Q&A with Michael Monahan, author of American Scary
Could you please describe American Scary Vol One and Volume Two. What are these books about?
The books are a collection of in-depth interviews with various TV horror movie hosts from all around the country, spanning the early days of live television to the dawn of the internet. The interviews are organized chronologically, so you can chart the changes in broadcasting and culture over the decades. As much as it's about the art and the absolute fun of horror hosting, it's also about the life and death of locally produced television. Volume One begins with Vampira and Zacherley, who performed live in the studio, and wraps up with The Ghoul and Dr. Creep, two hosts who videotaped their shows for UHF channels. Volume Two picks up the thread with Count Gore De Vol, a UHF host who was constantly looking over the horizon, and eventually became the first horror host producing original content for the internet.
Who else is included?
Between the two volumes, there are a total of thirty interviews. This is the second edition of the book. The first was released in 2011 and had 23 hosts interviewed. There's a lot of new material, which is the main reason this revised and expanded edition has been split into two volumes. Joel Hodgson from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Ned the Dead are new additions, as well as Toledeo's Dr. Shock. Crematia Mortem and Stella aka The Man-Eater from Manayunk have been carried over. Chilly Billy Cardille, Big Chuck Schodowski, Bob Wilkins, Christopher Coffin, The Son of Ghoul, Commander USA, both Svengoolies. It's a pretty packed deck.
How did you become interested in horror hosts?
I was lucky enough to grow up in the San Francisco Bay Area, which was a major media market. My mom bought a portable TV in 1968, and for the first time, we had access to UHF channels. My brothers and I eventually stumbled across Shock It to Me Theater on KEMO TV 20. I was a Monster Kid from back when I was counting birthdays in the single digits. But Shock It to Me was the first time I saw a monster movie with a host.
Frank Sheridan was the guy playing, Asmodeus, an elegant and sarcastic demon. That was a whole new ballgame for me. He was showing the usual low budget stuff, like Zombies of Mara Tau and The Beast with a Million Eyes, but he later had the classic Universal horror package. So I was also seeing Dracula's Daughter, The Invisible Man and The Werewolf of London for the first time. It was a real education, and I've got Asmodeus to thank for that.
A year later, KTVU 2, a major independent in the Bay Area, premiered Creature Features with Bob Wilkins. Wilkins' first film was Horror of Party Beach, a trashy and downright odd throwback to 50s sci-fi horror. He followed up with things like Agent for H.A.R.M. and Jesse James meets Frankenstein's Daughter, films so outside the mainstream that no one went fishing there. It shouldn't have worked. But Wilkins' whimsical sense of humor created an irresistible, gently surreal alternate universe...kind of like Pee Wee's Playhouse on 'ludes.
Meanwhile, KBHK 44 brought in their own host from Cleveland, The Ghoul, a crazy guy with a voice like a garbage disposal. He only lasted a year. But to a certain segment of rebellious teens, he was a god. He blew stuff up. KBHK later syndicated another out-of-towner with The Son of Svengoolie from Chicago.
I'm sure that, at the time, I wasn't aware these shows were produced in other parts of the country. So I wasn't thinking about the shows I saw in my market as part of anything larger. I remembered Zacherley from Famous Monsters and Vampira from Plan 9 from Outer Space, but hadn't really considered horror hosts as a national thing. That idea started filtering in over time, just because of my monster-centric interests. But it was a retrospective interview with Bob Wilkins in 1998 sparked an active curiosity about other hosted horror shows. I was trading VHS tapes of old TV and movies with people in other parts of the country, and I started asking them to send me anything with a horror host. First thing I got was a host in Indianapolis named Sammy Terry, who I immediately fell in love with. After that, my obsession with the genre just exploded.
How did this project come about?
Back in the late 90s, a friend asked me what my dream project would be. I told him, "A documentary on the history of TV horror movie hosts." I knew I didn't have the skills, the equipment or, frankly, the confidence to actually carry it off myself. But the idea always lingered in the back of my mind.
There must have been something in the air. Because just a few years later, I was approached by a filmmaker named Sandy Clark. He was in San Francisco for a convention, and had seen long lines snaking away from a table with Bob Wilkins. He asked someone what the deal was with this guy, and they explained that he had been the host of Creature Features in the Bay Area about 25 years before. They gave Sandy my name as someone who could tell him more about the whole thing, and we got together soon after.
I pulled out all the material I'd been collecting, and explained the larger national history of the horror hosting genre to Sandy. He had originally been considering some short film about Bob Wilkins. But at the end of our first conversation, he said, "Damn, I think we've got a movie here!"
And that was the American Scary documentary...
Yeah. Things moved pretty quickly after that. Sandy's a great organizer, and he got the ball rolling right away. He and his partner had been making short films for the fan circuit for a while. They had been talking about a topic they could stretch into something feature length, and this was perfect for them. I gave Sandy a list of surviving hosts and he started making contacts immediately.
As luck would have it, a convention in Cleveland was coming up that had a guest list packed with old TV horror hosts - Dr. Creep, The Ghoul, Count Gore De Vol, Son of Ghoul, and a few others. So we were able to score a bunch of initial interviews in one swoop. Cleveland had its own rich history of horror hosts, and we booked interviews with Big Chuck and Lil' John, their longest-running hosts, as well. As a bonus, Big Chuck had been the creative partner of one of the giants of the genre, Ghoulardi. Ghoulardi was played by Ernie Anderson. He'd passed away by the time the film was being put together, but Chuck was able to fill us in on some amazing and hilarious Ghoulardi stories. So, yeah, Cleveland was very good to us.
When did the idea of converting these interviews into book form take shape?
Right from the beginning. We were doing these hour-long / 90 minute interviews with genuine broadcast pioneers, and it was all going to be chopped up into snippets and sound bites - maybe five minutes total per host. At the outset, I asked Sandy if I could have access to the complete interviews once the film was done, and he was enthusiastic.
The documentary itself is a bit of a hodge-podge. I came into the topic from the local TV history perspective. Sandy loved the local angle. But his perspective was more informed by the Star Wars era, and the DIY culture of science fiction and fantasy conventions. That was the environment he grew up in. So he was equally excited by fans who were creating their own content for public access TV, VHS self-distribution, and eventually, the internet. They were a regular part of the convention scene at the time, so he wanted to draw on that as well.
So the book was an opportunity to keep the focus on local TV production, as well as celebrating a unique and eccentric form of entertainment. Being in media at the time, these people were constantly bumping into history. So it's a much bigger story than a bunch of grown-ups playing Halloween every week.
Were there any interviews that surprised you?
When we were planning a trip to New York, I mentioned to Sandy that there had been two hosts in Syracuse that I didn't know much about, but who might be worth checking out - Baron Daemon and Dr. E. Nick Witty. They turned out to be two of our favorite interviews in the whole magilla. It turned out that Mike Price - the Baron - and Alan Milair - the Doctor - were the quintessential local horror hosts. They were charming, enthusiastic and humble, and they had remained beloved by their communities decades after their shows had gone off the air. We said, "Yep, that's what this whole project is about."
Anybody you missed?
Only hundreds...A complete inventory of horror hosts over 50 years or so would likely hit the high end of triple digits. There were some we couldn't find at the time, some had passed away. In a few cases, they're schedules prevented it. And of course, there were budgetary restrictions. No budget.
I continued to gather interviews in the years after the film was completed, that's how Fritz the Nite Owl and Rich Koz's Svengoolie got in the first edition. I was still contacting people after the book came out, and these conversations got folded into this new second edition.
I also went back to Sandy, and he found some material I'd missed the first time round. The interviews with Dr. Shock, Hives and Joel Hodgson all come from the documentary archives. I also discovered that, for some crazy reason, I'd used a follow-up interview with Stella in the first edition. The original was much, much better - and happily, it's in the second edition of American Scary as well.
Any other differences between the first edition and the second?
All the introductory material and biographies got a top-to-bottom rewrite; a lot of new information, some corrections. And of course the second edition has been expanded enough that it needed to be split into two volumes. Luckily, the halfway point hits at a perfect transitional moment between the past and future of broadcasting and the new and coming technologies. So it actually makes thematic sense as well. I think there are a few less photos in the new edition, mostly due to the formatting. But I've gathered up a lot of great new photographic material over the years. A few things I think may be seeing print for the first time, and a couple others certainly rarely seen outside their local markets.
Any closing thoughts?
Only that I want to thank Bear Manor for giving me the opportunity to dust off American Scary and give it a good polish. It's been a double-layered nostalgia for me; revisiting the time these shows were created, and the once-in-a-lifetime experience of talking to the wonderful people who created them. I once described local TV to Sandy as folk art, something handmade and evoking a regional identity. It seems all the more true in today's digital world as the concept of regionality disappears. I hope American Scary inspires people to rediscover their regional roots - broadcast or otherwise. There's an amazing treasure trove of stories that are only yours.