Once again, it’s mentioned in the Death Pool thread ( http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=776787&page=39&highlight=Zacherle ), but John Zacherle deserves his own thread.
I grew up watching him on WPIX’s Chiller Theater (back before they had the opening with the six-fingered hand). The cut in scenes of him into the movies he was showing (as a museum guard, for instance, directing the re-animated Roman in The curse of the Faceless Man to where the heroine fled.)
Later, he appeared in Frank Henelotter films FBrain Dead (where he provided the voice of the monster Aylmer) and as a weatherman in the background TV in Frankenhooker. I also have a tape of his anthology Horrible Horror.
From the obits, I see that he did a few other movies I didn’t know about, as well as a 2008 one-time-only revival of Chiller Theater.
There’s a video of him singing his novelty hit Dinner with Drac on the Horrible Horror compilation.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized that he had groomed his appearance to resemble Lon Chaney’s in The Phantom of the Opera.
And he left us – at 98 years old – just before Halloween.