I'm not a huge fan of most horror movies but I used to watch them often on TV, largely for the hosts. There are few, if any, these days but we used to have "horror hosts" in this country…men (and occasionally, women) who'd dress up to introduce monster movies and macabre films on local channels, usually late at night.
There were an awful lot of them. Sometimes, they were devout fans of such flicks. Sometimes, the station manager would order one of the local newsmen or announcers to dress up as a ghoul and go introduce movies. Some of them came up with some very creative ways to get you to tune in for the umpteenth rerunning of Man-Made Monster with Lon Chaney Jr.
As I wrote in this article, my favorite in Los Angeles was a gent named Larry Vincent whose screen character was called Seymour. Ever since I posted that on this site, I get one or two e-mails a month from someone who wants to know where they can find video of the Seymour. I have to write back to them and report that if any still exists, it's pretty well hidden. I haven't seen a frame of Seymour footage anywhere since he was on KHJ and KTLA back in the early seventies.
But you can see a lot of other horror hosts in a new documentary that's debuting on DVD this week. It's called American Scary and it was assembled with great love and dedication by John Hudgens and Sandy Clark. I don't think they located any Seymour footage but they did find tons of clips of hosts from across the land, and they tracked down an awful lot of them for interviews, along with folks who were enthusiastic watchers. You can find out more about this great work at this site and you can watch a trailer for it by clicking your mouse a few inches below this paragraph…