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Welcome back to Georgian Ore. Along with mister Lobo. Mister Lobo, you worked on a film in California called The Blind Bargain. Tell us about that I did.
It was quite an experience. It was based on a lost Lawn Cheney film from the twenties, also called a Blind Bargain. And it's got some amazing kind of monster makeup in it. It's got really interesting kind of characters. It's filmed very film noir. It stars Kristin Glover and Amy Wright and boy. It was directed by Paul Bonnell, who directed a movie called The Ghastly Love of Johnny X,
which we showed on Cinema and Zombia last year. And what we got to do was, you know, we got to know the director when we hosted his film, and then he liked the way we did our show, so he brought us in to do all the behind the scenes. So we got to interview all the actors, all the special effects of people, all the writers, editive producers.
Uh.
And then I also got to be in the film. I have a role in the film and it's just it was. Yeah, it was a really experience and it's so much work, twelve plus hours of day, six days a week. I mean, it's like low budgeted movies. It's a lot of work.
And it was film this time, not digital, right.
It was filmed, Yeah, actual film and this digital age we're talking about high tech. They actually shot this on Super sixteen and it looks beautiful. It's got that sort of warmth that film has, and you know it's with with they had no safeguards, no as far as backups. It's like they either got it on film or they didn't get it at all. And so it was very kind of thrilling to see the technical you know, with with with digital, it's just cheap, just roll and roll
and roll on none of the matters. With filming, you're burning a frame and it just costs so much. You know, every you know it's so costly to do, but you know it makes you plan better, it makes you you know, you can't you know, you can't do it on accident. You really have to know what you're after and you only want to get it, and you know it's few takes as possible. But there was a great energy on the set of that, and I think it was also a great way to homage the classic horror tones of
this this piece. And you know what's beautiful about it is that, you know, even though photography was invented, people didn't stop painting, you know what I mean. And I think that even though digital exists, there are still some filmmakers who want to work with film, and I think that that's a wonderful thing.
Directors like Marty SCORSESEI they still use thirty five millimeter film or have they gone digital?
I think Scorsesey does, if I'm not mistaken, But I know that like David Lynch and a lot of directors have already moved on to digital and won't look back. So, you know, I think it's I think it's great that there are some directors who want to preserve that art form and do do their favorite art form in the way the old masters did their favorite art form.
So lovell let's talk a little bit about TV horror hosts. When did that genre really start?
The genre really started in the fifties. I mean, you know, there were always horror hosts to a certain degree in radio. You know, you had you know, like Lights Out and
inter Sanctum and stuff like that. But as far as a TV horror movie hosts, that started in the fifties screen gems packaged a bunch of universal horror films for television for the first time, and then they were They went out to stations across the country and every every there was a national phenomenon that had that happened locally. Every single market had their own character, you know, vampire or bad scientist or whatever. They would host these films,
and some markets didn't do a host at all. They just had a voiceover or weird bumpers of things that they made in house.
I know Detroit had my buddy who's passed on, doctor Morges, remember.
Him, Oh, doctor Morgas. Of course, he was definitely one of the best. The old ice House, right, yep, Chopsley is it Chopsley?
Chopsley was his little big assistant the Harriet launched.
His little big assistant. Yes, and he was always doing his wild experiments during the movie, which never seemed to come over quite right. There were always problems with his experiments. But what an inventive, amazing guy. Boy. I loved when he would come on your show.
George, had we had fun. And then I remember in Detroit her Graves Ghastly.
And yeah, yes, it was amazing too, and he was syndicated. People in even as far down as Virginia got to see Graves Ghastly.
Did most local markets have local horror hosts?
The bigger I would say most of the bigger markets did, I think, I think a lot, like I said some and some markets did not like I said, I think that Philadelphia, even though they had doctor Shock later at Boston, there were a few where sometimes they would have just a voiceover or weird bumpers or whatever.
What about Vampire? How did she start.
Vampire? Was she was an an actress in La. She was at a party her her husband was a writer for the show Rawhide. She was at a party Kate with a kt LA party and she was dressed and Missus Adams from the Adams family, and they liked her look and they asked if she would host the horror movies on the local TV station. And they knew that they couldn't get away with having her just be Missus Adams from the Adams family, so they created their own character.
Her husband and her created Vampire. She had a twelve inch waist a Guinness Book World Record's smallest waste twelve inches. Yeah. So she had a wasp waist that made her look cadaverous, and you know, long black fingernails, long black hair, and she sort of her delivery was kind of like Norma Desmond in the Sunset Boulevard, this sort of vamp character. And she was in Life magazine and made a huge splash, very imitated by many horror hosts, including al Vira in
the eighties. So, yeah, she was, but she started back in the fifties. She just went to the right party and they put her on.
TV when the Adams Family came out, didn't Morticia kind of echo that too.
Yeah, well it's interesting, it's the tale, what's the dog in? What's the Tale? And who's wagging what? She saw the comic strip and took some aspects of vampire, took some of her aspects of her character from Morticia in the comic strip, which didn't have a name at that point. It was just Missus Adams in the comic strip, and so she took some of that to create her character. But then, but she was so popular that when they made a TV show of the Monster or excuse me
of the Adams family. They took aspects of Vampire and brought it into Missus Adams and gave her a name Mortitia.
How about you, When did you get started in the horror hosting?
Oh boy, well, I back in two thousand and one is when it really warmed up for me. I mean, honestly, it was way before that. In the nineties, I made a bunch of pilots and stuff that never got never went anywhere. And then but in two thousand and one, I worked at a TV station ABC affiliate in Sacramento and they had an overnight movie that ran twenty five minutes short. And I walked into the general manager's office and I said, you've got this movie overnight on Saturday
that runs twenty five minutes short. You've got six and a half minute commercial breaks. Have you ever tried to sit through six and a half minute commercial break? And they said no, And I said, well, I don't know if you're obvious either. Can we fill this time with something? Can I try to fill this time with host segments? And they didn't care, which was the best thing ever. So we started creating host segments for the Overnight movie.
Back in two thousand and one, and that evolved into cinema and.
Zombia, which it's been it's almost twenty, what's twenty three years now, and you know we're syndicating across the country still on many stations.
That's great. That's like saying, where were you born?
Sacramento, California.
You've been all over the map, done, haven't you?
Oh? Yeah, you know you just go where the where the where the water is warm, where the food is you know it is, George. You know, you just need a mat on the ground, a dish with your name on it.
I was curious. Gomanz that I'm was played by John Ashton Is. He's still alive. He's ninety four years old.
He's still alive, and he does these one man shows where he plays Edgar Allen Poe. Uh and he lives in Baltimore, and people locals there always are on the lookout for John Aston. But yeah, it's amazing and he's still he's still great. He's just you know, I mean, every once in a while you'll see him in a more modern film like The Frighteners, and it's like, man, what an incredibly talented, funny.
Guy you're meant He was a fellow by the name of Bob Wilkins. Right.
Bob Wilkins was the host of Creature Features in the San Francisco Bay area, which I watched as a kid. He also was the host of the Bob Wilkins Show in Sacramento, so he was he actually was in two markets simultaneously hosting horror films, and if the wind was blowing the right way, I got to see both versions of his show, and you know, he was my hero.
I wrote for a magazine called Planet X, which was a sci fi magazine, and we interviewed Bob for the magazine and we met each other, and he encouraged me to be a horror host and we did a lot of live shows where Bob would host you know, it came from outer space, a creature from the Black Lagoon or whatever, and I would write material and Bob again encouraged me and said you should get out in a chair and host horror movies. Like Bob. People don't do
this sort of thing anymore. This is like the when we were kids and Creature Features and your thing, and he could well, you know, you never know, it was always a cycle with these things. You could be on the forefront of another wave of horror hosts and UH. Like I said, I with that encouragement from Bob Uh when when I was working at the TV station and they had that movie overnight that ran short, I knew that that was my opening. I knew that that was my shop to see if I could do uh do the job.
Why did it die out.
A lot of reasons. I think a cable and you know, and and and and home video had a big hand in it. I think I think a lot of Saturday Night Live had a bit of a hand in it. I think too, I think a lot of a lot of markets had trouble competing with Saturday Night Live. I think that again, with the advent of cable, UH and and home video, a lot of people will watch watching movies on cable and home video, and a lot of
hosts went to cable and home video. There were a lot of videotapes that had hosted segments at the beginning and UH, and there were the cable stations that that that followed this. But I think that you know, on the local level, on broadcast stations, you know, I think that there was less and less of an emphasis on producing material in house and uh, and and then try and then also trying to sell as much of the
advertising time as possible. And so instead of uh trying to make that, instead of adding a companion to the movie, uh, they just put in more commercials or not show a movie at all, to show an infomark fill in the middle of it.
I what do you think of streaming?
Now? Streaming is interesting, it's wonderful and terrible. It's a lot of it's a lot of things. Uh. You know, I I think that the part of that it's frustrating is I don't want to have two hundred subscriptions to a bunch of different you know, you're always talking to your friends and going, oh, I just saw this great show, and then they'll always say, oh, well, I don't have that service. I'm not subscribed to Paramount, I've got I've got this other thing, or I'm not subscribed to Disney Plus,
I have this other thing and this other thing. I have Netflix, And so, you know, you lose a lot of that communal thing where you know, you talk to your friends and you're all watching the same shows. Now there's sort of like you have to ask for oh do you have Netflix? Okay, well, I you know, well there's this show that I watch, you know, so, and then again, you've got all of these services, and if you subscribe to all of them, you're paying as much as you were paying for cables. So so a lot
of that is sort of frustrating. And a lot of these things that you you know, you paid for these spending services, a lot of them so that you didn't add commercials, and now they're all adding commercials because they you know, they're not making the money that they thought
they were going to be making. And and I think that there's been a lot of weirdness too, where they're having these shows on streaming premier day and date at the same time as the movies are released being released in theaters, and sometimes that hurts the movies in theaters, or if they think it's just going to go to streaming in a couple of weeks, they might not even go out to the theater. So it's it's I don't really feel like they they've come across what really works for streaming yet.
The executives a blockbuster video mister Lowo, We're asleep at the wheel, weren't they?
Yeah, they sure were they sure were Scheorge.
I mean I envision some young executive going into his boss's office saying, there's something called streaming which is going to hurt all our stores. We need to get into it. And the guy probably said, what are you talking about. We're invested in all this real estate and retail. We're not going to get in to this other technology to waste the time. I bet, I bet it's something like that happened.
I think you're right. And you know who the you know who that person did end up talking to with Netflix because Netflix was renting DVDs to people through the mail.
Do you remember I remember that then you just drop it back in the mail to send it back.
Right exactly, and and and and everyone was giving that business. Everyone was was was carving the gravestone for that business, just like they were carving the gravestone for Amazon. Oh you're selling books over the internet. Yeah, that's not going to last. And in the same way they felt about Netflix. It's like, oh, you guys, are you guys are mailing DVDs to people through the mail? Yeah, you're good luck.
You're going to be gone in five years. And they ended up pioneering the streaming world and dominating the marketplace and being one of the biggest companies in media.
I met Jeff Bezos about a month ago. He walked right by me at a little restaurant. I was in Oh Wow over the weekend, and as he he's going by me, I said, Jeff, if I don't shake your hand, I'll feel left out for the rest of my life. And he came back and shook my hand and said, Hi, how are you, and I went, I'm great. And I was just thinking, as you just pointed out, the guy started off selling books in his garage on the internet. When I look at him now, he's one of the world's most richest guys.
Yeah, I mean, no one would have ever thought that. You know. Everyone was talking about people not even selling books anymore, you know, And yeah, it's just incredible. He went from selling books out of his garage to you know, having drones and millions of trucks and super domes full of robots and becoming a James Bond, the villain of the global media.
I think he's responsible for places like Seers biting the dust.
Well and Sears. I think missed the boat because they were the original mail order.
Yep, they had that catalog they had.
The cattlealog they should have been. The first years, should have been the first on the Internet.
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