ANGIE LABANSHEE (Joan Kelley-Cordt) hosted the B-Movie show Spooks Hotel Friday nights at 10:30 on KDAO Channel 44 in Marshalltown, Iowa. This sultry banshee with the Transylvanian accent was the manager for the Spooks Hotel, whose owner Mrs. Spooks was traveling the world off the money the hotel made for her.
Joan Kelley (Cordt after her February 1986 marriage) and her brother Kevin were inspired to create, direct and produce Spooks Hotel by their fondness for the 1960s and 1970s Movie Host show Gravesend Manor, broadcast out of Ames, IA. Among the supporting characters they came up with to appear alongside Angie LaBanshee were Elmer the Mummy, who was the Bellboy; multi-ethnic Master Chef Pierre O’Brien, expert pizza maker from Germany; French Maid Fifi; and Kevin himself as the voice of the cheap, ugly puppet Old Man Dan.
After the success of the pilot episode, Spooks Hotel aired as a series, with Joan producing, Kevin directing and both of them writing the show. Angie hosted Psychotronic movies accompanied by Host Segments from October 1985 well into 1986.
The program’s success let Joan advance to hosting the station’s Monday through Friday show Marshalltown Today during 1987 and 1988. In 1991 Angie LaBanshee and some of her Spooks Hotel backup characters did a one-off Spooks Hotel special titled The Elmer Awards, complete with various categories of Bad Movies that featured several nominees and ultimately a winner read from an envelope.
You can’t keep a good banshee down, however, and for Halloween 1992 Spooks Hotel was back with a special Double Feature consisting of Planet of Blood (1966) and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962). In 1999 the show returned for a new series of episodes, this time with Joan Kelley-Cordt hosting as Mrs. Spooks herself instead of Angie LaBanshee. That limited run of 5 episodes aired during the closing weeks of 1999 into Y2K.
Some 1985 episodes of Spooks Hotel: Continue reading
TO THE MOON & BACK IN NINETY DAYS (1917) – By John Y. Brown. Balladeer’s Blog presents more Ancient Science Fiction (or Vintage Science Fiction if you prefer). This story was first penned in 1917 and later published by the Lunar Publishing Company in 1922. 
JANUARY 6th – Marching from northern Florida, a combined force of over 2,000 British Regulars, Colonial Loyalists to Britain and Native American allies of the British surrounded U.S. Forts Sunbury and Morris in Georgia. 
PART 69 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the March 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure:
ROBERT REDFORD R.I.P. – After his death I reviewed his obscure films like War Hunt, This Property is Condemned, The Chase, Downhill Racer and others 
BAD MOVIES – JACINTO MOLINA, SPAIN’S KING OF HORROR – I reviewed his movies like Exorcismo, Fury of the Wolfman, Assignment: Terror, Werewolf vs the Yeti, House of Psychotic Women and many more 
FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – PARTNERS IN CRIME (1984) – Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter as widows of a P.I. who take over his agency and solve his murder as their first case 
DADDY DEAREST (1993) – As usual for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at obscure movies or television shows that fit the occasion. For this Father’s Day it’s Daddy Dearest, a largely forgotten sitcom that starred RICHARD LEWIS and DON RICKLES, a very bizarre pairing. 
JUNE 21st, 1925 – In Wichita, Kansas the black semi-professional baseball team the Wichita Monrovians (named for the capital of Liberia) played a team from the Democrat Party hate group the Ku Klux Klan. During the 1920s the Democrats were trying to improve the image of the Klan via public picnics and other civic events. 
THOR Vol 1 #225 (July 1974)
Meanwhile, a being called Firelord arrives on Earth and enters Krista’s hospital. People attack Firelord, who injures them, prompting Hercules to fight him.
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