American Scary

Monday, October 5, 2009

Our good friend Bob Burns and his wife Kathy hosted a Halloween show for many years at his home in Burbank, CA, some of them inspired by classic films, and later ones actually featured actual props from the films (such as the full sets from the film Alien), as well as known actors performing for the crowds.

Bob (with the help of a LOT of friends) has put together a three hour documentary on how his Halloween shows were done, and it will be available on-line in segments beginning this week right here - future segments will feature the shows themselves.

Tell all your friends!

HALLOWEEN SCREENING IN LOS ANGELES!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Hey, who was your horror host? If you're tempted to respond, "Whaddaya mean, my horror host?", you probably grew up in the post-local television era. Which means, you spent your childhood without a mordantly sardonic costumed creep to introduce (and heckle) your Z-grade shock/shlock fare when you were staying up way too late.

Horror hosts are one of the folkways of TV, beginning in the 1950s when broadcast was both local and live, with the indelible Vampira. Each station spawned its own variations on the theme, from the classic "cool ghoul" Zacherley in New York, to Chicago's undead hippie, Svengoolie, to Cleveland's beatnik-styled Ghoulardi (director P. T. Anderson's father!) It just gets weirder from there in documentary American Scary, which digs deep to discover that before Mystery Science Theater, there was a whole world of campy characters for every kid--and stoned sophomore--to call their own. And we've got our own host, Mr. Lobo, to share even more great goodies and treats that they couldn't pack into the film.....and then, continuing the fine tradition, we'll all watch a rare surprise TV Movie feature from the 70s!

8pm - Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Silent Movie Theater
611 N. Fairfax Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 655-2510
Contact info@cinefamily.org for more information!

Friday, April 17, 2009

On April 6, 2009, a fire destroyed most of our friend (and American Scary interviewee) Len Wein's house. He and his family are okay, but their beloved dog Sheba perished that day. So did Len's collection of books and toys and games and artwork and those things we accumulate that help define and enrich our lives.

Insurance will fix the house but many things, including his comics, were not covered. A lof of us thought it would be great if his friends and fans pitched in to help him recreate those shelves of the comic books he's worked on. Mark Evanier is setting everything up on his website, and you can read all about it (and find out how you can help!) either by clicking HERE or on the banner above.

AN ANNOUNCEMENT!
Thursday, January 15, 2009

From: Cinema Libre
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ghastly Creatures and Graveyard Humor in...
American Scary
A Documentary Featuring Zecherley, Vampira, Ghoulardi, Svengoolie, and more.
Late Night TV Done Right on DVD, February 17, 2009

LOS ANGELES, CA (January 15, 2009) - A nostalgic homage to the glory days of the late night horror shows, American Scary, features interviews and archival footage of the most famous hosts from the 1950s to present day. John E. Hudgens and Sandy Clark offer an affectionate tribute to horror show hosting, which will be available on DVD February 17, 2009 at an SRP of $19.95.

The birth of TV horror in the late 1950s also marked the rise of a new American folk art form: horror show hosting. Before syndicated programming and cable were introduced, hosts of locally produced shows were a staple of television. Local programs, such as Creature Feature and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 launched a spectacle of beloved kooky TV personalities, who will forever belong in the horror "crypt of fame" with their unforgettable farcical make-up, grimy costumes, grotesque props, and even freakishly altered bodies. American Scary features extensive interviews with both celebrity fans and the hosts themselves on the genre's beginnings, the ups and downs of '60s and '70s, and modern revivals. American Scary is a wistful memento of that once significant local television programming and a yearning for its resurrection.

American Scary premiered at the Hollywood Film Festival, and has played in multiple film festivals across the nation, including Austin Film Festival, Ohio Independent Film Festival, Longbaugh Film Festival, and others.

SYNOPSIS:
American Scary is a tribute to the popular hosts of the golden age of television. They transcended their local stations to became icons. Today, they continue to garner respect, admiration and fondness from fans all over the country.

Across the nation, people remember their local hosts fondly: from Bob Wilkins and John Stanley in the San Francisco Bay area, Chicago's Svengoolie, to Sir Cecil Creepe in Nashville. Follow this American art form from its glamorous beginnings, through repeated waves of popularity and get re-acquainted with those who are a part of television history, featuring interviews with the most notable, including:

* ZACHERLEY (John Zacherle) began his horror hosting career in the late 1950's in Philadelphia as "Roland" and became one of the most iconic nationally recognized figures in the genre.

* GHOULARDI (Ernie Anderson) - anarchic hipster creation exploded on Cleveland television in the winter of 1962, and proceeded to excite and warp the minds of his fanatic followers until 1966.

* VAMPIRA (Maila Nurmi) and her record small waist, was created from elements of Charles Addams cartoons, screen glamour queens and bondage magazines. Vampira was featured in many national magazines, including Life and Newsweek.

BASICS
Price: $19.95
Street Date: 2/17/2009
Pre-order Date:1/6/2009
Languages: English
Running Time: 92 mins
Rating: Not Rated
DVD cat # CLS1069
UPC # 881394106925
ISBN # 1-59587-102-0

Bonus Features: Audio Commentary, Original Pitch Reel, Bonus Interviews, Trailers, and More

About Cinema Libre Studio:
Cinema Libre Studio is a haven for independent filmmakers with views, offering one-stop shopping for production and distribution Headquartered in Los Angeles, the company is best known for distributing in theaters and on DVD films that shine a light on social issues including: Uncovered, Participant Productions' Angels in the Dust, and ESPN's Through the Fire. The company has recently finished production on a feature length documentary about poverty called The End of Poverty, coming to theatres in April 2009. For more information, please visit www.cinemalibrestudio.com.

Late 2007 Update

After our premiere in Hollywood and early screenings last fall, Sandy and John crisscrossed the country for multiple festivals - the film has screened in Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Asheville, Oak Ridge, Kansas City, Dallas, Coney Island (where it was the opening night film), Flint, MI, and many others.

We've gotten mainly good reviews for the film, and John went back back in and reworked the film a little from the premiere version - we rearranged some sections so that it plays a little better, and that version debuted at the San Francisco Documentary Festival screening with John Stanley in attendance.

One incredibly annoying thing concerning the film happened recently - persons unknown (seriously, we still don't know who yet) took it upon themselves to attack the film's ratings on the Internet Movie Database. We had been polling a very nice 9.2 out of 10 until late October, when we suddenly plummeted to a 3.2 in one week. Now, we have no problem with someone expressing an honest opinion of the film - if you don't like it, fine, that's your prerogative. However, we were hit with many bottom of the barrel ratings in a very short period of time - over 40 votes of "1" in that two week period, and NO OTHER VOTES were registered. I'm sure you can all agree that, statistically, that's pretty damn close to impossible - especially when it happened during a period where the film was NOT showing anywhere. To date, the IMDB has removed some of the fraudulent votes, but nowhere near all of them. It's frustrating as heck...

CLEVELAND!
Monday, November 13, 2006

American Scary screened over the weekend in Cleveland at the Ohio Independent Film Festival - we had a pretty decent turnout for the film there, despite the fact that the local paper got ahold of the original older and longer cut, and reviewed that. However, those who saw the film appeared to enjoy it.

Hosts Keven Scarpino (Son of Ghoul) and Timothy Herron (Baron Von Wolfstein) showed up in costume for the screening, and were a big hit with the crowd, posing for pictures so long they finally had to chase us out so the next film could start.

THE PREMIERE!
Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Hey, group! So that happened... :)

While it wasn't a huge turnout (we were opposite a Q&A with Oliver Stone about Born on the Fourth of July that was running WAY over time), those that did show up seemed to enjoy the film a lot, based on their reactions and what they said afterwards. On the host front, we had Crematia Mortem (Roberta Solomon), Mr. Lobo (Eric Lobo), Remo D. (Shane Dallmann), and Malena Teves (from Neil Gaiman's Fox series) in attendance, as well as film interview subjects Curtis Armstrong, Patricia Tallman, and Len Wein. Our friends Marv & Noel Wolfman and Trey Stokes also showed up, along with various other friends and family of everyone. But there actually were people there who were NOT affiliated with us!

Malena wrote about the event on her blog as well - you can read that here.

And here's an excerpt from Sandy's posting to a few Yahoo groups:

The audience cheered, laughed and egged each other on as their favorite host or friends came on the screen. Timothy Herron got a laugh every time he appeared. Goulfinger came off as erudite. Griffin came off as a consummate showman. Count Gore was eloquent and the audience was engaged. They jeered the bad puns, hooted at the blue humor in places and laughed at the pure genius we all know as the American Horror Host.
Nobody left and in the end, nobody got strung up in front of anything either.
We gave out buttons, answered questions and talked in the lobby for about an hour after. Everyone learned something they didn't know from the film and many were surprised to learn of current hosts, the HHU or the scope of the hosting phenomena.
My goal was to make a movie that reminded people of this show they loved and had forgotten. I wanted to remind them that TV used to be local and something ANYONE can do. I wanted it to be a fun ride for the fan but accessible to the masses.
One of the teen ushers asked for a button and said, "Wow, your movie is really cool. I kept peeking in. These guys were funny."
"Yeah," added a co-worker with orange and black ribbons in her hair, "I'd like to do a show like that."
Now, if I can only engineer an audience full of those kids!

After the Hollywood premiere, the film screened the next day at the Austin Film Festival. Professor Anton Griffin's account of that screening, as well as a review of the film, can be found here.

Monday night, Malena and I (John) attended the Gala Awards ceremony which was affiliated with the Hollywood Film Festival. I hesitate to say that it was part of the festival, as there was little to no mention of the films from the festival. However, we had a grand time, and got to meet and talk with quite a few of the celbrities at the party, including Robin Williams, Forrest Whittaker, and John Lasseter (whose wife is a big fan of Chilly Billy!)

Next stop, Cleveland! We're scheduled to screen there 6pm November 11 at the Ohio Independent Film Festival. I'll be appearing on Cleveland's WCPN radio around noon on Halloween day to talk about the film on-air with Chuck Schodowski.

MORE SCREENINGS!
Monday, October 10, 2006

We've added two more festivals! American Scary will be screening twice at the Austin Film Festival - 7pm Sunday, October 22 and then again on Thursday, October 26 at 7pm. We're also going to be screening at the Ohio Independent Film Festival in Cleveland, Saturday November 11 at 6pm.

Tickets are now on sale for the Hollywood Film Festival screening - you can order those from the ArcLight website right here.

WORLD PREMIERE UPDATE!
Monday, September 18, 2006

Never fear, the movie's not dead, we've just been editing, re-editing, and editing some more as we refined the film. There's been a lot of movement and activity behind the scenes lately, so we've been sitting on our hands waiting for the official announcements to start happening...

The movie is done (or done to the point where we're ready to show it!), and will premiere at 9pm Saturday, October 21st as part of the Horror program at the Hollywood Film Festival at the ArcLight Cinema in Hollywood!

FilmThreat publicly announced the horror line-up this morning, and the actual film festival pages should be updating soon, as everything was delivered to them last week for next month's premiere.

Tickets should go onsale beginning October 1 at the ArcLight Cinemas website. We don't know yet whether there will be any kind of Q&A after the screening, or who from the interviews will be in attendance. However, both John and Sandy will most definitely be attending!

And a very special thanks to those of you who helped out with some last minute edits, footage and additions! It really made a difference!

JANUARY UPDATE!
Monday, January 10, 2005

We're still here!

Not much news to report right now on the film - we're still working on editing the movie, tracking down footage and photographs, and beginning the process of getting music for the film. It's all beginning to come together quite well - we've essentially locked down how we're going to open and close the film, now it's just all the reshuffling, reordering, and tweaking of everything inbetween that taking so much time... Unfortunately, the one problem we're going to have is that we can't touch on *all* of the hosts out there - we'd need a whole mini-series or a sequel to attempt that, so deciding what to keep and what to drop has been a challenge.

As for the website, we've made a few cosmetic changes, and added some new sections. We've added a CafePress store with American Scary logo swag for those of you who are interested, and we've also added a new section of short host biographies of the major figures in the film. There's just a few there now, but we'll be adding more people to that in the coming weeks.

Thanks to everyone who's helped us out so far!

HALLOWEEN 2005 UPDATE!
Monday, October 31, 2005

I realize we've not updated this in some time, but there hasn't been much to report - we've been editing the film, re-editing the film, tweaking the edits and then re-editing again...

However, the film is *very* close to being finished - most of the tweaks right now are minor ones for pacing, or adding in more B-roll and clips to cover edits... we felt strong enough about the rough cut that we submitted it as a work-in-progress to both the Sundance Film Festival and the Slamdance Festival... the festivals won't make their selections known for another month or so, but we're going to keep working on things for the time being...

Back to the editing!

JANUARY UPDATE!
Monday, January 10, 2005

We're still here!

Thanks to everyone who's helped us out so far!

HALLOWEEN UPDATE!
Sunday, October 31, 2004

The second American Scary trailer is now live - you can take a look here or by clicking the trailer link over to the left.

There hasn't been much news to report of late, as we finished gathering interviews earlier this summer, and have been working on editing the movie ever since. It's coming together nicely, but we're going to take our time and make fine-tune everything before we release it to festivals and then theaters.

At Doctor Gangrene's Horror Hootenanny a few months ago, we met the band PsychoCharger, and the band shared some of their host memories, and then offered us their music for use in the film. One track in particular impressed us so much, it's become the music behind the opening montage in the film... They'll make a great addition to the music in the film, whic already includes contributions from The Moon-Rays, the King Dapper Combo, and MX-80.

MAY UPDATE!
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Sorry for the lack of updates, but the last two months have been very busy for us, with lots of trips and interviews to add to the film.

In March, we went to New York, and met with Joe Bob Briggs, Commander USA, Halloween Jack, and Zacherley! All had some great stories to tell, and we had the added bonus of learning that the Commander was a huge Zacherley fan... After that, we hit Syracuse and Philadelphia, and added Baron Daemon, Dr. E. Nick Witty, and Stella to the lineup. We also went back to Cleveland for some followup material with Big Chuck and Little John (including filming at a show taping), Son of Ghoul, and The Ghoul.

April saw us heading back to Los Angeles to interview Curtis Armstrong and Film Threat's Chris Gore, as both had memories of The Ghoul and Sir Graves Ghastley they wanted to share. We also ran back down to San Diego to meet up with the original Svengoolie, Jerry Bishop.

May saw one of the coolest opportunities for the film, as we were invited onto the set of the Fox Movie Channel's upcoming 13 Nights of Fright, hosted by noted author Neil Gaiman! We spent a day on the set, and recorded a fantastic interview with Neil afterwards - and then Patricia Tallman (Babylon 5 and Night of the Living Dead)showed up, to share her memories of Chilly Billy, Svengoolie and Marvin.

MARCH UPDATE!
Friday, March 5, 2004

The first American Scary trailer is now live - you can take a look here or by clicking the trailer link over to the left.

We would like to welcome aboard Production Assistants Chris Hanel, Patti Garcia, Brendan Thompson, and Mike Woods. We would also like to thank Crystal Guillory, Ronald Lee, George Chastain, Joseph Fotinos, Shane Dallman, and Erik Lobo who have all banded together and knocked out a mammoth job of Horror Host sleuthing for us. If you are interested in helping out, please contact us.

We will be heading for New York next week to interview Zacherley, Joe Bob Briggs, and a few others, and will be returning to Cleveland the weekend after, where we'll be shooting some fan interviews at Ghoulardi's Bar & Grill. Stay tuned for more updates!

JANUARY UPDATE!
Saturday, January 31, 2004

The American Scary crew had an incredible afternoon recently with Maila Nurmi, also known as Vampira. Everyone involved was blown away by her charm and grand Hollywood tales. She spoke about not only her early days as a host, but gave us advice for the next generation hosts. We look forward to including her footage in the project and seeing more of her in the future. Many thanks go out to Jeff Clausen for making that happen for us.

We will be heading for New York in March, and should be returning to Cleveland and Los Angeles soon, along with a possible trip to Chicago - stay tuned for more updates!

NOVEMBER UPDATE!
Friday, November 7, 2003

The American Scary crew has been on the road and hard at work with recent trips to Cleveland, Nashville, and Kansas City - interviewing the likes of Tim Conway, Roberta "Crematia Mortem" Solomon, Richard "Count Gore DeVol" Dyszel, Ron "The Ghoul" Sweed, and many other hosts.

We are planning a trip to New York and other East Coast areas soon, and several trips to Los Angeles. If you know of someone we should speak with, please contact us.

AMERICAN SCARY HEADS FOR CLEVELAND!
Friday, September 26, 2003

The American Scary crew will be recording interviews at the Cinema Wasteland convention next weekend (October 3-5) convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
If you're going to be there and have an interesting host related story, please contact us!