This was a program on late saturday nights on WGN. It was always a “B” Science Fiction movie, and I loved watching it as a kid- it was the first program I was allowed to sit up late and watch.
There was a piece of music that was played at the opening and at the breaks (usually Bert Weinman Ford ads, remember that?) which I’m trying desperately to find. It was a kind of erie thing, with a strong baseline, and I’m damned if I can remember what it’s name was. Any help out there?
B.
Well, I don’t know if it’s the same music as your station, but for their Saturday afternoon “Creature Double Feature”, WLVI Boston played a snippet from Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s “Toccatta” (from Brain Salad Surgery), which has a strong baseline and a pretty creepy feel to it.
–sublight.
Sorry, “Toccata”.
Was Dr. Paul Bearer the host? They used to show this in other cities as well, I think I used to see this in Atlanta and maybe Washington, DC as well.
I don’t know of this Dr. Paul of whom you speak.
I know I was a little kid, sitting in my pajamas on one of the couch cushions in front of the tube watching such gems as “Monolith Monsters” and “Godzilla vs. the smog monster”.
I do seem to remember some commentator opening the show- but damned if I can remember even noticing that beyond thinking “Get ON with it!”. I just have that music stuck in my head. I’ve tried to download a clip from several places and have had no luck determining if Toccata was the theme- this was popular in the late 60’s early 70’s, and I don’t even know if Brain Salad Surgery was out yet then- ( Not an ELP fan) and WGN is so conservative I doubt they’d have used something that was that modern, I’m thinking it’s some classical piece, though I STILL haven’t been able to listen to the clip I downloaded. And I’m damned if I’m gonna install that crap RealPlayer on this machine.
Thanks for the help, at least I have SOME direction to look now!
b.
If we are talking about the same show “Toccata” was not the theme. I wish I had a clue how to look up a song title, when I’ve got the damn theme beating through my brain. Thanks for the memory.
The music was by Link Wrey.I remember getting to stay up late to watch it.There was one about people stranded on a beach with some glowing sand monster that ate flesh.
They ran the show in St. Louis too, early 70’s. I was in elementary school at the time and I loved it, but I don’t remember the theme music, just that most of the monsters were more fakey-looking than the monsters on Ultraman.
Slightly OT, but none of the shows were as scary as H.P. Lovecraft short stories (At the Mountains of Madness caused me to question the Holy Trinity when I was 9.)
Hey, ALL those movie monsters were awful… that’s what made them fun! When you were 6, this was a big deal!
Lovecraft is a great writer- it’s still fun to read his work- but it loses a little of it’s flavor when you know he was a man with no superstitions or religeous beliefs whatsoever- and he thought of his readers as superstitious fools who were afraid of their own shadows. At least that’s the take I get from his private communications, which I can’t now remember where I read…
Anyway, I just remembered one of my favorites, a movie about a two-dimensional creature named Eck, who got stuck in our dimension my being electrocuted or some such thing, and his vision was bad so he had to have lenses fitted so he could see properly and get back to his own world. it was the goofiest thing I ever saw, and I still laugh when I see it on latenight T.V.
b.
P.S.Qwisp! Love your cereal. Someone told me it’s still being made!
Dr. Paul Bearer was the host of the Creature Feature I watched growing up in Tampa. In fact, I actually MET him at my elementary school’s Halloween Festival. For that reason, I thought he was local.
When I was a child, I watched a show called Son of Svenghoulie, which I found very amusing, and which fostered an interest in bad movies. I never saw the original Svenghoulie, or Creature Features, though there was a certain old-school crowd that would always bring them up.
I was also a big fan of The Gigglesnort Hotel, which I’ve come to learn nobody outside of Chicago has heard of.
Whoa! With The Blob! And Maynard Thumbtwanger! [reels from nostalgic whiplash]that’s MY childhood you’re talking about!!![/reels from nostalgic whiplash] yeah, I still watch son of svengoolie, watched it the other night. The original was as good if not better, mostly because it was more ill-produced and even campier. (BERWYNN?)
now I’m gonna begin my long deathmarch down memory lane.
b.
From here:
I downloaded a sample, and sure as hell, that’s it! How cool you are, and how much a master of all that is obscure. Remind me not to play trivial pursuit with YOU.
Thanks many times over for the help.
Best cheers!
B.
I used to watch that almost every weekend with my dad and/or grandfather. While I know I saw all of the greatest “B” monster movies ever made, I remember very little about them besides the Godzilla ones, and the one about killer bees. I wasn’t even in school yet when they stopped doing the Creatures Double Features, so I guess I’m lucky to remember anything at all…those were the days, huh?
They used Wrays’s “Rumble” augmented with screams. I can’t listen to that song without mentally adding the screams.
I was in Cleveland for the heyday of Ghoulardi (although generally not able to stay up late enough) and Chicago for Creature Features, the original Svengouli, and, now, the Son of Svengouli. It has been a good life, except for BJ (Bill Jackson), host of Gigglesnort Hotel. He lived half a block from my school and would give us dirty looks when we’d yell “Hi, BJ!” when he was out washing the fake Model A he used for personal appearances.
And in that case, you would have been correct.
Dick Bennick, who portrayed Dr. Paul Bearer in various cities across the country settled in Tampa/St. Pete. He stopped “lurking for you” in February, 1995, when he moved into his coffin permanently.
The macabre tone of the post is intended to reflect the genuine good spirit of the man. He was okay, by all accounts.
From the better late than never department:
It was Experiment in Terror by Henry Mancini. It scared the shit out of me when I was a kid, though the full piece has a beautiful orchestral movement in the middle that makes it far less threatening and actually kind of sultry now that I listen to it as an adult.
I seem to remember Svenghouli and “Creature Feature” being on WFLD channel 32. I lived in Northern Indiana, and you had to point the UHF antenna in the right direction to pick it up. The best part was that Svenghouli appeared as a voice-over to a series of still, black-and-white photos. It was incredibly tacky.
WGN had “Garfield Goose” – Emperor of the United States.
BERWYN!?!?!