American Scary, a new documentary is now available that I had the privilege of watching last weekend, is now available which represents a great film on an important aspect of pop culture that will take many down memory lane. This film is a nostalgic homage to the glory days of the late night horror shows which features interviews and archival footage of the most famous hosts from the 1950s to the present day. American Scary was written and directed by John Hudgens and Sandy Clark (the latter also serving as producer), with Michael Monahan serving as associate producer. In the following interview Sandy and Michael talk about their love for late night horror hosts and the background for American Scary.

TheoFantastique: How did you come up with the idea of doing a documentary on the television horror hosts?

Sandy Clark: There are two elements to the argument. John likes to talk about being in Knoxville and there was a guy there with a button for Sir Cecil Creape, a Nashville horror host. It was the first time I had ever seen the phrase “horror host,” but it didn’t really stick in my head. I got my friend Lowell to wax poetic about them, and he had this transfiguring moment when he started to talk about it. He went from being a reserved, stoic, serious guy into becoming this nine year-old kid. And I thought that was interesting. What is this thing that can transport men back to their childhood hearts? A couple of weeks later I was pushing a comic book at WonderCon in Oakland and there was a line around the show floor to see Bob Wilkins, now the late Bob Wilkins, who did Creature Features. I was right next to this and I asked what they were selling, what had these people lining up, and when I heard it was a television show that hadn’t been on the air for decades I just couldn’t believe there was still this kind of following. But these horror hosts were worlds apart from each other. Sir Cecil Creape had the hunchback, the teeth, the accent, and then Bob Wilkins had the cigar, the rocking chair, they couldn’t be more different from each other. So I knew I had to draw the various strands together from these very different horror hosts around the country. I started fishing around with the idea of doing a fifteen minute movie short in about two weeks and I was looking for an expert, somebody who could guide me in across the River Styx into this world of horror hosts and that’s when I found Michael.

Michael Monahan: That would be me. Sandy and I hooked up and he came over to my house and I had been researching television horror hosts since about 1998. Bob Wilkins had come out with a series of tapes from his old Creature Features show and it struck a cord with me again having grown up with that in the Bay Area. I started reaching out to find out about hosts from other markets because I was curious and someone sent me a tape of Sammy Terry from Indianapolis, and immediately, as Sandy says, it was worlds away from what Bob was doing, but was still this local core, something that just felt alive. It got me very excited about the genre itself, and I’ve always loved horror films, but after this I began to collect and research people from across the country. By the time Sandy came over I already had a lot of these materials in my collection and I said here’s the history. It began in 1954 with Vampira in Los Angeles;  here’s Dr. Paul Bearer from Tampa; here’s Morgus the Magnificent from New Orleans; there’s Stella from Philadelphia; Zacherly from New York. By the end of it Sandy just sat back in the chair and said, “Wow. We’ve got to do this.” It was just such an exciting opportunity once we hooked up and I realized I was going to have a chance to talk to the people I’ve grown to admire. Just being on the project became a very, very exciting process.

Sandy Clark: Something else important came out of that meeting with Michael and I. He said something that shaped the tone of this. We had just seen a review in Arkansas Online that established a tone that we hit with the film, and Michael said it, and he may not even remember it. He said, aside from jazz horror hosts are the only true American folk art form. And it just stuck with me. There is this level of Americana in this, there’s a level of a cultural touchstone to this, and as we went forward that was more of what I tried to bring out of it, is tying it into the whole social experience of growing up in America, not just horror movies.

TheoFantastique: This last comment leads into my next question. What were some of the conditions in television markets and the culture going back to the 1950s and into the following decades that provided the right mix and led to the creation the horror host and brought this aspect of pop culture into being?

Michael Monahan: The roots of this go way, way back to the turn of the century to the painted sideshow and that moves forward through the spook shows that were very popular in the 1930s and 1940s where a traveling magician would take a show around to various movie theaters and do these barnstorming performances. Often those shows ended with the horror film. They would perform their magic act cutting off heads, sawing people in half, and then they would show a horror movie. So in a way the spook show created the template for the horror host. And of course radio finalized the template by having programs like The Witching Hour and The Inner Sanctum where a host introduced the program and also ended with a moral of some type. That extended through Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, all of the EC Comics which were also hosted horror stories. All of these elements funneled into this television explosion and when Universal released their shock movie package to television stations around the country suddenly had access to this huge library of classic horror. Now the Universal films ran anywhere from sixty to seventy minutes long which was always convenient for programming. Through this the horror host served several purposes. One was presenting a face for the station and having a station personality. The second was filling that time, a ninety minute time slot for a seventy minute film required an additional ten to fifteen minutes of coverage, so the horror host was there to fill in that space.

Sandy Clark: Let me extend what he said a little bit. Horror hosting now when you look at it, all people see are the surface aspects. It seems amateurish, do-it-yourself, the guy in fake teeth with a cape on a makeshift set. At times that’s all people see, but all of that stuff has been articulated and polished and well worn in everything from Vaudeville to the aspects Michael was talking in about in radio and television. Now it’s something that’s very comfortable and familiar. Again, quoting Michael, this goes back to the first time people were sitting around campfire and telling stories to each other in semi-darkness. The host is a guide. He takes you to a place inside yourself where you don’t really want to go by yourself. Ignore the marketing and the need to fill and make it fit the time for a moment. It’s your companion to another place. And the material lends itself so well to being hosted, much better than the movie of the week that we’ve had hosts on, this material you really want to share it with someone, for protection or analysis or revelation.

TheoFantastique: You feature a number of horror hosts in the documentary, and three seem to be most influential to the phenomenon as a whole beyond their individual television markets. These seemed to be Vampira, Zacherley, and Ghoulardi. Can you share a little about them and why they were so influential beyond their immediate viewing audiences?

Sandy Clark: I want to put one disclaimer out front. We found over 300 hosts and that they can’t all make it in. This is the one complaint we get, “Why didn’t host X make it in?” Often times we couldnt’ find their spokesperson, especially if they had passed away. I think we did establish the three main beads of Vampire, Zacherly, and Ghoulardi as being the most influential. But we have to remember there were other hosts that did things first or did innovative things like Morgus, Dr. Paul Bearer that really deserved to get mentioned, but we just couldn’t find that magic trifecta of fans, someone speaking for the host or the host speaking themselves, and great footage from their program. If we couldn’t find those three things then they couldn’t make it in.

Michael Monahan: You basically hit the big three in the sense that if you look at this whole genre Vampira was the king, Zacherly the king, and Ghoulardi the jester. There’s your royal three. Vampira gets credit not only for being the first, but she developed the template for horror hosting that followed. In 1954, in a bit of a vacuum, she pulled all of the elements together and created this one iconic character, probably the first post-atomic, mythological creature in Vampira. Zacherly, for his part, was having so much fun with what he was doing it was infectious. He was someone who connected with his audience because he was just a big kid. He was having so much fun with these experiments, reaching out to his community as well in Philadelphia and later in New York. Ghoulardi had sort of the benefit of timing in a way. When he hit the Cleveland market it’s the dead of winter in February 1963 and people are pretty much trapped in their homes at night, so with three stations to pick from, Channel 8 with this crazy guy on at night is one of the places you’re going to go. So he had a bit of a captive audience to with. And timing wise his arrival also coincided with the arrival of the Beatles in America, and there was this hysteria among the age group that were both targets for Ghoulardi and the Beatles, so I think they were able to build off each other in a way. Ernie Anderson hated the Beatles and rock and roll music, he was a big fan of jazz, but I think they both tapped into the same rebellious spirit, and Ghoulardi benefited from that.

Sandy Clark: One of the things I’ve noticed is that people will frequently imitate Vampira’s design, her style. People will imitate Zacherly’s tone or theme, the light hearted guy. But people imitate Ghoulardi as a holistic thing. It’s interesting that he spawned a way of behaving and hosting the material so much so that he spawned a bunch of offspring. There’s a whole tree that sprouts out of him and you find it really interesting because for each of the others it was broad, but for Ghoulardi it was the sheer force of personality.

Michael Monahan: I’ve often said to Sandy and others that if you wanted to make a film about the history of Cleveland television it would be like the Godfather: a multi-generational story with friendships and hatred and reconciliation and vengeance. People in Cleveland are so passionate about their horror host history and Ghoulardi specifically. They do an annual Ghoulardi Fest. There’s a bar and grill named after him. No other area of the country do you get that in. You don’t have Elvira’s Taco Stand.

TheoFantastique: I think you and I should get together and create some kind of Bob Wilkins franchise, Michael, in the Bay Area.

Michael Monahan: His influence is still felt. There is another documentary called Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong that is specifically about Bob Wilkins. There’s a new show on KOFY TV-20 in the Bay Area called The Creepy Coffee Movie Time and references to Bob Wilkins pop up in that.

TheoFantastique: Prior to watching your documentary I thought there was level of archaeology involved in this in that I thought the horror host had disappeared, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is a new generation hosts on television and the Internet. Can you talk a little about how the old horror hosts on television influenced this new generation and who some of these new personalities are?

Sandy Clark: I think that if you’re going to talk about the new generation of hosts the guy who is your bridge is Count Gore De Vol (Dick Dyzel), because he was the first horror host on the Internet, he’s done a lot of community building, heh bridges the material from television to the Internet, he has contacts that are almost universal through horror hosting and the horror community. He’s kind of the bridging aspect between the old generation and the new generation. The thing that put it all into perspective for me was every new medium that has come along since radio has used a horror host to establish market share early on. Radio did it, VHF stations did it, they had their local hosts, then the hosts moved on to UHF, when the cable networks you had Commander USA establishing local market share. Now that the Internet is here everybody is their own local market. The field is wide open. If the horror host relies on a place that’s a bit like the Wild West where you can do what you want and you can get away with a little more, then the Internet should be an ever-renewing force to see more horror hosts spawning off. It’s open, it has that freedom, you can do stuff and then put it up and watch YouTube. Maybe only three people and your cat will see it, but if it makes you happy you can do it. I’ll turn it over to Michael because he gets to play one of these new generation of horror hosts.

Michael Monahan: My experience is similar to anyone else who went to public access or the Internet to display their own talents as a host. We’re all inspired by the people we grew up with. Everyone in this new generation has their hometown hero. As Sandy was pointing out earlier, he say a Sir Cecil Creape button at a local convention, well that was on the jack of Doctor Gangrene, a host out in Nashville. For me if Bob Wilkins, also Asmodeus on Shock-It-To-Me Theater on Channel 20. Later KBHK syndicated The Ghoul from Cleveland, Son of Svenghoulie from Chicago. We had a rubber mask host movies for a while as The Glob on Channel 44. All of these influences came together in a show I did called The Hip Crypt of Dr. Ghoulfinger on Berkeley public access BTV 25 from 2001 through 2004, and this is a a similar experience across the country. When I began to announce to friends that I was going to do a horror host program on television I literally had one guy jump up from around the table, come around the table and shake my hand. They are just so excited to hear that is happening. That community is already there, it’s established. I think just the sense of support that you get in doing something like this is exciting to people who are pursuing it, and you get a lot of positive feedback. We ended up doing a lot of live shows on a local program called Thrillville that even established the character even more than on television.

Sandy Clark: To mention Doctor Gangrene, he found that as well. He hosted public events in Nashville and found that when you put a horror host back in the public with a live audience it’s like the latent genetic material for antediluvian spook show cells reasserts itself and they have an instant grip on the audience. They are the perfect predator for the entertainment world.

Michael Monahan: You also see in programs like Mystery Science Theater 3000 that immediate reaction from their viewing audience once it hit Comedy Central on cable, the program was structured like a local show, and immediately they got letters and cartoons from kids just like your local host would. Everyone in the country felt like they had a local host back and it tapped into the same sort of community spirit that Sandy was talking about, almost a Jungian race memory of local programming. I think this, and talent, was one of the things that immediately catapulted MST3K to that kind of feeling.

TheoFantastique: Do you see some kind of continued evolution and survival of the horror host?

Sandy Clark: I’ll reinforce a point I made earlier, the Internet means they’ll never go away now. The Internet creates a backstop that means you’re not going back. The Internet creates an ever-renewing place for people to do this with a small or large audience that’s up to the skill and innovation of the hosts themselves. Also, there are lots of imitators in terms of programming, we had Dinner and a Movie a few years ago and other hosted shows that tried to be a little more innovative. MST3K is an obvious spinoff of this, so as long as they have imitators they’re not forgotten as well. But I think the cornerstone is going to be the elixir of the Internet, that mixture of access and available bandwidth and the constant questing of the human mind to find something interesting.

Michael Monahan: I also think again there’s something specific about the wide open rebellious spirit of the horror host that really appeals to creative people. You can pour more creativity into a hosted horror show than pretty much anything else because you can draw your influences literally from anywhere. You can have a stuffed doll, a comic book, a guy in an elaborate costume, any element you pull into the show fits into this horror host, and you can’t really say that about a lot of other genres.

TheoFantastique: What other projects do you have in the works?

Michael Monahan: I’m actually pitching a book on this subject, perhaps through Chronicle Books  or McFarland.

Sandy Clark: We’ve got to mention American Scary‘s director, John E. Hudgens is working on a documentary about fan films on the Internet, Star Warsand science fiction fan films and a history of how this subgenre came up. He won an award for a Star Warsfan film from George Lucas himself and we got to go to Skywalker Ranch for this project. This has been going on for a number of years as a part-time project.

I’ve moved on to a number of projects, a series of mystery novels, but my big stuff is working for a company that’s trying to build a relevant space search engine for the Internet where you can find things you need but never saw coming. I’m also working on a lot of community building in my new home in Springfield, Missouri where I founded a non-profit called Eclectic Endeavors and we build fan-based community around the geeky arts. We host a giant picnic in the middle of the summer, and we’ve done four now, and they draw 140 to 200 people, and it’s everything from horror fans to ham radio. We’re sponsoring a convention at www.springfieldgame.com in October 2009 with the Gaming Arts and Media Expo. We’re going to slowly grow that until it becomes a regional magnet for the geek tribes of all stripes in the Midwest.

TheoFantastique: Is your great documentary available for purchase, through what outlets, and how can people learn more about American Scary?

Sandy Clark: It’s available through Cinema Libre Studio, through Amazon.com, and through our website at American Scary, and it’s also available through the various people who participated in the film through their public appearances. One of the things that I think is neat is that Cinema Libre has an affiliate program set up so that if you’re a local host or have a host fan page up you can throw a plug in and offer the movie to the readers directly and get a cut of it. When we made the film one of my goals was that it should be a marketing tool for horror hosts. It should be a film that they can use to say here’s where I fit in the cultural context, and they should be able to get a cut off of it. If I were to pick out of all the places I’d love people to get it then it would be through local horror hosts or fan pages from hosts they remember because then they’d know that some of the money from the purchase is going back to support the memory of that host they love. But those haven’t started popping up yet.

Michael Monahan: Because the people are fans of this genre they are themselves historians of their local hosts. A lot of these people are reservoirs for their local television history. I continue to learn a lot by going to people in various places and learning from people on the ground in their own backyards.

TheoFantastique: Michael and Sandy, thank you again for putting together this documentary on an aspect of American folk art, and for sharing this project with readers.