MAZEPPA (1970-1973) BAD MOVIE HOST

MAZEPPA – No relation to Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazeppa, this blog post refers to comedian, artist and actor Gailard Sartain, who got his start playing the wizard Mazeppa (center left) while hosting Tulsa, Oklahoma’s late Saturday night Bad Movie show called The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting.

Triple features and anarchic comedy sketches were the name of the game as Mazeppa and his figurative sorcerer’s apprentices Jim Millaway and THE Gary Busey presented So-Bad-They’re-Good movies, old Universal classics, and musicals from Busby Berkeley to 1950s rock and roll flicks. (Though Tulsa viewers rebelled against the Busby Berkeley musicals according to a 1971 interview with Gailard.)

In between films came old educational shorts, black & white sci-fi shows, weird cartoons, you name it. It was like a countrified forerunner of Night Flight from later decades.

Long time readers of Balladeer’s Blog may remember that when I reviewed the bad 1973 horror film Hex in 2011 I mentioned how that flick’s co-star Gary Busey had moved on to movies after his stint as the wizard Mazeppa’s sidekick. I also resolved to review Mazeppa’s show. Good thing nobody held their breath.

And let’s quickly address the nice coincidence of Mazeppa and Busey’s character Teddy Jack Eddy hosting campy rock and roll movies like Don’t Knock the Rock, Untamed Youth or Shake, Rattle and Rock only for Busey to go on to play Buddy Holly and Sartain to play the Big Bopper in The Buddy Holly Story.     

Taking it from the top, Gailard Sartain just fell into his role as a Movie Host by sheer chance, like so many of his contemporaries on such programs. Graduating from the University of Tulsa, Gailard worked as a cameraman at KOTV in the same city.

The future “Mazeppa Pompazoidi” cracked up his coworkers with his between takes antics to the point where they started letting him show off his mad comic genius in a few programs. When it came time to cast a host for The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting, Sartain was the man.

After a three-week tryout the show was a hit and became so popular among teens and twenty-somethings that Tulsa police stated youth crime and misconduct plummeted late Saturday nights because they were all home watching Mazeppa!  

Rather than portray a vampire or mad scientist character for his Movie Host role, Gailard played the more versatile wizard character (at right) conjuring up cinematic mayhem for Oklahoma’s gob-smacked late-night viewers.

Given the chaotic Marx Brothers movie air to the show Gailard, Busey and Jim Millaway (as Sherman Oaks) were just as likely to be playing anything from Good Ol’ Boys to tycoons to reverends to DJs or JDs in various sketches throughout the night.

One of Mazeppa’s wizardly concoctions was his Vial of Concentrated Personality, which Sartain originally drank to transform into his comedic characters like Johnny Donut (host of Dialing for Dullards), Coach Chuck, Swedish Blues singer Bjorn Toulouse and others. Eventually, Gailard dispensed with the transformation formality and just went straight into the sketches.

Another wizard element was the way the host would try to mystically conjure up quality movies for the audience. It occasionally worked for things like the original Dracula or War of the Worlds, but most often Sartain’s spells yielded schlock like This Island Earth or I was a Teenage Frankenstein.

(Must have been those boxing gloves he often wore throwing him off.) 

From April of 1970 to the summer of 1971 The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting aired on KOTV, then moved to KTUL from July 1971 to the end of summer 1973. NOTE: Some online sources mistakenly list Mazeppa’s show running only from 1971-1973, thus accidentally omitting more than an entire year from its history.   

TUFFACM’s Host Segments were performed live in the early days and one night – one source says during the movie Conquest of Space – some teenage friends rode down to the studio to complain about too much reshuffling of the same films. Mazeppa invited them on the show for an impromptu sketch in which they got in trouble with the police over throwing snowballs. 

When he wasn’t presenting flicks like Face of the Screaming Werewolf and It Came from Outer Space, the late-night wizard also did in-character ads for local businesses on-air. In 1970 he even released his own novelty .45 songs as “Mazeppa Pompazoidi and the Natural Brass Company” – Scope Them Turkeys Out and What’s So Funny?  

At one point, the show’s name was expanded to The Incredible Mazeppa Pompazoidi’s Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting, which title makes The Texas 27 Film Vault and Mystery Science Theater 3000 look brief.

And a special shoutout to the show’s ladies – Janey Jackson (above left as Janey the Waitress), Judy Owen and Gwen Taylor (aka the witch Li’l Darleeng). Any fans with more info please let me know. 

Anyway, after three years & a few months of shorts, serials and Golden Turkeys of all kinds like Plan 9 from Outer Space, Billy the Kid vs Dracula, Maniac, Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster and more, the late-night madness came to an end. 

Gailard and Gary left for movies and television, while Jim Millaway went on to host another Tulsa Bad Movie show – Creature Feature & Groovy Movie – during the 1980s.   

As the legend of The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting grew along with that of other Bad Movie cult shows of the past, Sartain and his wife Mary Jo eventually assembled whatever footage of the program had not been erased at KOTV and KTUL. They released that footage in the four-volume Lost Tapes of Mazeppa DVDs, and needless to say I snapped them right up long ago.   

After his run as our favorite Bad Movie magician, Gailard Sartain moved on to Hee Haw and his work as a respected character actor in films like The Outsiders, Blaze, Mississippi Burning, Fried Green Tomatoes, Hollywood Knights, The Grifters and more.

When he appeared in Michael Mann’s biopic about Muhammad Ali in 2001, the irrepressible Sartain quipped “I play Ali as a child.”

Renaissance Man Gailard was also an accomplished artist. He did cover art for Leon Russell’s Will o’ the Wisp album and others, plus worked as the Art Director for Tulsa magazine. This one-of-a-kind creator passed away on June 19th, 2025. 

FOR OTHER MOVIE HOST ENTRIES CLICK HERE:   https://glitternight.com/category/movie-hosts/