians" and "Space Amoeba" are nice looking and fun. Godzilla and Gamera kept going, and there were some fantastic titles released in the 90's, particularly the Gamera trilogy.
Hurray for Seymour! When I was in college, he hosted a special Halloween showing at my school (now called Cal State Northridge) of Lon Chaney's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and the original FRANKENSTEIN (excellent prints of both films). I made my younger brother go with me. He grumbled a lot about "stupid silent movies" but when PHANTOM ended he couldn't stop talking about how great it was. Seymour was a terrific host, gracious to all his fans and very knowledgeable about the fims.
There was at least one English horror host in the mid-80s - Deadly Ernest, a poor man's Dracula with a nice line in wry comments on the evening's film.
And as for Roger Corman's not-really-Poe adaptations, I'm surprised no-one has mentioned "The Tomb of Ligeia".