Misc: Book Review: I WAS A TV HORROR HOST

I WAS A TV HORROR HOST: MEMOIRS OF A CREATURE FEATURES MAN
by John Stanley
(Creatures At Large, 208pp, $19.99, ISBN-13 978-0940-06-411-9)
(a book review by Mark R. Leeper)

For those who were not around at the time, a lot of baby boomer
horror fans got their start watching the horror film packages
distributed to television starting around the late 1950s. I know
I lived from one Saturday night to the next looking forward to my
first chance to see some film like HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN that I
had read about in FAMOUS MONSTER OF FILMLAND magazine. In
Springfield, Massachusetts the Late Show would just have a
science fiction or horror film every Saturday night. The larger
stations made it a weekly program with a host who went by a name
like Ghoulardi or Svenghouli, usually in some weird costume.

The San Francisco area had a little more class. KTVU out of
Oakland broadcast CREATURE FEATURES with its host Bob Wilkins.
When horror hosts like Zacherley and Vampira were dressing up in
Halloween costumes and doing skits, Wilkins looked relatively
normal underplayed the horror host role with a sort of Bob
Newhart deadpan style. His slogan was "Watch horror films...
Keep America Strong." I enjoyed Wilkins a lot when I was at
Stanford from 1972 to 1974. KTVU had John Stanley as the host of
CREATURE FEATURES from 1979 to 1984 after Wilkins left.
Unfortunately, I never saw John Stanley on the air. As far as I
can tell John Stanley carried the Wilkins tradition of the laid-
back style. (Oddly, each looks like he has a portrait somewhere
doing all his aging for him.) Stanley also published a guide to
the kind of films he would show, JOHN STANLEY'S CREATURE FEATURES
MOVIE GUIDE.

That brings me to John Stanley's current book, I WAS A TV HORROR
HOST. As the name suggests, this is a memoir of his years as a
horror host--probably the first memoir of a horror host. It
covers a lot more including the history of horror hostdom going
back to radio hosts like Raymond on "The Inner Sanctum".

A little over half of the book chronicles John Stanley's
adventures interviewing the major names associated with media
fantasy in the 1970s. Several people associated with Star Trek
and Star Wars were his guests. He interviewed Ray Harryhausen,
Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Vincent Price, Roger Corman, and John
Newland (the host of TV's "One Step Beyond"). He finishes
Christopher Lee, William Castle, George Romero, and Boris
Karloff's daughter.

The interviews are not in any great depth. Certainly they are
not in the depth of Tom Weaver's interviews in numerous books
published by McFarland. But as Stanley's interviews were
interruptions of the evenings' Creature Feature, they were kept
brief with some interesting tidbits.

What do I like and not like about the book. Let us start with
what I liked.

-- I have rarely seen the subject of television horror hosts
covered in book form anywhere else. There was a legion of them
(and Stanley lists most in the book) and there must have been
some good stories about them and their stations.

-- John Stanley illustrates the book with a treasury stills.
Every page has a photo and some have as many as three.

-- The price tag of this book is $19.99. Unfortunately most
books on popular media of the past years seem to be published by
Scarecrow Press or their clone McFarland. This is the sort of
book that McFarland might publish. They would tone down the
silly title fonts, make sure it had the index it really needed,
sandwich it between hardcovers, and slap a $55 price tag on it.
McFarland has a great line of media books, many of which I would
love to own, but I am only a poor corrupt official. I slightly
prefer Stanley's less dignified format and his $20 price tag is
as nostalgic as the book itself is.

-- Stanley does a good job of covering the subject of horror
hosting, and the popular horror including hosts of the past like.

-- John Stanley has an infectious enthusiasm that comes through
in the book.

-- I frequently find factual errors in books about the old horror
films. Stanley seems fairly careful with his facts. Stanley is
a fan of the horror genre and has an encyclopedic knowledge.
Through the book John Stanley's positive personality comes
through and lights up the entire narrative. He is the biggest
asset of his own book.

Now what about the negatives?

-- The biggest fault is that book has no index. Perhaps Stanley
felt his book was supposed to be just light reading and did not
need one. Flipping through pages is no substitute for knowing
what page to go to find the comments about Christopher Lee or
Robert Bloch.

-- There are many more attempted jokes than actual laughs. This
is, of course, a matter of taste and probably is in the tradition
of CREATURE FEATURES. And I have the same problem with my jokes.

-- I was not looking for Stanley to dish dirt, but he seems
unrelentingly positive on all the celebrities he discusses. Here
and there he tells an anecdote that maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger
would not like if he were not Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Stanley
seems to have no pet peeves, no axes to grind, and he had no
problems with the celebrities with whom he dealt. He likes
everybody, so his narrative feels a little sugar-coated and
perhaps not a good source for insight.

For those who want to understand the state of popular fantasy in
the 1970s or to just reminisce about the period this book is
worth the modest purchase price.

Admission: I have not finished reading the book yet. What is
left I am going to save to read only on Saturday evenings while
watching good (or bad) horror films.

Mark R. Leeper
mleeper RemoveThis @optonline.net
Copyright 2007 Mark R. Leeper