B-MOVIE HOST: FRITZ THE NITE OWL (1974-1995, 2001-2003, 2010-2014)

FRITZ THE NITE OWL – Frederick C. Peerenboom aka Fritz the Nite Owl, lasted so long as a Movie Host that it would take a multi-volume set of books to truly do justice to his career. Consider this blog post a mere scratching of the surface.

Peerenboom was born December 27th, 1934 and is still at large as of this writing. He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps until his honorable discharge in 1959. From there he worked in various broadcasting jobs “up and down the dial” as the saying goes, landing in Columbus, Ohio in time to begin hosting the Saturday night Bad Movie Show on WBNS-TV in September 1974.

Double Chiller Theatre aired a Double Feature beginning at 11:30pm. Over time it became better known as Nite Owl Theatre.

Fritz the Nite Owl wore the distinctive Owl Glasses that defined his Movie Host “look” to this very day. In multiple interviews over the years Peerenboom has expressed relief that the station rejected the initial plans to have him wear a full owl costume.

Let’s face it, the Owl Glasses let Fritz retain the oddball cool air he had cultivated as a radio DJ playing pure, deep-cut jazz in Columbus. That initial fan base would likely have rejected a man in a full body bird costume like a college sports mascot.

For his Movie Host persona’s backstory, Fritz maintained that he was an alien from the planet Zontar (an obvious nod to the schlock classic Zontar, the Thing from Venus). He lived in the WBNS Tower and on Saturday nights after everyone had gone home he would sneak down to host broadcasts of science fiction, horror and Elvis flicks plus a few mainstream films now and then.     

Often, Fritz would spice up his Host Segments by (what we would today call) photoshopping his face – or at least his trademark glasses – onto the heads of male heroes in illustrations or posters, some of which reflected the genre of the movie being shown.

For instance, Fritz’s face would be talking from the head of, say, a Sword and Sorcery Hero from a Boris Vallejo cover while defending a scantily clad woman from a monster. Or the head of a ray-gun wielding Space Opera Hero fighting against hopeless odds, you name it. He’d even turn up sitting in Captain Kirk’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise.     

Whatever the tableau, it was just an excuse for our Nite Owl to introduce the movie and provide sarcastic running commentary on how bad or weird the film in question was in tried-and-true Movie Host fashion.

On July 5th, 1991, Peerenboom’s run on WBNS on Saturday nights came to a close. He continued as a Columbus, OH institution by moving his show over to WCLS from 1992 until 1995. After 6 years spent on just his radio work, Fritz resumed hosting bad and weird movies, this time on WCLL in Columbus from May 2001 until July 2003. 

You can’t keep a good alien down, however, and from 2010-2014 our hero began hosting Nite Owl Theatre Starring Fritz the Nite Owl on one Saturday night per month. This program was an internet production, with Fritz hosting and with the commercial breaks consisting of vintage ads from the relevant time periods.     

In all of his show’s incarnations, Peerenboom presented the expected So Bad They’re Good cult movies.

In March of 2012, Friz was inducted into the Horror Host Hall of Fame along with Joe Bob Briggs and Elvira. 

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