Tonight we bring you one of the lost treasures of Horror Hosting:
Pardon the lady's crease... and click to embiggen
That's Tarantula Ghoul, who hosted Portland's House of Horror.
Tarantula (Taranch to her friends) was a pretty typical host in many ways. She rose from a coffin at the beginning of each show, lampooned the movies, engaged in macabre social satire, and had a sidekick. In her case, the hunchbacked gravedigger-turned-gardener Milton.
Though one wonders if perhaps he didn't sometimes confuse his two careers...
Also like many horror hosts, Tarantula's rise to stardom was surprising, meteoric... and quickly over. House of Horror ran from October of 1957 to November of 1958, but in that short span Tarantula hit it big. Her show was popular enough that she was featured in TV Guide (from which the creased picture above came), she made public appearances...
...in which she apparently carried Screamin' Jay Hawkin's walking stick...
...and generally lead the life of a successful 1950s horror host. And then her show got cancelled, only a little more than a year after it began. But it didn't end due to poor ratings. It was cancelled because Tarantula (aka Suzanne Waldron) got pregnant out of wedlock, and that just wouldn't fly in that more restrictive era.
That's not why we remember Tarantula Ghoul so fondly, however. We remember her because in her year of fame, she also cut a record. And what a record! Dig the hep sounds of Tarantula Ghoul and the Gravediggers, with their one and only single, "Graveyard Rock."
(Not the original video... obviously, I guess...)
Hot damn! That's one of our all-time favorite Halloween songs here on the Dork Forty, and it's not even the A side! No, that honor goes to the bossa-nova-flavored "King Kong," which you can also hear below:
So it's been a long, hot summer here on the Dork Forty. We took a little vacation from the reviews, turned our attention elsewhere for a while, and kinda just let things pile up around here on the nerd farm. You should see the giant stack of stuff we've got sitting there waiting to be belatedly written up. It's frankly a bit overwhelming. So overwhelming, in fact, that we won't be getting to it tonight.
No, tonight I wanted to simply direct your attention to the Dork Forty's new favorite portion of the YouTube empire: Cinema Insomnia TV! As we've spent ample time outlining in the past, we're big fans of the horror host genre around here, and Mr. Lobo (host of Cinema Insomnia) is our favorite of the current generation of hosts.
The Man Himself!
Lobo's mix of classic (and not-so-classic) public domain schlock, retro commercials and some genuinely clever host humor segments always make for an entertaining evening, whenever we can catch it. And now, we can catch it pretty much whenever we wanna. Because Mr. Lobo's posted up about 20 full-length episodes, with movies, to his YouTube station. These are mostly the episodes he's been making available via streaming video at his website, but now you can watch whichever of them you want, whenever you want, instead of constantly stumbling upon the Superbug episode like we do.
(Which, you know... Nothing against Superbug. It's a funny episode, with one of those rare movies that's so mind-bogglingly awful that you can't believe it exists. But after the third or fourth viewing, even if you're just turning it on to nap to... Well, let's just say that the nerd wranglers get restless, and that's never a good thing.)
Anyway. After the jump, I've linked to one of my all-time favorite B Movies, and one of my favorite episodes of Cinema Insomnia as well: Vincent Price in Last Man on Earth. It's a genuinely effective low-budget adaptation of the novel I Am Legend, and in his portion of the show, Mr. Lobo paints a portrait of masculinity that should be all too familiar to those of us in the Dork Nation. It's worth a click just to see the opening PSA, though...
So here we are at the end of Thanksgivin’ weekend. We’ve had a grand ol’ American good time the last few days, and now we thought we’d slow down a little and take stock. Think about the thing this holiday’s really s'posed to be about: the stuff from the precedin’ year that we’re thankful for. There’s friends and family and good health and all that, of course, but... Bein’ on the Nerd Farm really makes us think most about all the dorky crap we loved in 2010. So here, in no particular order, is our list of Ten Dorky Things To Be Thankful For…
1. Mythbusters
There’s nothing dorkier than science, and this show combines science with urban legends AND blowing stuff up! Could documentary television really get much better than that? Not in our eyes, my friends! From the ridiculous concepts, to the fascinating practical science of the experiments, to the genius hosting odd couple of Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman (pictured), we love this show deep down to the core of our dorky little hearts. Even with the cheesy fake enthusiasm of the back-up team (who I like, don’t get me wrong), Mythbusters is like some kind of dork wet dream, and we’re thankful that they’re still making new ones.
2. JH Williams III
The single-best artist working in mainstream funnybooks today. With his innovative layout, mutable style, attention to detail, and talent for visual symbolism, Williams has made every comic he’s worked on twice as good as it might have been without him. This year, that comic was Batwoman, which was to funnybook art what Grant Morrison’s Batman was to funnybook writing: head and shoulders above the competition in the world of corporate spandex.
So Halloween might be over, but that don't mean the Dork Forty nerd wranglers can't pull some more Halloweenie goodness out of the fields for your enjoyment. And tonight, they found us a doozy: Uncle Eerie's Halloween Shiver Show! We profiled Uncle Eerie in our run-down of the Dork Forty's favorite horror hosts last month, but in case you don't remember...
Though it just debuted earlier this year, the Shiver Show's off to a great start. Uncle Eerie himself has a really fantastic look and gimmick, and the show is, in general, a bit of a visual feast. The costumes and set design for this thing are really impressive, especially for a public access show. The Shiver Shack set is particularly nice, evoking "run-down hell-hole" while still being otherwise aesthetically pleasing. I dig on the Lite Brite set with "REDRUM" spelled out on it, especially.
Pretty as it is, though, the Shiver Show's comedy material can be a little hit-and-miss. It's very funny on the concept and character side of things, and I really like the 1950s documentary music cues they use. But some of the actual gags fall a little flat. Some of that's on purpose, I'm sure, corny gags being a horror host staple (Svengoolie, anyone?). Sometimes, though... I don't laugh when I think I'm supposed to. But it's early days yet for this show, and it's otherwise so good that I cut them a little slack.
And, I'm pleased to say, they got the comedy firing on all cylinders for the Halloween special. I laughed my ass off at this thing. The opening features one of my new favorite fake ads I've seen for anything...
(And Blogspot's acting up on us again, so please click through into the article to watch.)
HA! My favorite Halloween myth, brought to cheesy life!
(Because, yes, children: no police department in America has ever received a report of razor blades in Halloween candy of any type. No poisoned candy, either. It's an urban legend, folks! So feel free to take a delicious candied apple from the old lady at the end of the block next Halloween! Unless you hate candied apples, of course. In that case, chuck some eggs at the old bag's house and run like hell!)
In the second segment, Uncle Eerie demonstrates the true spirit of Halloween...
So some of you may remember, back at the beginning of the Countdown to Halloween, me going on at length about the TeeVee horror host I grew up watching:
Doctor Madblood
The Doc's retired from the regular horror hosting gig now, but he does a Halloween special every year. And now this year's special's been posted up on-line by his station, WHRO. It's the show's 35th Anniversary special as well, chock-full of clips from past episodes and the usual Madblood goofiness. It's a great improvement over last year's special, as well, which I felt was sort of a long-time-fans-only sort of affair. The movie is Horror Hotel, (not)starring Christopher Lee.
So to get a full dose of Madblood goodness, complete with cheesy-ass movie, go here.
So I was going to move on to EC Comics next in my cavalcade of comics covers, but then I realized that I'd forgotten one of the big DC horror books: House of Secrets!
The sister series to House of Mystery, House of Secrets has a similar publishing history, though it started publication in 1956, after the Comics Code went into effect. Initially presenting stories of suspense, mystery and the supernatural, it shifted with changing times to giant monster and alien invasion fare before becoming the home of recurring characters like Eclipso (half hero / half villain!) and Prince Ra-Man (super-mentalist). As sales dwindled on the Eclipso series, House of Secrets was cancelled, only to be brought back three years later in 1969 as part of the horror line. And, like the rest of that line, it was blessed with a series of great covers. Most of the early ones were by Neal Adams, starting with issue 81:
Not Adams' best, nor a particular high point for DC horror in the 60s, but still a striking cover image. You'll note the bearded fellow up in the logo? The one that looks like an evil Orson Welles? That's Abel, host of the House of Secrets and brother to the House of Mystery's Cain. Why they thought taking the participants in the first Biblical murder and making them horror hosts was a good idea is anybody's guess, but I must say that it worked. Abel was a less sinister host than Cain, or maybe just less mean-spirited. Abel was plenty creepy, though. Whereas I always got the sense that Cain would be a fun guy to hang out with right up until the moment he cut your throat, Abel always just seemed creepy to me. Like the sort of guy who might have the kind of van you really wouldn't want to climb into...
But, anyway. The covers! Adams didn't deliver such great work on his first few issues, but then, for issue 88, he turned in this stunning piece, which you can see... after the jump!
So it's gettin' real close to go-time now. Only a little while longer, and we begin the lonely vigil and blizzard of Halloween sincerity required to attract the attention of the Great Punkin. But first... More horror hosts! Our final horror hosts, in fact, and my favorites of the current generation: Mr. Lobo, host of Cinema Insomnia, and...
Penny Dreadful
That's not just Penny up there, of course. She's the witch in the middle, but she's flanked by whacky neighbor and monster hunter Dr. Manfred von Bulow (on the left) and her werewolf husband Garou (on the right). Though Penny's clearly the star, these three host Shilling Shockers as a team.
But backing up a sec... When I learned that there was a horror host show called Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers, I was won over without ever seeing a minute of footage. "Penny dreadfuls" and "shilling shockers" were (for those of you who don't know) names for cheap, tawdry fiction in Victorian England. Poorly-written and printed out for the masses in serialized format, on cheap paper and even cheaper printing presses, penny dreadfuls were the precursors to pulp magazines, comic books, and of course the very types of B-Movies most often shown by TeeVee horror hosts. In other words, everything we love most here on the Dork Forty.
And we love this show, as well. They've done seven seven-episode seasons since 2006, appearing on cable access stations (and I believe PBS) throughout New England and elsewhere. Penny's a versatile and extremely charismatic host, able to move from gothic spookiness to broad humor in the blink of an eye. That transition's one of her best tricks, in fact, as you can see in this storyline recap clip... after the jump.
So the fun levels returned to normal around the Dork Forty today. Sure, everybody’s real excited about the possibility of a visit from the Great Punkin in three days’ time. But it was back to business today. The blood fields have been exsanguinated, but now it’s time to start wranglin’ the shrunken heads and pickin’ out the punkins we’re gonna be carvin’ in effigy this weekend. A busy day. But not so busy that I can’t share a couple more of my favorite working horror hosts with you for Night 28 of the Countdown to Halloween. Tonight, it's Dr. Gangrene, and this guy...
KARLOS BORLOFF!
I capitalize the header above because Karlos Borloff is a capital letters kinda guy. Aside from having maybe the best horror host name ever, Borloff is also the most in-your-face excited and enthusiastic host I've ever seen. His love of monster movies is palpable every time he comes on-screen, and that makes his show, Monster Madhouse, a pure-fun joy to watch. The premise is simple, and gloriously stupid: Borloff has gathered a collection of monster hunters to destroy or (even better!) recruit dangerous monsters! And then they all get together to show monster movies and try to make sense out of them.
Debuting in the Washington, DC, area in 2006, Monster Madhouse is complete chaos. The current cast picture at the website...
...features no less than ten characters, and that seems like a serious under-representation. To watch Monster Madhouse is to fill your screen with bizarre characters swirling around a set that sometimes looks like some kind of Transylvania Labor Day Telethon, with Borloff as a monster-metal Jerry Lewis at the center of the maelstrom. The cast often expands to include even other horror hosts! Jeremiah Buzzard, Dr. Sarcofiguy, and Sally the Zombie Cheerleader have all been members of Borloff's gang at various points, joining regulars like Lizardman, Sasha Trasha, Freak Daddy, and (my personal favorite) the Countess Contessa Vanessa. Sometimes, it's a wonderful mess... as you can see if you make the jump...
So it's back to the horror hosts for Night 25 of the Countdown to Halloween, with my first look at the horror hosts of today. The relatively easy availability of public domain films (along with the proliferation of video cameras and affordable film editing software) has lead to a renaissance of horror hosting in the last decade. No longer requiring the facilities of a television studio, many B-Movie fans have decided to make their own home-made horror shows in imitation of the great hosts of the past. Some just put their stuff up on the web, but many (most?) instead broadcast via their local public access stations, with YouTube serving as a way to reach a wider audience. The quality of these shows, as you'd imagine, varies wildly. On the low end, I've seen filthy-mouthed sock puppets, emo versions of Wayne's World, zombie potheads, you name it. But on the high end, I've also seen hosts with great gimmicks, good writing, and shows every bit as entertaining as the classic hosts of days gone by. There's a lot of good hosts out there, and I plan to spend some time here in the home stretch to the bestest day of the year counting down my favorites. Tonight, I'll be bringing you clips from Ghoul A-Go-Go, and this guy...
Eerie Lee Shivers
Eerie Lee hosts Uncle Eerie's Midnight Shiver Show out of Portland, Oregon. The show just launched earlier this year (I think there are only about four episodes extant right now), but I really love the gimmick. Uncle Eerie is an Old West gambler type, with of course a ghoulish touch. I don't really know much about the guy other than that, but I will say that he's one of the most entertaining Facebook friends you can have.
There are lots of Shiver Show clips on the YouTube, but I think the flavor of the show is best-represented by a commercial done for its launch, which you can see... after the jump.
So I thought I’d take a little time tonight to share with you one of the dorkier corners of our Halloween Punkin Patch: The Dork 40 Radio Theatre Of the Air, our radio drama mix-tape!
A playlist and download link will follow after the jump, but first… a little history. Radio plays were the favorite entertainment of America for more than 30 years. Telling stories with nothing but voice, music and sound effects, radio drama thrilled millions of listeners coast-to-coast. It was killed by the advent of television, of course, but thousands of radio plays were produced between the 1920s and 50s, and one of the most popular genres in the medium was horror.
There were any number of horror radio series back in the day, with titles like Suspense, The Mysterious Traveler, The Hermit’s Cave, The Inner Sanctum, and Lights Out (famous for its trademark opening: “It‘s… Later… Than… You… Think!”). As with much radio drama, these shows were anthologies, with each week bringing a new and different story. Many of the shows had a regular host as their only common thread from episode to episode, and these hosts ranged from regular radio announcers to morbid characters who added a bit of color to the proceedings.
Sound familiar? It should, if you’ve been visiting the Dork Forty much this month. It was on radio that the whole concept of horror hosts began. The idea was copied first by EC Comics for their infamous horror line, and then on TV by the likes of Vampira, Zacherley, and all those who followed them. But it all got its start on the radio. My favorite of the radio horror hosts I’ve heard is the Old Hermit from The Hermit’s Cave, if only because I love the “crazy old coot” voice.
So it’s Night 21 of the Countdown to Halloween, a mere ten days from the big day itself. We’ve got the sincerity of the punkin patch all straightened out now, and I’m starting to feel the press of days. I’ve got a whole bunch of horror hosts left to talk about, and only a little over a week to do it. So here, tonight, is a piece on a still-active horror hosting giant known as…
Count Gore de Vol
Dick Dyszel started hosting horror in 1973, under the name of Count Gore de Vol. But many also knew him as Captain 20, a pointy-eared alien cartoon show host. Others knew him as Washington, DC’s Bozo. And still others knew him as the guy in the plaid suit who spun the big movie prize wheel. Basically, if you watched local TV in the DC area in the 70s and 80s, you probably saw Dick Dyszel in some guise at some point. But through it all, there was Count Gore.
The character apparently debuted on Bozo, and was such a hit that the station (WDCA, Channel 20) gave him his own show called Creature Feature, where he, as you would expect, hosted horror movies. Count Gore very swiftly moved on to slightly more… grown-up material with Creature Feature. His name, for instance, is a double joke: it's a neat play on the name of author Gore Vidal, but for local viewers it also plays off Washington's De Vol Funeral Home. He also made political satire a Creature Feature staple, having a particular field day during the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals. Count Gore also fully embraced the sexual revolution. He was infamous for having Penthouse Pets as guests on the show, and Count Gore himself is a rather amorous (though eternally frustrated) sort of vampire. He's a bit like your sleazy uncle. If your sleazy uncle was Bela Lugosi...
And if that sort of thing appeals to you, continue on after the jump to see Count Gore in action...
So it's back to the horror hosts tonight. I've alread talked about a few of my favorites from years past, but now it's time to turn to the big guns. The guys who, through sheer talent and/or longevity, have become the legends of horror hosting. So, for Day 20 of the Countdown to Halloween, I give you...
Svengoolie
A legend of local Chicago television, Svengoolie is a class act all the way. As you can see from the picture above. That's the current and most beloved Svengoolie, Rich Koz. But he was preceded in the role by Jerry G. Bishop, who originated the character on a horror movie show called Screaming Yellow Theater (which is, hands down, the single best name for a TV show EVER). Bishop played Sven from 1970-73, and his version was essentially a ghoulish hippy. The YouTube is full of Jerry Bishop Svengoolie segments, so many that I can't really choose between them. So here's a bit of the Svengoolie segment from American Scary, the horror host documentary:
(As often happens to us here on the Dork Forty, the videos in this post aren't showing up on the front page, but are all intact and viewable if you go into the post itself.)
American Scary is well-worth a watch, by the way, if you've been enjoying these horror host posts we've been doing here on the Dork Forty. Virginia Creepers is also good; it covers the long tradition of Virginia/Washington DC area hosts.
But here's another Jerry G. Bishop clip, chosen specifically because it features Svengoolie's primary contribution to the culture of the greater Chicago area, from which I took the title of tonight's post:
There you go. That exasperated, disgusted exclamation of "Ber-wyn?!" is apparently in the vocabulary of everybody who grew up in the Chicago area, to this day. Crazy the impact a horror host can have. (Oh, and "Berwyn," by the way, is the name of a local town that Svengoolie long ago decided, for no apparent reason, to make an object of scorn. I have friends who live there now, and they say it's very nice. Plus, it's got to be cool to live in a place that's the source of such a universal local joke.)
After three years in the make-up, Jerry G. Bishop left Chicago for a fabulously successful career in Hollywood voice-over announcing (I'm told that, if you've watched American television at all in the last 30 years, you've heard his voice thousands of times). But a few years later Rich Koz (a former fan of Bishop's who'd worked as an assistant on Screaming Yellow Theater) resurrected the character with Bishop's blessing. But Koz didn't want to just repeat his mentor's act, so he debuted as The Son of Svengoolie. About whom, more after the jump...
So tonight I thought I'd feature a few more horror hosts of years gone by. I have a lot of favorites out there, but I don't have a lot to say about some of them. Either their story is the standard one (station personnel press-ganged into putting on the ghoul make-up) or I don't know a lot about them. One drawback to armchair research on local TV personalities is that they're very fondly remembered by a very small group of people, and sometimes there's not much easily-accessible information. There's only so many hours in the day, as well, and sometimes I don't care enough to dig, or haven't gotten around to it yet. That doesn't mean they're not worth taking a gander at, though, so here's a small sampling of what I consider to be the best of the rest: the guys who aren't horror hosting giants, but who put on interesting shows nonetheless...
The Host and Ronald
These guys worked out of Wichita, Kansas, where their show was on the air in various incarnations from the late 50s to the mid-90s! I've only recently discovered these guys, and as yet I know little or nothing about them. But that's insane longevity for a horror host, and I love their schtick as seen in this clip from their first series, Nightmare:
(I'm with The Host here, by the way: Lon Chaney Jr. was a lump.)
So technical difficulties have delayed my planned funnybook post for tonight. It looks like Friday the 13th came on Wednesday this month! But I couldn't possibly skip Night 13 in the Countdown to Halloween! That would just be... wrong. So! Instead, you'll get another look at a classic local TV horror host, this time Nashville's Sir Cecil Creape:
Hrm. Last time I tried this, my house caught on fire. Let’s hope I have better luck tonight…
I have to admit, I cheated horribly on this list: it took far longer than 13 minutes to compile. But that’s not because I tried to make the list perfect. It’s because I had a really hard time thinking of 13 horror comics I was willing to recommend. That shocked me a bit, because I feel like I’ve enjoyed horror comics my whole life. But when it came time to list them out… I realized there’ve been damn few of them that were really any good. Of course, I suppose I could have listed out the EC, DC, and Warren horror anthologies separately, but that just seemed… wrong, somehow.
At any rate. In no particular order, here’s my list of 13 Horror Comics in 13 Minutes…
1. Tales From the Crypt, by William M. Gaines, Jack Davis, “Ghastly” Graham Ingles, Joe Orlando, etc.
THE horror comic. I’ve always been struck by how… realistic? The stories in Tales From the Crypt (and the rest of the EC Comics horror line) were. I mean, sure, there were ghosts and zombies, and even the occasional vampire or werewolf. But they always played second-fiddle to the very grounded tales of vengeance, greed, and love-gone-wrong that were EC’s bread and butter. There was always a perfectly relatable motive behind all the gruesome shenanigans, written to a pitch-perfect tone for the audience of 10-year-olds that loved them.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention EC’s ground-breaking work in one of my personal favorite fields of pop culture ephemera: the horror host. Each of the EC horror titles had a host, a master of ceremonies who not only served as a continuing character for readers to latch onto, but also did some heavy lifting in the stories themselves, offering introductions that set the mood and sometimes established important plot points. Tales From the Crypt had the Crypt Keeper, of course (though he was a far cry from the emaciated corpse puppet that hosted the TV show). And as for the others…
If you want more: Luckily for you, the EC horror line was more or less interchangeable, except for the hosts. So if you like Tales From the Crypt, you’ll almost certainly also enjoy its sister series The Vault of Horror (hosted by the Vault-Keeper, who was sort of a cut-rate Crypt Keeper) and the Haunt of Fear (hosted by The Old Witch, drawn with aplomb by "Ghastly" Graham Ingles). All three are available in collected editions, sort of a “best of” for each series, and are well-worth a look.
So the blood farming's got me a bit tuckered out tonight, and I'll just be posting some pretty pictures. But, hey! It's not all bad! 'Cause I'm turning the focus back to the funnybooks, and shining the Spooky Spotlight on the cover art brilliance of ... The Witching Hour!
Part of DC's classic horror comic line, The Witching Hour was the relative baby of the batch, not launching til 1969 in comparison to the 1950s debuts of the more venerable House of Mystery and House of Secrets. These anthology series were profitable "try-out" books for DC through the 60s and 70s; many artists (perhaps most notably Bernie Wrightson) got their first professional funnybook work through the horror titles, and the better talents were nurtured for eventual jobs on the higher-profile super hero books. But The Witching Hour launched big, with a series of really fantastic, eye-catching covers from Teen Titans artist Nick Cardy. Like this one, from the very first issue...
Love that cover! The vertiginous perspective, the eerie green, the pose on the witch, the way the title's worked into the image as a word balloon... That's some classic-ass funnybook cover design! And it continued...
So here we are at day five of the Countdown to Halloween, and tonight I'm turning my focus back to the horror hosts. Following Vampira and Zacherley (who I discussed back on day one), local TV stations across America found that having a performer (usually station personnel pulling double-duty) host their weekly late-night horror movie broadcasts boosted ratings. At one time, there was a veritable parade of home-grown vampires, ghouls, and mad doctors out there, all with intensely loyal followings inside their home broadcast area. The shows were cheap affairs, generally, with very basic makeshift sets, and acting that could hardly be called professional. But audiences thrilled to the hosts' macabre puns and irreverent attitudes toward the schlocky movies they were showing each week. If you grew up anytime between the 50s and the 80s, you had a pretty good chance of seeing one of these guys.
I grew up watching a show called Dr. Madblood's Movie. Every Saturday night, I'd creep out of bed, turn the rotor box on my parents' rooftop antenna all the way around to tune in WAVY-TV 10 out of Tidewater, Virginia, and sit back back for the best two hours of my TV week. The premise was simple: Dr. Madblood was a mad scientist who'd retired to the swamps of Pungo, Virginia, to build monsters, conduct experiments, deal with a legion of whacky neighbors, and of course show movies that he tuned in via his Ethermorphic Receiver. Here's the good doctor with a couple of early supporting cast members:
That's Madblood in the middle, flanked by Queen Mumenkara and the lecherous vampire Count Lacudra (that's Dracula spelled sideways, as the Doc was fond of saying). The actor playing Lacudra was local radio personality Mike Arlo, who played a number of characters: Madblood's next door neighbor Dusty the Crop Duster, snooty French painter Tolouse Latrine, Drunken Dave, Lacudra, and (my personal favorite) Father Beerabelli, a punch-drunk priest known as Kid Exorcist. Arlo's a hoot; he can't be on-stage more than 30 seconds before I start laughing. Of course... I am, as I've said before, a very strange man.
More history, and a couple or three complete Madblood episodes, if you hit the link...
So there's one thing that everyone reading this really ought to understand: Halloween is the most important holiday we have out here on the Dork 40. It's like Christmas, Easter, July 4th, Waffle Day, and Jack the Ripper's Birthday all rolled up into one! We dude up the scarecrows in their scary best, harvest our punkins and carve them up in effigy, light bags of poo on fire, and then hunker down in the fields and await the arrival of the Great Pumpkin! I just know he'll come this year! I know it!
It's a busy time. But I'd feel like a poor host indeed if I didn't share the fun with you, my faithful readers. So I've decided to take part in the Countdown to Halloween, a crazy-ass blogging marathon in which I'll make a Halloween-related post each and every day in October, the bestest month of all. I'll review horror movies and horror comics, post Halloweenie videos and music, and on days when I'm feelin' real tuckered out from the blood farming, maybe just post up some scary pictures.
To start, I thought I'd talk a little bit about my hero and personal savior, Zacherley the Cool Ghoul.
Which would be better: A buddy cop show starring horror hosts Karlos Borloff and Mr. Lobo? Or the two of them in a sitcom as Odd-Couple-style roommates? I'd watch either. But then, I'm a very strange man...
