Chiefly, the definition must include any example of the genre of TV matinee shows where an old movie is shown that features introductions by a host or hosts – most often playing characters outside of themselves – who do something a bit beyond just talking about the movie. This could include comedic monologues, skits, interviews (in character) with directors or actors, original films, etc. Not just "Here's the movie... see you when it's done!"
THOSE "NOT QUITE HORROR HOST" SHOWS
And yet, there are shows I watch regularly which fall just outside the above definition for me, even if not being quite the correct focus. TCM has a still fairly new, regular show on Sunday mornings called Noir Alley that I have not missed since it started months ago. You could say that it is just another normal TCM feature show – like The Essentials, or, just any evening airing of a film on TCM where it has a host introducing and closing the film. But the host of Noir Alley, Eddie Muller, seems as no-nonsense and tough as any detective in a noir film, and you get the sense that he would love to live that life, even if he is standing on a set on the TCM backlot. It helps that he really is an expert on his preferred genre, and writes his own novels and plays in the form. He is 100% real in his passion for his subject and is just being himself, but he still feels like a character put on for the cameras.
On the opposite end is TCM Underground, which is a horror host show without a horror host. Every Saturday night, TCM airs a primary film under this title that is usually within that range known as "psychotronic" – generally cult films, most often science fiction or horror, but can really be any genre as long as the primary component is that they are weird or out of the norm somehow. A second film, often closely related to the first, is shown next. The series started ages ago with Rob Zombie as the host, which seemed like a perfect pick but he was gone after a year. The show has remained host-less ever since and seems unlikely to ever get one, though I have long campaigned for the return of Joe Bob Briggs or someone similar to give late Saturday evenings a little more zip. Even without a host though, I still save many TCM Underground offerings on my DVR, if only for the novelty of seeing the gorier or dirtier examples on the normally squeaky clean TCM. (Seriously, it's kind of a thrill with me, the modern equivalent of sneaking a peak at nudity-laden cable TV when your parents are asleep.)EMBRACING WHAT I HAVE ALREADY...
With Elvira no longer doing her duties regularly, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is clearly the prime example of this type of show in the modern era. Even if the movies are not always horror or science fiction-oriented, the horror host model popularized in the '50s and '60s by the likes of Vampira, Zacherley, and scores of mostly local yucksters dressed up in monster trappings was clearly an influence when MST3K hit the Minnesota airwaves in the late '80s. In terms of scope and comedic chops, MST3K has a clear leg up on its predecessors – especially now that the new series has started to attract familiar celebrity names to both its roster and guest list – but at its core, it was basically a bunch of goofy guys making jokes about "Z" grade films. Which is all you really need. (And no, Andrea, I have not forgotten the fine fellows at Rifftrax; I figured that show gets packaged in with the other MST3K spin-offs. All groovy with me...)
With Noir Alley, TCM Underground and the revived MST3K (which I helped revive in my own small way), you might think, "Oh, that's not enough for you?" No, I want real horror host thrills and terrible jokes -- ON THE AIR. I want the fun of turning on a basic cable or even public access channel and finding an ultra-low budget show with a guy in weird makeup trying to make me laugh while showing me a terrible print of an awful film. That's like the horror movie version of a peep show. It will rot your brain. And you will love it.
Thankfully, these days, I have dear ol' Svengoolie to hang out with on Saturday nights on MeTV. Rich Koz has played Sven (originally the Son of Svengoolie) since 1979, after the original Svengoolie, Jerry G. Bishop, gave Koz permission to continue the character. (Koz used to write and perform on the original show, Screaming Yellow Theater, which ran from 1970-1973.) After a break when Son of... ended in 1986, Svengoolie has been a Chicago institution since its return as 1994, and went national in 2011 when he was picked up by MeTV. I had seen clips of Sven online, of course – because I tend to seek such things out – but once he hit MeTV, I added him to my regular rotation. Naturally, the moldy puns that Koz employs by the dozens are right in my wheelhouse, as are most of his sound clips from radio shows and cartoons, and I am more than jealous of Koz as I watch because it appears he seems to love his job. It isn't all pretty – some of the original songs can be atrocious, especially when Koz has to sing just out of his range – but it is all rather endearing nonetheless. Pure monster antics... which might be the reason my cat seems to really like it when I play the show, too.
...BUT WHERE ELSE TO GO?
The internet seems to be a prime place to find a lot of local horror hosts in one place, such as on The Monster Channel website. I find having to catch specific hosts a little difficult with the website's schedule, which gives you the weekend's 3-day schedule but during the week you are on your own. Also, while I don't mind streaming video on sites like Netflix or Hulu, where you can stop, start, pause, and rewind as you please, streaming on The Monster Channel means starting the player and picking up whatever show wherever it might be in its airing. I tend to only put on The Monster Channel so I can play it in the background while I am writing. As a result, I don't pay as close attention to most shows or hosts as I should.Cinematic Insomnia (one of the very best of the lot) on OSI 74's channel on Vimeo (sadly, I don't have Roku where I could watch the regular channel). Ms. Monster and Her Monster Melons on YouTube. (Is she doing shows anymore?) The occasional old Zacherley episode. You can find these and others online, but I still prefer watching such shows on television. I maintain there just has to be a place for these shows somewhere on a thousand-channel cable schedule, though maybe not in the places (such as Syfy) where one might think they would be a natural fit. I never give up looking though, and I will probably spend the rest of my days slowly flipping from channel to channel hoping in vain that that 3:00 a.m. showing of The Black Castle is accompanied by some strange horror host of whom I have never heard before.
LAMIA IS THE NAME-IA
Cut to last Friday morning, as I scanned the cable listings on my television and found a midnight showing of Man in the Attic, a 1953 remake of the story that Hitchcock filmed in his silent days as The Lodger. Man in the Attic features Jack Palance in the role of the suspected killer, and he is pretty damn good in it. I own the film on DVD already, so I didn't need to record it on my DVR, but I thought that perhaps I should check it out since it was airing on a channel called Retro TV. That's right... I was holding out hope there was horror host goodness to be had... and there was!I have run across Lamia - aka actress Kristina Michelle – before on YouTube, but not on her regular horror host show, Horror Hotel Film Festival. She's pretty but not exactly my type, but I suppose she has a zillion guys stalking her constantly, dressed as she is in a revealing vampire costume, with just the right amount of cleavage and bare leg showing. Lamia, whom I assume is named after the Greek mythological figure (known for turning into a child-devouring demon), doesn't really go for the jokey, Elvira-style of entertaining that her obvious forbearer Elvira does. There is the occasional pun or interstitial in which she tries a little too hard to be sexy. Mostly, it seems Lamia likes to open her shows by telling us everything about the movie she can read off IMDb, and then reappears throughout the show to ask us how we are enjoying the show. Some pieces seem baked in, so that they can be reused from show to show; in fact, I saw the same clip at least twice during Man in the Attic, and twice more in the next evening's showing of Dementia 13. But each movie also had brief bits that corresponded directly to the movie at hand, and so it wasn't just a matter of her filming an opening and closing for each film only.
How this girl can speak that long with those fangs in her mouth is beyond me. I did not say "speak completely clearly" because it is quite noticeable she has to work hard to enunciate many of the words. Still, I admire her drive. I think that the long portion at the beginning where she reels off cast members and trivia would be better served being broken up into smaller bits throughout the show. (Svengoolie does this type of thing best, I feel.) I kept going, "Start the movie already!" during both films. I also wished that the print they used in the show was of a less shabby quality than the eyesore that I saw. But even if the opening drags a bit, Ms. Michelle seems to love playing Lamia, and I am not going to begrudge anyone from dressing as a sexy vampiress if that is their desire.
AND... BUT... ALSO... SOMETHING OFF BEAT...
After discovering that the seductive Lamia lurked within the copy of Man in the Attic on Saturday morning, I checked the listings for Retro TV for the rest of the weekend to see if they were showing other horror-oriented fare. That evening, they were airing House on Haunted Hill, the 1958 "B" classic starring Vincent Price and directed by gimmick-master William Castle. Never one to turn down some free Castle, I recorded it and the next morning, I cracked into it to discover yet another "movie host" show – not necessarily full "horror host" given the basic premise – Off Beat Cinema (from out of Buffalo, NY it seems).
Off Beat Cinema seems to specialize more in weird, cult cinema in general, though that will probably mean more horror and science fiction given what I have seen from the first two shows I've seen. The hosts are a trio of slang-spouting beatnik types named The Mysterious Zelda, Bird the Painter, and Theodore – Cinematic Theologian. (Well, I can get behind that last stance.) I don't really want to get into ragging on the hosts of these shows, because in many cases they are mostly doing these things on the fly and on the cheap, but... cue cards are not a bad idea. I thought there might be more of a cool vibe that existed between the hosts of such a show, but the feeling was more, for lack of a better term, "improv awkward". (You can append that phrase with the adjective of your choice...)Still, I didn't entirely dislike my experience with the first show, even with the truly terrible (most likely public domain) print of House on Haunted Hill. (I had to skip from host segment to host segment because the film hurt my eyes too much.) In the second show the next evening, in which they aired Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (which I watched today), the host segments were filmed live at a local comic convention, and had a little more pep to them. The dialogue is too close to modern speech and not strong enough on the beatnik vibe, though it is clear they are trying. (I do like the finger-snapping when they go into the movie or to commercial... reminds me of the beatniks from Happy Days.) It still might take me a while to warm up to Off Beat Cinema, but I am willing to give it a go. I would rather have the option to watch it than not. Keep kickin', cats...
FINALLY, A HARVEY THAT I CAN ACTUALLY LIKE**...
Then came Sunday evening, when I recorded the movie White Zombie, the 1932 Bela Lugosi classic. Once again, I didn't need to record it, but I had struck gold twice already on Retro TV. I was, of course, recording Bride of the Monster later in the evening (which would turn out to be the second Off Beat Cinema offering), but unlike the other shows, White Zombie was airing in prime time hours, so I didn't know what to expect. When I started the recording Monday afternoon, that is when I met Halloween Harvey for the first time.Local horror hosts are fine, even when they mumble or forget their lines or trip over their tongues. But I admire true professionalism, even in a cheap horror host show. That is where Halloween Harvey comes in... With some clear thought put into tying the different segments together – it is the only one of the three main shows discussed here that tried to tell a story, however silly and trivial, between the chunks of movie – Harvey's Festival of Fear shows a confidence and zip that the other shows sorely lacked. Whether Harvey's almost screeching style of delivering hyper dialogue – he sounds quite like Curly from the Three Stooges – works for you is beside the point. It hit a sweet spot for me. As much as I was enjoying White Zombie again, I also couldn't wait to see the next bit with Harvey, if only to see if he could keep the rhythm going (which they almost did).
And so now, I have three new horror host shows, all producing episodes currently, that I can find easily in one spot each weekend on Retro TV. I noticed from their online schedule that the channel has another regular movie spot, Mondays through Fridays, for something called Retro Drive-In. I haven't checked to see if it is hosted yet, but judging from the movies promoted on their Facebook page the last couple of days – the Buster Keaton sound film (only OK), Speak Easily, and The Godson, the remake of Le Samourai – I am also not sure if the true drive-in aesthetic is being celebrated consistently or not.Time will have to tell... like tomorrow night, Daddy-O...
RTJ
** You can ask me about the "Finally, a Harvey that I can actually like" title, but you won't get very far. Just accept that there is a Harvey in my past that I can't fucking stand. And Harvey, if you are reading this, rest assured it is you. I have only met one Harvey in my life (and, no, it was not Weinstein...)
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