by lhb412 » Fri Feb 03, 2017 10:06 pm
In honor of Svengoolie's monthlong showcase of Godzilla movies (starting tomorrow with Godzilla, King of the Monsters!) I thought to make a thread dedicated to arguably American television's greatest invention: the horror host. Despite the common wisdom that they are a feature of yesteryear, I realize I've been watching horror hosts in some form my whole life.
Now, if I'm to understand correctly, horror hosting took off in the late '50s when Universal made a syndication package of their horror and thriller movies called 'Shock' available to local stations nationwide. Some brave souls from those local broadcasters (weathermen, radio announcers) donned monster makeup, assembled crude dungeon or mad scientist sets, and began hosting the movies, often supplying goofy humor to make the scary movies more palatable for the kids watching.
I grew up in the '90s, but I really didn't watch Joe Bob Briggs' MonsterVision all that much. I was terrified of horror movies, but if he was showing something like Godzilla or King Kong I was there. I'll never forget watching Joe Bob host Godzilla vs. Monster Zero while on a trip. I begged my parents to leave the TV on while everyone else slept, putting the volume down low enough to not disturb anyone. Of course, I was flummoxed when Joe Bob said "most Godzilla fans hate this one because it's got so little monster footage." Wha?
Around age 11 I started liking horror movies, and was introduced to many of them via AMC's Monsterfest, which screened so many Universal/Hammer/AIP classics. They'd often have guests hosts for that particular year, and they even had a kind of permanent, weekly Monsterfest for old sci-fi movies called EFX, hosted by Stan Winston which often showed kaiju movies.
By the early to late '00s these had all faded, but I still managed to occasional catch Macabre Theatre, a bottom-rung syndication thing that showed Deep Red a lot and aired on a small local channel owned by an eccentric former reporter in the next county. When the digital switchover happened and the former UHF lineup was joined by another half dozen channels of mostly reruns I caught Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In a few times, but the biggest advent of the digital switchover was MeTV acquiring Chicago's long-running (since the '70s!) horror host: Svengoolie! I dig his old-fashioned comedy shtick with intentional cory jokes (some out of date by an order of lifetimes), bad puns, and other assorted groaners that eventually elicit him to be pelted with rubber chickens. Sven (real name: Rich Koz) is also great with trivia, giving the movies some serious coverage and not just jokes.
Of course, horror hosting is also a key influence behind my favorite TV show: Mystery Science Theater 3000, although I agree with Joel Hodgson's appraisal that they aren't actually hosting movies, but merely using movies as raw material to build a variety show on top of.