For a lot of people, when they think of horror hosts, they think of characters such as vampires, ghouls, werewolves or even mistresses of the dark. They don’t think of horror hosts as being someone basically dressed in a suit and being themselves, a fan of monster movies. This actually doesn’t happen very often…in the past we had Bob Wilkins and John Stanley. Today we have Mr. Lobo!
Jeff Carlson is a name that many Svengoolie fans, like myself, are familiar with. Not only had the 42 year old Chicago artist been a regular contributor to the former Svengoolie Web, but also the current Svengoolie YAHOO group page. You can often see Jeff’s work shown by Svengoolie himself during mail segments thanks to his regular submissions.
Saturday promised to be the busiest day of the Horrorhound convention. Wanting to get an early start, I immediately went down to the main hall after breakfast. Due to the large number of hosts attending the Vampira Tribute, I had no illusions about meeting them all. In an effort to stay focused, I created a short list of the ones I really wanted to meet.
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The main hall of the convention was immense. Locating the horror hosts required careful navigation through crowds of people to reach the opposite side. Once there, you’d find an entire section dedicated to them, along with a schedule roster listing their availability. As many of them were also filming excerpts for their own shows or even entire web casts, catching them all would require frequent visits.
Slinking down a dark corridor, illuminated only by the glow of soft candles and dry ice, Maila Nurmi makes her grand entrance. In the unlikely event that her seductive gaze failed in seizing your immediate attention, there is no doubt that her skin tight black dress, accenting the quintessential “wasp” waist, certainly would.
It’s hard to imagine what my life would have been like had I not had the honor of growing up with Svengoolie. The “1970’s world” I was raised in was devoid of VCR/DVD’s and DVR cable. Consequently, watching monster movies at your own convenience was simply not the option that it is today. I suppose this is the “you kids don’t know how good you have it” story that my generation gets to tell in place of “having to walk six miles to school in the freezing cold.” All kidding aside, however, you really did have to be home at the right time to catch a rare showing of what interested you. During this era, many of us “scary movie” kids depended on our local horror hosts to reliably deliver those goods.
Terror from Beyond the Dave 