B-MOVIE HOSTESS: ANGIE LABANSHEE (1985-1993)

NOTE: Special thanks to Mike Pieper – part of the creative team on this program and the man who played the first Elmer the Mummy for three years – for correcting, clarifying and providing a wealth of additional information about this Movie Host series. He was a friendly and helpful man! 

ANGIE LABANSHEE (Joan Kelley-Cordt) hosted the B-Movie show Spooks Hotel Friday nights at 10:30 in Marshalltown, Iowa. The program was initially aired on the local college’s Iowa Valley TV station – Channel 22. From 1990-1992 Spooks Hotel was on KDAO TV, Channel 39, then back to Iowa Valley TV after that.  

As for Angie, this sultry banshee with the Transylvanian accent was the manager of 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, Elmer’s father. Somehow.

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 alongside Mike Pieper. Angie hosted Psychotronic movies accompanied by Host Segments from October 1985 to October 1993. Episodes were taped Wednesdays for their Friday broadcast.

The program’s success let Joan simultaneously host the station’s Monday through Friday show Marshalltown Today during 1987 and 1988. In 1991 Joan Kelley-Cordt began playing a new character Mrs. Spooks, who at last returned from her world travels with her hubby, mad scientist Dr. Spooks (Steve Scheiding).

She, Mike Piepers and some of her Spooks Hotel backup characters did a Spooks Hotel special titled The First Annual Elmer Awards, complete with various categories of Bad Movies that featured several nominees and ultimately a winner read from an envelope. Two more Elmer Awards shows followed in time.

Among the milestones on Spooks Hotel during its original run was a 1992 Double Feature consisting of 1) Planet of Blood aka Queen of Blood (1966) Dennis Hopper, John Saxon, Forry Ackerman and others star in this movie about a spaceship rescue mission which pits its crew against a bizarre space-vampress and her offspring. And 2) The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) Jason Evers in the infamous film about a mad doctor keeping his fiancee’s decapitated head alive after an accident while he looks for a woman to kill so he can use her body for his fiancee. 

Some of the episodes of Spooks Hotel: 

THE RED HOUSE (1947) – Edward G. Robinson starred in this flick about a creepy brother and sister pair who raise an orphaned teen girl who begins to sense the horrific secret of the red farmhouse on the siblings’ property. Also starring Judith Anderson, Julie London, Allene Roberts, Ona Munson and – doing his trademark standing and walking – Rory Calhoun. 

This debut episode also featured Joan and Kevin’s brother Steven Kelley performing with his Heavy Metal band Krank. (Not to be confused with the later band called Krank.)

DOUBLE FEATURE: THE DEVIL BAT & THE TERROR – The Devil Bat is the 1940 Bela Lugosi anti-classic in which he plays a mad scientist who trains deadly bats to attack and kill his enemies. The Terror (1963) is an early Jack Nicholson horror film set in 1806 Europe. Jack plays a deserting officer from Napoleon’s army who comes across a haunted castle in which lurk Boris Karloff impersonating the Baron he murdered, plus a shape-shifting she-demon and an evil witch. This Roger Corman flick is a staple of Bad Movie shows.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) – George Romero’s black & white film in which space radiation from a downed satellite causes the dead to rise from their graves to feed on the living. With legendary Pittsburgh Movie Host Bill Cardille appearing as a news reporter. NOTE: Performing in this episode was a Marshalltown band called the Renegades. 

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) – Not the musical, but the original Roger Corman movie about a man-eating plant from outer space which chows down on several deserving and not so deserving victims. Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller and others show up.

HORROR EXPRESS (1972) – Telly Savalas, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing star in this adaptation of The Thing/ Who Goes There set on a train in 1906. An alien has infected and controls the frozen body of a caveman unearthed near the Pole. The caveman thaws and the alien goes on to infest and terrify others on the Trans-Siberian Express.

GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943) – The East Side Kids (aka the Dead-End Kids, the Bowery Boys and the Little Tough Guys) go up against Bela Lugosi as a Nazi spy who runs his plots out of a house he rigged up to seem haunted. AVA GARDNER co-stars along with Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Sammy Morrison and Billy Benedict. 

GORGO (1961) – England tried its hand at a Godzilla/ Gamera kaiju schlocker with this movie about a gigantic amphibious monster which emerges from the Atlantic Ocean to rampage through U.K. locations. Starring Bill Travers and William Sylvester.

THE WOMAN IN GREEN (1945) – Basil Rathbone is great as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce is the most mentally challenged Dr. Watson in film history. This is the pair’s 11th movie in their Holmes series. Elements of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Final Problem and The Empty House get scrambled into a story about murder victims whose fingers have been removed. Henry Daniell plays archvillain Professor Moriarty and Hillary Brooke is along for the ride.

KILLERS FROM SPACE (1954) – The notorious Golden Turkey about bug-eyed aliens, their giant lizards, insects and spiders, plus Peter Graves.

THE SECRET WEAPON (1942) – Holmes and Watson again clash with Moriarty (Lionel Atwill this time) when he abducts a Swiss inventor to help the Nazis. A little of the Holmes story The Dancing Men is mixed in. With Whit Bissel and Veda Ann Borg. Old Man Dan was murdered in a whodunit subplot through some of the Sherlock Holmes episodes.

THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (1963) – Plant-creatures from outer space arrive on Earth and begin devouring human beings. Howard Keel and Janette Scott star.

PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953) – A spacecraft crashes in the San Fernando Valley. The alien pilot survives and removes his space suit, which makes him turn invisible. His touch is radioactive and Earthlings follow the trail of dead bodies to a final confrontation with the “phantom” at the Griffith Observatory.

PSYCHOMANIA (1973) – Nicky Henson stars as the leader of a British motorcycle gang which makes a pact with Satan to commit suicide and return from the dead as unkillable fiends on a rampage. Final film of George Sanders.  

DRESSED TO KILL (1946) – Holmes and Watson take on Patricia Morison in a counterfeiting plot that mashes up The Six Napoleons, The Engineer’s Thumb and A Scandal in Bohemia. Last of the Holmes series.

THE CRAWLING EYE (1958) – Psychotronic classic about literal giant eyes from outer space which possess tentacles and terrorize a mountain resort community in Europe. Angie LaBanshee did a recurring joke about her allegedly knowing the movie’s star Forrest Tucker personally.

Other 1985-1993 episodes featured flicks like Terror by Night, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, Bride of the Monster, and William Castle’s The Tingler. There were also two kaiju classics – Godzilla vs Megalon and Godzilla vs the Sea Monster – plus an outtakes show where the movie being shown was Scared to Death.

In 1999 the show returned for a new series of episodes. That limited run of 7 episodes aired during the closing weeks of 1999 into Y2K.

1999 EPISODES

BEACH GIRLS AND THE MONSTER (1966) – Hosted by Joan Kelley-Cordt as Mrs. Spooks (at left), back from her world travels. Surf-crazy teens go up against a monster which periodically emerges from a cave near the beach. Starring Jon Hall and Sue Casey with music by Frank Sinatra, Jr.

ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) – One of Roger Corman’s schlockiest – and therefore most fun – movies. A scientific expedition on a remote island runs afoul of gigantic radiation-altered crabs who can communicate in the voices of the victims they ate. With Russell Johnson of Gilligan’s Island.

HANDS OF A STRANGER (1962) – Another adaptation of The Hands of Orlac. A pianist loses his hands in an auto accident. A doctor replaces them with the hands of a late killer but the hands make the pianist go around strangling people to death. With Sally Kellerman and Irish McCalla.

LAST WOMAN ON EARTH (1960) – Roger Corman’s schlocker written by THE Robert Towne and starring Betsy Jones-Moreland. Two men and one woman find themselves to be the last survivors of an apocalyptic disaster, resulting in the men competing for the last woman.

THE PHANTOM PLANET (1961) – An astronaut crash-lands on a mysterious asteroid populated by tiny humanoids. The atmosphere shrinks him down to their size and he must struggle to survive their strange, deadly culture. With Anthony Dexter and Francis X. Bushman.

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964) – Virtually every Bad Movie Show from the 1960s onward has shown this flick about Martians kidnapping Santa Claus and two children in their plot to force Santa to make toys for Martian children from now on. A very young Pia Zadora was in a supporting role.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME (1967) – Anthony Eisley, Scott Brady, Gigi Perreau and Lyle Waggoner starred in this inferior remake of The Time Travelers (1964). A corporate money man (Brady) accidentally causes the time travel machine he is financing to start its journey before it is completely ready.

*** What a fun show! A little bit of Gravesend Manor, the Wail of LaBanshee as a nod to Vampira’s opening scream, and comedy sketches that showed off the versatility of Joan and her co-stars. In 2005 a mini documentary was aired celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Spooks Hotel. Joan Kelley-Cordt passed away in 2011, and here in 2026 she was inducted into the Horror Host Hall of Fame. 

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