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 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. 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: Continue reading
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