MAZEPPA – No relation to Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazeppa, this blog post refers to comedian, artist and actor Gailard Sartain, who got his start playing the wizard Mazeppa (center left) while hosting Tulsa, Oklahoma’s late Saturday night Bad Movie show called The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting.
Triple features and anarchic comedy sketches were the name of the game as Mazeppa and his figurative sorcerer’s apprentices Jim Millaway and THE Gary Busey presented So-Bad-They’re-Good movies, old Universal classics, and musicals from Busby Berkeley to 1950s rock and roll flicks. (Though Tulsa viewers rebelled against the Busby Berkeley musicals according to a 1971 interview with Gailard.)
In between films came old educational shorts, black & white sci-fi shows, weird cartoons, you name it. It was like a countrified forerunner of Night Flight from later decades.
Long time readers of Balladeer’s Blog may remember that when I reviewed the bad 1973 horror film Hex in 2011 I mentioned how that flick’s co-star Gary Busey had moved on to movies after his stint as the wizard Mazeppa’s sidekick. I also resolved to review Mazeppa’s show. Good thing nobody held their breath.
And let’s quickly address the nice coincidence of Mazeppa and Busey’s character Teddy Jack Eddy hosting campy rock and roll movies like Don’t Knock the Rock, Untamed Youth or Shake, Rattle and Rock only for Busey to go on to play Buddy Holly and Sartain to play the Big Bopper in The Buddy Holly Story. Continue reading
Edwin L. Raub (1921-1998) served as a paratrooper in World War Two and fought on D-Day & during Operation Market Garden. He was written about by name in Cornelius Ryan’s non-fiction book (later a movie) A Bridge Too Far about the latter action. 
Graduating to the hour-long Uncle Ted’s Children’s Party, Edwin Raub cemented his position as a local television icon. In 1974, Scranton’s WNEP-TV hired him to use his Uncle Ted persona to host their Friday nights at midnight Bad Movie show Uncle Ted’s Ghoul School, elevating his kiddy-show schtick to the more wry and sarcastic approach of hosting old and bad movies. 
TARANTULA GHOUL – Actress Suzanne Waldron’s performance on stage in Macbeth captured the attention of the bosses at Portland, Oregon’s KPTV. They hired her to host House of Horror, their late-night B-Movie show, in a similar style to Vampira down in Los Angeles. 
Most of the classic Bad Movie shows aired on Friday or Saturday nights, which were ideal for audiences to stay up late watching the movie and the host’s antics. Trapped in the mire of a late-night middle of the week timeslot, the brilliant Tarantula Ghoul’s show sadly lasted from just October 9th, 1957 to November 26th, 1958. 
DR. SAN GUINARY – From 1971 to 1981, director John F. Jones at KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska hosted the channel’s version of Creature Feature as mad scientist Dr. San Guinary. The program originally aired late Saturday nights after the 10:00pm local news, then was moved to Midnight when KMTV started airing SNL in 1975.
The doctor, whose voice always had a certain Wolfman Jack sound to it, also did comedy inserts and sketches, of course. The circulating DVDs of Horror Host footage from decades ago featured plenty of Dr. San Guinary’s comedy bits, including his Mystery Door segments (above right). 
SIR GRAVES GHASTLY – Lawson J. Deming portrayed this vampire character whose eponymous movie show ran from January 1967 to November 1982 in Detroit – a longer run than most other classic Movie Hosts. His Saturday afternoon at 1:00pm program was even syndicated in Cleveland and Washington, DC for a year or two during the 1970s. 
At the start of each episode Sir Graves would emerge from a coffin and make with his signature laugh – “”Nyeeea-aaaa-haa-haaaaa.” At show’s end he would climb back into the coffin and pull down the lid. 
Balladeer's Blog 