B-MOVIE HOSTESS: ANGIE LABANSHEE (1985-1986)

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: 

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.

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 were now iconic Mexican-American band the Renegades back before they made it big. 

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. 

SOME 1986 EPISODES:

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 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.  

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 1985-1986 episodes featured flicks like A Shriek in the Night (1933), Beyond Tomorrow (1940), The Gorilla (1939), Black Magic (1944), and One Body Too Many (1944). 

1992

SPOOKS HOTEL HALLOWEEN DOUBLE FEATURE – 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. 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. 

1999 EPISODES

BEACH GIRLS AND THE MONSTER (1966) – Hosted by Joan Kelley-Cordt’s new character 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. 

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.

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.

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.

In 2005 a mini documentary was aired celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Spooks Hotel. Joan Kelley-Cordt passed away in 2012, and in 2026 she was inducted into the Horror Host Hall of Fame. 

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