SCORPIO (1976-1977) – From September 18th, 1976 to August or September of 1977 Scorpio (actor name unknown) hosted Thing Theatre at 1:00pm on Saturday afternoons. Thing Theatre aired on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s WPGH-TV, which was back after having declared bankruptcy years earlier when its Movie Host show was Scream-In.
The fun backstory for Scorpio was related in the opening of every show. WPGH field reporter Ed Barrett played himself in a remote bit about pollution. He and the crew with him pretended to find a coffin covered in undergrowth, so (for some reason) they took it back to the station with them. Setting up the coffin in an unused studio, they got the lid opened revealing nothing inside.
Losing interest, Barrett and the others wandered off, leaving the coffin sitting there. As one does, I guess. Suddenly, a man in tattered clothing with messy hair and sporting an eyepatch emerged from the coffin evilly laughing at how he had fooled the others.
He introduced himself as Scorpio and, playing off Ed Barrett’s question about what kind of thing the coffin once held decided to call his show Thing Theatre. Belaboring the point, Scorpio also said he needed to call his show something … something … some THING!” in the same sketch. Only the audio of this opening survives, no video from it.
Over time, Scorpio – who was NOT a vampire – showed he had more powers than just the ability to turn invisible and insubstantial. Some fan accounts claim he was an all-out wizard, like Tulsa’s iconic Movie Host Mazeppa from 1970-1973.
Another fan recalled that if you wrote the studio as a fan of Scorpio he would send you a sheet detailing his fictional life story. Sadly, the only part the fan remembered was that for Health Status, Scorpio had entered “Dead.”
This host loved chowing down on popcorn during the week’s movie and would do the usual comedy sketches going into and out of commercial breaks. At the end of each episode he would announce the following Saturday’s movie.
By this point in the 1970s all manner of Psychotronic movies from around the world were available to American television stations and the So Bad They’re Good approach was pretty much baked into every single Movie Host program.
Thing Theatre‘s timeslot at 1:00pm on Saturdays let it avoid going head-to-head with the dominant 11:30pm Chiller Theatre, hosted by the legendary Bill Cardille (Chilly Billy Cardilly).
The very first movie presented by Scorpio was Corridors of Blood, and the following Saturday was Japan’s Invasion of the Neptune Men. Beyond that, fan memories have provided a partial list of other films on Thing Theatre. Some examples:
CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (1958) – Aired September 18th, 1976. Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee starred in this tale of an 1840s mad scientist who experiments on human subjects in hopes of perfecting anesthesia. He also becomes addicted to the opium-like gas which he uses in his process and falls in with a gang of murderous criminals. Also starring Adrienne Corri.
INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN (1961) – Aired September 25th, 1976. When Japan, and later the world, get invaded by the metallic aliens of the title, an astrophysicist (THE Sonny Chiba) becomes the superhero called Space Chief and leads Earth in destroying the villains.
CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS (1962) – After atomic wars have threatened the fertility of every human being in the world, humanoid robots are becoming more and more numerous. They even start pursuing romances with humans. Absurdly stiff and strained sci-fi with a hilariously stupid closing line. Dudley Manlove from Plan 9 from Outer Space co-stars.
PLANETS AGAINST US (1962) – The famous Italian schlocker about aliens who want to take over the Earth. They kill an Earth scientist and make multiple copies of him to use as spies but Euro-folks get wise and foil the aliens.
LADY FRANKENSTEIN (1971) – The one and only Rosalba Neri stars as a female descendant of Dr. Frankenstein. She has her own dark experiments going on and makes a monster of her own.
BARON BLOOD (1972) – Joseph Cotten is back as the title Baron, who was cursed by a witch to return from the dead only so that he can be killed over and over again.
ATOMIC RULERS OF THE WORLD (1965) – Another ridiculous Japanese sci-fi superheroes – Starman (Super Giant in Japan) – is sent from the Emerald Planet to save the Earth from aliens who have allied themselves with a militaristic country. Followed by three more movies every bit as enjoyably goofy.
THE BLOOD ROSE (1970) – Yet another variation of the “male relative experiments on human victims while trying to fix the scarred face off their wife/ daughter. Howard Vernon stars as the crazed botanist (?) behind it all. Vernon would practically be type-cast as this type of character in this type of plot.
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