Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Nightmare (Gorgon's Trophy Room)


I've posted this clip before, but I really like it and it certainly seems appropriate, what with tomorrow being Halloween. NIGHTMARE was the title of the weekly monster movie showcase on one of the local TV stations when I was growing up, and I think you can see from this clip that for ultra-low-budget local TV, it was pretty darned good. It scared the bejabbers out of me when I was a kid and still gives me the creeps. The actor playing the host, Gorgon, is the great Bill Camfield, who also hosted the early morning kids' show SLAM BANG THEATRE as Icky Twerp. (There are lots of Twerp clips on YouTube, if you're interested in seeing them.)

6 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Early TV mustered up some pretty scary moments--at least for kids. The lighting in itself was spooky.

J F Norris said...

We had Chiller Theater on WPIX and Creature Features on WNEW in the 70s when I was growing up. Though the weird Claymation opening of CHILLER with the six fingered hand sinking into a bloody quicksand was neatly done it was nowhere near as intense as this opening to NIGHTMARE. I'd have been back every week just to hear that thrililng voice and be hypnotized by those sinister eyes.

James Reasoner said...

John,
You should check out some of the clips featuring Bill Camfield as kids' show host Icky Twerp. Hard to believe it's the same guy.

Todd Mason said...

I dug out and posted a page in a tv supplement or possibly independent magazine about Camfield at the links list post:

http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2012/10/tuesdays-overlooked-films-andor-other_30.html

James Reasoner said...

Todd, that's a great feature! Thanks for posting it. There's some stuff in there about Camfield I didn't know, like those other characters he played in his early days at the station. Local TV production was really done on a shoestring back then, and people wore a lot of different hats.

Todd Mason said...

You're quite welcome, James...and that tradition (as much of the discussion of horror hosts will tell the reader) of multiple hats worn continued into the near-present, at least...certainly the last two local ones I'd see, Count Gore de Vol and the Bowman Body (respectively on Channels 20 and 56 in the DC area in the 1980s into early '90s) were also multiply employed at their stations, or sibling stations (Bowman was based in Richmond, at another public station). Both stations became anchors of new networks (20 initially as a UPN owned-and-operated station, in the wake of UPN's merger with the WB, sold to News Corp and now one of the O&Os in the MyNetworkTV web; 56 as national hub of MHz Worldview, the small public network), and their hosted horror shows left local broadcast (and de Vol's alter ego as, among other things, young children's show Buffalo Bob-analog Captain Twenty went away).