B-MOVIE HOST UNCLE TED (1974-1982, 1984-1997)

Edwin L. Raub (1921-1998) served as a paratrooper in World War Two and fought on D-Day & during Operation Market Garden. He was written about in Cornelius Ryan’s non-fiction book (later a movie) A Bridge Too Far about the latter action.

After the war, Raub went on to work as a magician, television sales rep, producer and announcer. While working at Scranton, Pennsylvania’s WDAU-TV, he adopted the on-air persona “Uncle Ted” and hosted The Uncle Ted Show performing magic tricks and otherwise entertaining children in the studio and at home.

Graduating to the hour-long Uncle Ted’s Children’s Party, Edwin Raub cemented his position as a local television icon. In 1974, Scranton’s WNEP-TV hired him to use his Uncle Ted persona to host their Friday nights at midnight Bad Movie show Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School, elevating his kiddy-show schtick to the more wry and sarcastic approach of hosting old and bad movies.

For this program, Edwin changed Uncle Ted’s costume to a suit and fez while adopting the air of a vaudeville-level mad museum curator to accommodate this show’s older audience. Uncle Ted performed magic tricks and acted in comedy sketches for his Host Segments.   

In 1975 WNEP reporter Bill O’Reilly, future national figure, did a 9-month stint writing for Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School to supplement his income. Already a jackass, O’Reilly (per his own year 2000 memoirs) clashed with Edwin Raub, whom Bill felt muffed his jokes too many times.

O’Reilly maintains that he was fired for sabotaging the opening sketch of Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School one night when the Host Segments were still performed live on-air. He supposedly locked the coffin that Uncle Ted was to emerge from that night, so the program started with the alarmed Raub knocking on the locked coffin lid until saved by the crew. 

Smug prick O’Reilly called his action “a tad inappropriate.”

Uncle Ted had two sidekicks on Ghoul School – Richard Briggs as his Nefu (sic) Ned and Gerry Coleman as Mordeci the Demented Hunchback. Nefu Ned wore a mop top wig with Groucho Marx glasses, nose and moustache. Comedy sketches featured the misadventures of Uncle Ted and his aides, sometimes tied into the night’s movie.

For instance, during a showing of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the night’s Host Segments centered around Uncle Ted accidentally shrinking his sidekicks and crew.  

Raub hosted movies like The Lost Continent, Hold That Ghost and Dracula’s Daughter until 1982, when Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School was canceled. In 1984, the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Public Broadcasting station WVIA-TV launched Edwin’s new Bad Movie Show – Uncle Ted’s Monstermania, which aired on Friday nights at 11:30pm. 

Briggs came along as Nefu Ned and Coleman as Mordeci. The show’s format of comedy sketches and Bad Movies like Killers from Space and X the Unknown continued for years, with frequent Double Features and Hammer Horror productions.

The program became an enormous hit with college students throughout eastern Pennsylvania.

Gerry Coleman replaced Richard Briggs as Nefu Ned in 1992 and sometimes had to host the show himself as Edwin Raub’s age and lifetime smoking habit caused health issues that often sidelined him.

Uncle Ted’s Monstermania technically lasted until 1997 but new episodes starring Raub became fewer and further between. Nefu Ned hosted several times and for a while reruns of 1980s and early 1990s episodes hosted by Edwin in his younger years filled the timeslot until the final show.   

Edwin Raub passed away in 1998 and was inducted into the Horror Host Hall of Fame in 2014. One of his trademark signoffs at the end of a show was “That’s all there is. There isn’t anymore. And what there was, is all gone.”  

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