Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed Book

"Good evening. I am Vampira."

Television Horror Movie Hosts by Elena M. Watson is a great example of what the publisher McFarland does best.

In the 1950s and 1960s (and continuing, in a different way, through today), individuals spent hundreds of hours watching local TV shows, hosted by (generally) outlandish characters, presenting (and sometimes interacting with) horror movies.

In their markets, these putatively creepy and repellent "monsters" had major fan bases, making public appearances to large crowds, getting bags of fan mail, and even running for President.

Yet, despite it being a weekly routine for so many in so many areas of the country, this is a part of our pop culture history which has been poorly documented and most would simply allow to disappear.

Enter (presumably in a cardboard coffin through a smoke machine's haze in front of a painted backdrop of a castle wall) McFarland and Watson. Rare pictures (often provided by the hosts themselves), background stories, and where are they nows give those of us who remember and the ones born too late a glimpse into these spooky wonders of the television age.

We became the "Monster Kids", thanks to "Uncle Forry" Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland (from 1958) and the horror movie hosts (from 1954, but really expanding with the release of the Shock! Theater package of early horror movies to television in 1957).

While most profiles are short, it was interesting to see how similar the hosts were. They were often corny, full of puns and sight gags, although with an undercurrent of the counterculture. It's worth noting that where I watched, in the San Francisco Bay Area, we were an obvious exception. Most of the country was giving you The Munsters (at one point literally, with Al "Grandpa" Lewis being a horror host), while we watched the normal seeming Bob Wilkins and later John Stanley. I suspect that's because we think of ourselves as The Munsters (or rather, the more loving, more sophisticated Addams Family)...so it's (super)natural that our hosts would be the "Marilyns" of the group. ;)

There were a few unnecessary hyphens, and one misspelling I noted (The "Monoloth Monsters", rather than "Monolith"), but overall, it's a well-produced book.

Two areas which could see improvement in a possible future edition. The first one is simply necessary because of when it was first published in 1991...I want more! It would have been instructive to have Mystery Science Theater 3000 included, since there are a lot of the same elements (including making fun of the movies and appearing "in them", especially in the case of the new revival on Netflix...since Tom Servo can now fly, but as he notes, only in the theatre).

The other one is that I could have used more of a longitudinal commentary...more context, more outside of the hosts themselves. For instance, a listing of the movies released in the original Shock! package would have been nice. It would also be improved with active links to hosts' and fansites, and with an interactive index (it does have an Active Table of Contents), again, totally understandable given when it was released.

The bottom line: Television Horror Movie Hosts is a worthy and enjoyable documentation of a phenomenon, bringing back from the dead a big part of many of our lives.

As Elvira (who is covered...er, and partially uncovered, I suppose) might say, "Unpleasant dreams!" ;)