Spook-tacular Viewing - Fifties Halloween

Author: Jeff Little

Popcorn at the ready, frozen pizza heating, it's time to get spooked. Or at least it used to be.

"Boo"-ming across TV screens throughout the United States, monster movie hosts hit their peak in the 50's and 60's but are "scares"-ly seen today. By the mid 80's the profession had all but ceased to exist.

Spooky, gruesome and sometimes even sexy, hosts of local and syndicated horror shows were as varied as the B-movie fare featured on their programs. Ghouls, gravediggers, lovable fiends and bloodsucking sex kittens were not uncommon characters we all watched as kids (with no small number of adults also tuning in).

Probably most famous was a voluptuous character named Vampira. The creation of actress Maila Nurmi, the sexy, wisecracking Vampira hit Los Angeles airwaves in 1954 when she began introducing horror films and punctuating their commercial breaks with sarcastic humor on KABC.

Often touted as "the ghoul next door", Vampira became a character that would later achieve even greater fame by appearing in venues such as Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). And with fame came imitation.

Younger devotees of monster movie hosts (and hostesses) are most likely to first think of Cassandra Peterson (a newer version of "Vampira"). Better known as "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark", Peterson achieved "household name" status in the 80's and is still seen today when an occasion requires entertainment in an eerily corny vein.

Not to be out-spooked in the 50's, the East Coast fielded a soon-to-be legend named John Zacherle. In the guise of a dark-humored undertaker first known as "Roland" but later named "Zacherley", he creeped-out the Eastern U.S. (first in Philadelphia and then in New York) for many, many years.

Beginning in the 50's and continuing for years, the rest of the country emulated the East and the West by presenting their own local personalities playing characters that became favorites with both young and old. Eventually most every American city with a television station had some sort of ghost, goblin, funeral worker or weirdo introducing what were usually sub-par horror films.

Indianapolis had the ghoulish "Sammy Terry" (Bob Carter). Baltimore featured marital chills with hosts "Dr. Lucifer and Mrs. Lucifer" (Richard Dix and Nancy Lee Dix). Wichita also double-teamed audiences with "The Host and Rodney" (Tom Leahy and Lee Parsons). And Cleveland gave viewers goosebumps with "Ghoulardi" (Ernie Anderson).

Television monster movie hosts were so popular at one time that many cities had several different hosts on several different stations on various days and at various times. Finding a TV monster movie without a host in the 50's and 60's was about as easy as finding a vampire at a sunrise church service.

Today, many hosts of the past can still be seen in local commercials, at local grand openings or on the occasional Halloween Special. But few can be seen on a regular basis.

From the corny to the scary to the ridiculous, they entertained us for years. Then like so many ghosts, the once inescapable monster movie hosts virtually disappeared from television.

But are they really gone?

Maybe they just moved into our nightmares.

A rendering of "Vampira" on the current DVD cover for Plan 9 From Outer Space

Cassandra Peterson as "Elvira"

John Zacherle in character

"Spook-tacular Viewing"