B-MOVIE HOST: RONALD THE GHOUL (1959-1968)

RONALD THE GHOUL, real name Jerry Sandford, hosted the WVEC Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia version of Shock Theater on Friday nights at 11:30.

Sandford’s character Ronald was sort of an homage to the macabre yet comical Roland Zacherley, who went simply by Roland before changing to Zacherley the Cool Ghoul.

Jerry Sandford’s Shock Theater had its own Maurice the Cool Ghoul (Frank Van), who was a beatnik ghoul and wore a monster mask in the show’s early years but then donned a beret and a goatee to enhance his beatnik image. Completing Ronald’s supporting cast was Vicki McKee as the beauty to Ronald and Maurice’s beasts.

When Sandford left the U.S. Navy, he became a radio announcer on WVEC Radio in the Norfolk-Hampton area in 1957. During 1959 he moved over to WVEC Television, hosting the children’s program Bungles the Clown Monday through Friday and taking to the airwaves as Ronald on Fridays at 11:30pm.

Fans of Ronald the Ghoul recall him rising from his coffin at the start of each show. After his standard greeting with the words “Good evening, friends” it was on to the usual old movies with comedy sketches before and after commercials. As Shock Theater rolled along through the 1960s Ronald – like other Movie Hosts around the country – had access to more and more of the schlocky So Bad They’re Good flicks that came to define movie hosting.

Norfolk and Hampton got their first look at Ronald the Ghoul on November 20th, 1959 as he, Maurice and Vicki McKee presented The Mad Ghoul (1943). Ronald emerged from his coffin for the last time on January 19th, 1968 to host Curse of the Faceless Man (1958).

The years in between saw assorted hijinks, including the time some local teens stole Ronald’s prop coffin from the WVEC studios and were caught blocks away selling opportunities to lie in the ghoul’s coffin for 25 cents a pop. The casket was back at WVEC in time for filming that week’s episode.

Ronald pretended to read aloud from a book each week, with the story therein really being the week’s movie. He would parody advertisements, too, like finding a cold six-pack of beer in a grave he was digging. 

No video footage of Jerry Sandford’s Shock Theater has survived, unfortunately, but here’s a partial list of the Golden Turkeys and old classics he presented over the years:   

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943) Aired Dec 18th, 1959 – John “He’s probably even in the Zapruder Film if you look hard enough” Carradine plays a mad scientist who transplants human glandular material into a female ape, causing her to transform into a beautiful human woman. (?) Because she retains the ape’s mind he also kills his lady lab assistant and places her brain into his captive wild woman. Things go wrong and the body count rises.

THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945) Aired July 15th, 1960 – The captive wild woman/ ape woman is back. She’s brought back to life by a different mad scientist and his deformed assistant Moloch (Rondo Hatton). Victims are kidnapped to serve as unwilling blood donors but the reborn ape woman suffered brain damage while dead and is now mindless. With Phil Brown, Luke’s uncle in Star Wars (1977). 

VOODOO MAN (1944) Aired Sep 9th, 1960 – We get the Holy Trinity of 1940s schlock – Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and George Zucco! Lugosi is a madman trying to resurrect his dead wife, Carradine is a bizarrely simple-minded lackey and Zucco is a faux voodoo priest in this Psychotronic classic. 

FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1958) Aired Sep 16th, 1960 – Teen idol John Ashley stars in this 50s flick about a descendant of the original Dr. Frankenstein who creates an unliving female monster (played by the male Harry Wilson in lipstick).

SHE DEMONS (1958) Aired Oct 7th, 1960 – The Infamous Golden Turkey about Irish McCalla washing up on an uncharted island where a mad ex-Nazi scientist uses female guinea pigs in an attempt to restore his wife’s beauty. They instead wind up with horrific faces but retain their nubile bodies. The Diane Nellis Dancers played the deformed She Demons. The rest of the cast included Gene Roth and Victor Sen Yung. 

BLACK DRAGONS (1942) Aired Jun 2nd, 1961 – Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist who performs plastic surgery on Imperial Japanese spies to make them resemble American captains of industry, whom he kills. Clayton Moore is along for the ride in this schlocker.

MISSILE TO THE MOON (1958) Aired Jun 23rd, 1961 – Remake of Cat-Women of the Moon, with the added attraction of Gumby-level moon monsters and a giant spider to go with the sexy moon maidens. With Gary Clarke and Leslie Parrish.

DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS (1954) Aired Jul 7th, 1961 – Patricia Laffan stars as Nyah, a leather-clad Martian woman who comes to Great Britain to abduct Earth men to use as breeding stock for herself and other Martian ladies. She wields a ray-gun and travels in a silly looking spaceship. Also with Hazel Court and Adrienne Corri.

THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES (1955) Aired Aug 18th, 1961 – We get a mad scientist, atomic radiation that spawns a sea monster and the usual 1950s bland man and woman as our hero and heroine. Stars Kent Taylor and Cathy Downs.

SNOW CREATURE (1954) Aired Nov 17th, 1961 – A scientific expedition in the Himalayas clashes with an entire family of Yetis. They capture one of the creatures and bring it back to the U.S., where it escapes and goes on a murderous rampage. Another W. Lee Wilder embarrassment to his brother THE Billy Wilder.

KRONOS (1957) Aired Dec 1st, 1961 – A gigantic alien robot arrives on Earth and begins absorbing all energy, which threatens to eliminate all life on the planet. Starring Jeff Morrow, Barbara Lawrence and Morris Ankrum.

FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE (1956) Aired Jan 19th, 1962 – Earth astronauts arrive on a moon of Jupiter inhabited by the last survivors of Atlantis, who fled there in a spaceship before it sank beneath the waves. Those survivors are a crazy old man and a large bunch of sexy Fire Maidens. The astronauts must save them all from a supposedly indestructible monster which terrorizes them.

WORLD WITHOUT END (1956) Aired Jul 27th, 1962 – Four men return from a mission to Mars but get caught in a time warp which hurls them to the 26th Century. There they find the Earth a wasteland from atomic warfare leaving nothing behind but mutants, giant spiders and the regulation harem of beauties just waiting to mate with our heroes to repopulate the world. Starring Hugh Marlowe, Rod Taylor and Nancy Gates.

DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL (1957) Aired Aug 17th, 1962 – In the 19-teens the daughter of Dr. Jekyll (Gloria Talbot) comes to believe that she has somehow inherited her father’s chemically-induced transformations into an evil persona and that she is responsible for a series of slayings. With John Agar.

NOT OF THIS EARTH (1957) Aired Sep 7th, 1962 – Roger Corman’s oft-remade sci-fi flick about an agent from the planet Davana (Paul Birch) who drains blood from Earthlings as part of his effort to cure the disease caused by radiation on his home planet. Birch dresses like a Blues Brother/ Men in Black wannabe. With other Corman regulars like Beverly Garland, Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze. 

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (1958) Aired Sep 28th, 1962 – An alien turns an abused Earth woman (Allison Hayes herself!) into a 50 foot tall giant. She eventually goes on a rampage to get revenge on her no-good husband and others. Also with Yvette Vickers.

THE COSMIC MAN (1959) Aired Oct 19th, 1962 – John Carradine in a goofy costume shows up as an alien in a single-seater spaceship “orb.” Scientists want his secrets while the military want him dead or recruited as a super-soldier. Also with Angela Greene.

THE GIANT BEHEMOTH (1959) Aired Nov 9th, 1962 – Underwater atomic tests revive a long-dormant dinosaur and give it the power to shoot electricity and radiation. It rampages through England.

THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE (1959) Aired Dec 7th, 1962 – Set in “futuristic” 1968, shipping near the Arctic Sea is being plagued by disappearances, so the atomic submarine Tigershark is sent to investigate. They clash with subaquatic aliens. Stars Arthur Franz, Brett Halsey, Bob Steele, Joi Lansing and Sid Melton.

FRANKENSTEIN 1970 (1958) Aired on May 31st, 1963 – Set in 1970, the last surviving Frankenstein male lets the family castle be used to film a horror movie as cover for his ongoing experiments to continue his ancestor’s work. Boris Karloff himself stars, along with Charlotte Austin and Don “Red” Barry.

*** Ronald was the local host remembered by Elena M. Watson, the Patron Saint of Movie Host research.

When Shock Theater went off the air, Jerry Sandford continued as Bungles the Clown into the 1970s. After leaving WVEC he worked in Newport News schools. Mr. Sandford passed away in 2020. 

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