Here are three old television shows that changed my life. No no no, you don’t understand…in the old days before satellite and cable, we were lucky to get anything remotely off the beaten path…
Why the hell do you think we were so wound up about Saturday Night Live and SCTV during the seventies? To (kinda) experience these underpraised classics, follow the links!
Fright Night & Seymour Presents with Larry “Seymour” VincentEvery era worth it’s salt has it’s great horror movie host. In the 50’s, Vampira was skewering poverty-row horror flicks…in the 60’s, Zacherly and Ghoulardi were supposedly good (never saw them, but their fans are RABID).
For the young Reverend Dan, Seymour was diety of choice back in the early seventies. Wearing his trademark wide-brimmed hat and black cape, he would saunter onto his cheesy horror movie host set (fog, gray bricks covered with green moss. whatever cheap props that could salvage from wherever), he would welcome us “Fringies” to the evenings program, and then insult us for tuning in to such garbage.
Gaunt as hell, sarcastic, and with a sense of humor so knowingly lowbrow, the show was a celebration of “Look what we’re getting away with tonight!” At Knott’s Berry Farm’s first Halloween Haunt, Seymour was the featured star, and I made damn sure to get a good seat.
When my hero walked on stage I was in awestruck. I did manage to yell out “Where’s Banjo Billy?”, a reference to Seymour’s nemisis (who was also portrayed by Larry Vincent). Seymour stopped in mid-sentence, looked right at me and snarled into the mike “None of your buisiness!” which cracked up the crowd and made me the happiest bastard on the planet at that moment.