Blog-o-ween 2022: The Classics, Pt. 2

Well, Blog-o-weeners (I'm really gonna have to think of a better name), we made it! It is 31 October; it is Halloween! I hope everyone has a great time today...what with the chill in the air...and the trick-or-treating...and the spooky movies...and the bobbing for apples...and the carving of pumpkins...ooohhhh, laaadyyy!

Here at LARPing Real Life HQ, I'm gonna throw on Zacherley's Horrible Horror, an old VHS tape I bought at Hill's Department Store in the 1980s. After that, I'm putting myself in the hand of Commander USA and his 1985 USA Network Halloween Special. I say "hand," because we all know that the Commander has his other hand full with his right-hand man, Lefty. Sure.

So, now we come to it. The final three old time radio show of Blog-o-ween 2022. And boy, oh boy, are they scary. I mean, I honestly hope you all are wearing a belt or a pair of suspenders at the very least, because these shows are going to scare the pants right off of you! Oh, yeah! I mean, double-knot your shoelaces, because the three thrilling and chilling stories we have today are going to knock your socks off! You bet!

Our first entry for Halloween is a 1948 episode Wyllis Cooper's Quiet Please. It is a terrifying tale called “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I don’t want to give too much away on this one. All I will say is that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. Everything about this episode - the writing, the acting, the sound design - is sheer horrific perfection. And the story’s ending is absolutely unforgettable.

Next, let's you and I take a trip into the canyons of Los Angeles -- Cypress Canyon to be precise. There, we will find a house belonging to James and Ellen Woods. It's a nice little place, perfect for a married couple. There's lots of closet space. In fact, one closet in particular seems to house enough blood to give Dracula a tummyache. Written by Robert L. Richards, directed by William Spier, and starring Robert Taylor and Cathy Lewis, “The House in Cypress Canyon” from the series Suspense is considered by many people to be the scariest radio program of all time. Do you dare listen to see if they are right?

Last, we have what I think is the scariest radio show of them all. The above shows are doozies, no mistake about it, but this next just has that certain je ne sais quoi, that little bit extra, whether it's the acting, the mood, the ending, that nudges it above everything else in my opinion. It is an adaptation of W.W. Jacobs's classic tale "The Monkey's Paw" as performed on the Canadian radio show Nightfall. 

The story is simply told: at the turn of the 20th century, an English family is visited by a friend just back from serving in India. The visitor has in his possession a souvenir from his time there: a shriveled, mummified monkey’s paw. He tells the family that it allegedly grants three wishes, but those who tempt fate through the paw’s powers are forever sorry they do so. The visitor tries to toss it onto the fire and burn it, but the paw is saved and kept by the family.

What does the family wish for? Do they get what they want?

What follows is a tale of terror and bitter irony that still sends a shiver up my spine. “The Monkey’s Paw” is a marvel of construction, simple, but with powerful moments leading up to its heartbreaking climax.

I hope you enjoyed our trip through old time radio this month. If you want to hear more, you are in luck! There are many more shows available for streaming at the Internet Archive, as well as your favorite podcast platform.

Be well, my fiends, stay scared...

It is 30 October. There is 1 day until Halloween.

What would a month-long celebration of Halloween be without a mention of those men and women who take it upon themselves to further the case for horror films to generations of TV (and now internet) viewers?

I am speaking, of course, of the TV horror host.

The TV horror host was born in the early 1950s, when Maila Nurmi first pulled on her skintight black dress and, as Vampira, screamed into the cameras of Los Angeles station KABC-TV.

Things didn’t really start to gain traction nationwide, however, until Screen Gems released the Shock! horror film collection to TV stations in 1957.

Shock! (and later Son of Shock!...and, later still, Creature Features) was a package of movies that clearly needed some adult supervision. So, what TV stations began to do was take a page from radio’s playbook. They created hosts to keep the audience company during the broadcasts. Similar to the hosts of such radio shows as The Witch’s Tale, Inner Sanctum, and Quiet, Please, the TV horror host wasn’t just a neutral, uninterested voice at the head and tail of each show. No, sir! The TV horror host was a part of the show, commenting on the movie during commercial breaks with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Sometimes, like Zacherley at New York’s WABC-TV, comments were made during the actual movie! Heck, most of the time, the movie was so lousy, it was only the host segments that kept your attention and kept you from switching over to studio wrestling or the off-the-air test pattern.

Every major and minor market in every city seemed to have their own horror host. Usually employees of the station itself, these men and women were, like poor old Larry Talbot, just ordinary weatherpersons or newscasters by day, but by night (one assumes when the moon was full and the wolfsbane bloomed) became creepy ghouls and ghoulies. Mundane TV studios were turned into castle dungeons and mad scientists’ laboratories.

[We interrupt this blog post for a Film Studies nerd interlude…

[It’s kinda fun to imagine the Jekyll & Hyde aspect of TV Horror Hosts in those early days. The TV station was seen as a wholesome, if stodgy, source of information and entertainment. It was the first place the community turned to when trouble reared its ugly head. Yet, at the same time, at night, when everyone had gone home for the day, these spaces mutated into breeding grounds of anarchy. And at the center of this midnight massacre of rules and regulations was a person who, only a few hours earlier, dressed neatly in a coat and tie or a conservative blouse and skirt, had soberly delivered the day’s news. Only now they were dressed up as a beatnik ghoul and chucking firecrackers at their cameraman. Incredible! There’s another blog post there somewhere…

[Back to our regularly scheduled program…]

In Pittsburgh, our horror host was none other than Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille. Some of you may know him as the on-location news reporter in George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Chilly Billy (and other late-night horror hosts in other markets) was so popular in the 1970s that Saturday Night Live was pre-empted and shown after Chiller Theatre. Executives at WIIC-TV certainly knew who paid the bills in Pittsburgh, and it wasn’t John Belushi.

Sadly, by the time I was old enough to stay up and watch (and, more importantly, appreciate) shows like Chiller Theatre, Chilly Billy was taken off the air. Local TV stations, thanks in part to the Reagan Administration’s FCC, were no longer required to air their own programming. Instead, they opted for infomercials and syndicated programming to fill the late-night hours.

What was a burgeoning monster kid to do?

Thankfully, cable television in the early- to mid-1980s was still kind of a wild west show. There were plenty of channels that thought the late-night time was the right time to air the outré. It may surprise some readers that the USA Network was ground zero for weirdness. USA showed Kung Fu Theatre, Saturday Nightmares, The Ray Bradbury Theater, Night Flight, and, my personal favorite, Commander USA's Groovie Movies!

The Commander was a wise-cracking superhero, who, from his secret headquarters beneath a local shopping mall, brought viewers some of the greatest and crummiest movies ever made. And the Commander was always on the side of the movie. He may have joked about them, but he was always enthusiastic about his movies. And so was Lefty, the Commander's right-hand man.

Like, tonight’s movie. It's a special Halloween episode of Commander USA’s Groovie Movies replete with commercials and promos and all sorts of VHS goodness. The Alligator People (1959) has got a bit of everything: Beverly Garland, cheapjack hypnosis, alligator men wearing pants, and that scene-stealer extraordinaire, Lon Chaney, Jr.!

So enjoy the festivities and remember to keep your nose to the wind and your tail to yourself!