Cassandra Gay Peterson is an American actress best known for her portrayal of the horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Peterson gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ-TV in her stage persona as Elvira, hosting Elvira's Movie Macabre, a weekly B movie presentation. A member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings, Peterson based her Elvira persona in part on a "Valley girl"-type character she created while a member of the troupe.
John Zacherle was an American television host, radio personality, singer, and voice actor. He was best known for his long career as a television horror host, often broadcasting horror films in Philadelphia and New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. Best known for his character of "Roland/Zacherley", he also did voice work for films, and recorded the top ten novelty rock and roll song "Dinner With Drac" in 1958. He also edited two collections of horror stories, Zacherley's Vulture Stew and Zacherley's Midnight Snacks.
Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi, known professionally as Maila Nurmi, was an American-Finn actress who created the campy 1950s character Vampira.
Morgus the Magnificent, also known as Momus Alexander Morgus, is a fictional character created and portrayed by actor Sidney Noel Rideau. From the late 1950s into the 1980s, Morgus was a "horror host" of late-night science fiction and horror movies and television shows that originated in the New Orleans, Louisiana market. Morgus is a quintessential mad scientist, assisted by executioner-styled sidekick, Chopsley. Morgus' well-intentioned experiments often served as book-end pieces to the late-night films being shown, and typically went awry at the last minute.
Svengoolie is an American hosted horror movie television program. The show features horror and science fiction films and is hosted by the character Svengoolie, who was originally played by Jerry G. Bishop from 1970 to 1973, before Rich Koz succeeded him in the role from 1979 on. Before and after commercial breaks, Svengoolie presents sketches, tells jokes, and performs parody songs related to the films being aired. The show is a long-running local program in the Chicago area and in recent years expanded nationally, airing Saturday nights on MeTV.
Count Floyd is a fictional character featured in television and played by comic actor Joe Flaherty. He is a fictional horror host in the tradition of TV movie hosts on local television in both the United States and Canada.
Creature Feature, presented in later years as Dr. Paul Bearer Presents, was a TV horror movie series on WTOG in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, from 1973 to 1995. The films were hosted by Dick Bennick Sr. as Dr. Paul Bearer, who hosted a different classic horror film every Saturday afternoon at 2 pm. Bennick created the character at WGHP in High Point, North Carolina, for the station's Shock Theater in the mid-to-late 1960s after his previous persona, Count Shockula, proved less than satisfactory.
Creature Features is a generic title for a genre of horror TV format shows broadcast on local American television stations throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The movies broadcast on these shows were generally classic and cult horror movies of the 1930s to 1950s, the horror and science-fiction films of the 1950s, British horror films of the 1960s, and the Japanese kaiju "giant monster" movies of the 1950s to 1970s.
Dr. Gangrene is a television horror host based in the Middle Tennessee area, played by actor/writer/producer Larry Underwood.
The Vampira Show was an American television show that broadcast vintage horror films presented by horror host Vampira. The series aired on the Los Angeles ABC television affiliate KABC-TV from April 30, 1954, through April 2, 1955. The weekly series was produced and created by Hunt Stromberg, Jr., and featured the Vampira character created by Maila Nurmi.
Barry Lee Hobart was a local television personality widely known to fans as Dr. Creep. He was a horror movie host on WKEF Television in Dayton, Ohio.
Nightmare Theatre was one of the more prominent late-night horror programs of the 1960s and 1970s. During its fourteen-year run, this show introduced several generations of television viewers to the horror films of yesteryear, across the Pacific Northwest. Produced by Seattle-based KIRO-TV, and utilizing much of the same cast and crew as the similarly popular The J.P. Patches Show, Nightmare Theatre reached an audience that stretched as far north as Alaska, as far east as Idaho, and south into Oregon, as well as Canada. Its residential horror host, The Count, has accrued a cult following over the years, much in the same vein as his make-up laden peers Maila Nurmi ("Vampira"), John Zacherle ("Zacherley"), and Cassandra Peterson ("Elvira").
Shock Theater is a package of 52 pre-1948 classic horror films from Universal Studios released for television syndication in October 1957 by Screen Gems, the television subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. The Shock Theater package included Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man as well as a few non-horror spy and mystery films. A second package, Son of Shock, was released for television by Screen Gems in 1958, with 20 horror films from both Universal and Columbia.
American Scary is a 2006 American documentary film about the history and legacy of classic television horror hosts, written and directed by American independent filmmakers John E. Hudgens and Sandy Clark.
Elvira's Movie Macabre, or simply Movie Macabre, is an American hosted horror movie television program that originally aired locally from 1981 to 1986. The show features B movies, particularly those in the horror and science fiction genres, and is hosted by Elvira, a character with a black dress and heaven bump hairstyle, played by Cassandra Peterson. Elvira occasionally interrupts the films with comments and jokes, and in some episodes receives phone calls from a character called "the Breather".
Chiller Theatre was a Saturday night television series broadcast by Channel 11 WPIX in New York City that showed classic horror movies.
Dr. Shock was a prominent 1970s fictional character, appearing on television as a horror host presenter, that was created and portrayed by magician Joseph Zawislak, commonly known as "Joe Zawislak." The character was created as an on-air host for the broadcast of B-rated horror movies for Philadelphia WPHL-TV Channel 17 that included three different show titles during his career: Scream-In, Mad Theater and Horror Theater. Dr. Shock, whose sign-off, "Let there be fright!", became a mantra for legions of school-age fans in Philadelphia for this local beloved celebrity. Fredy Benton, a young comedy writer and impressionist who worked with Dr. Shock in the early days, said that the horror host performed a version of the rubber chicken gag later made popular by Svengoolie.
Edwin Lynn Raub was a television personality and horror host under the name Uncle Ted in the Northeastern Pennsylvania viewing area of the United States. He is mostly known for hosting the programs Uncle Ted's Children's Party in the 1960s, Uncle Ted's Ghoul School from 1974 to 1982 and Uncle Ted's Monstermania from 1984 to 1997. He was posthumously inducted into the Horror Host Hall Of Fame in 2014. According to his first sidekick Richard Briggs: "He was a living legend, one of those guys who was around when (television) started up, and there's not too many of those guys around anymore."
Shudder is an American over-the-top subscription video on demand service featuring horror, thriller, and supernatural fiction titles, owned and operated by AMC Networks. The streaming service offers original films, TV series—such as Creepshow, based on the 1982 film of the same name—and documentary series. Shudder's library also features non-original programming, including well-known horror films, and annually airs a Halloween "Ghoul Log".
The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award, often called the Rondo Award, is an annual award founded in 2002 that honors journalism, scholarship and film preservation in the horror genre, particularly of classic horror film and their modern-day counterparts.
