Customer Reviews

American Scary

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

American Scary is a tribute to the golden age of the horror hosts. It contains some footage and interviews featuring Mike Price (Baron Daemon) and Alan Miliar (Dr, E, Nick Witty.) Although I was very excited to view the footage from so long ago, I found it somewhat disappointing.

Because it was less of a historical treatment of the genre and more of a collection of random three-second interviews interspersed throughout the DVD. No mention of Boris Karloff's contribution or the early spook shows and radio broadacasts. Also, many pioneers in the horror host filed like Sammy Terry, Nightmare, Al Lewis (Grandpa Munter), Zumbo were callously omitted.

It seemed to be geared for an audience with a very limited focus, limited interest in history and even greater limited attention span. I am still hoping for a more through treatment of the idiom in the future. There is additional footage of Baron Daemon and Monster Movie Matinee available at:
http://artofjosephcapuana.homestead.com/horrorhostindex.html

Joe Capuana

I found this by accident, bought it and loved it! I miss the old Horror Hosts. I have such fun, scary memories of watching Roland, Dr. Shock and Stella in Philadelphia. I was so excited to see that Stella made the DVD cover!!

A Look back at the Creature Feautre/Late Night Horror Movie hosts, Some Well known and loved such as Vampira and Elvira,others not as popular. A very entertaining and refreshingly different documentary.

I really enjoyed this DVD, particularly the vintage clips of horror hosts like Vampira and Zacherle. I also liked the way they link the old hosts with the current ones, including the effect of MST3K's success. It isn't perfect, though; the producers were unable to get actual MST3K material and I would've liked even more classic clips. Still, what I got was very enjoyable and, with any luck, we may just get a "special edition" re-release someday.

Highly recommended!

-30-

The long, long wait for this release made unreal expectations for the quality. The nuts and bolts of the video and editing are just fine but the content is just not there. The focus is on modern hosts recalling past hosts instead of interviewing the pioneers directly. Oh there are some nice spots here and there but for $20 I expect quite a bit more.

Good first effort but not great. Hopefully American Scary can serve as inspiration for more projects of this type.

If you are a fan (if you buy this you must be)you will love this DVD. I throughly enjoyed it. The only thing it lacked was Dr. Shock (Philly horror host from the 70's).

American Scary is the first documentary to spotlight the Horror Host phenomenon in America. The DVD is very professional and the filmmakers have done an admirable job of researching some of the original hosts from the early days of television, but what is really lacking is more footage of the horror hosts themselves. I grew up watching Pittsburgh's Chilly Billy Cardille back in the 1970's and while this host gets his due, he is only one of a limited number of hosts really given any airtime. We spend a lot of time watching a lot of "interviews" with "fans" of these icons from days-gone-by when what we really crave is more archival footage of these wonderful shows. By the end of this DVD I found myself feeling a little cheated and wanting for more horror hosts.

Great movie well played out.How it cannot have the SON OF SVENGOOLIE is a reason not to buy the movie.
Sven has been on for nearly 30 years and is loved in Chicago.

Excellent overview of not just a grassroots American phenomena, but a wonderful moment in time when television was local, before everything got sliced up and homogenized by the greedheads. Not everyone can be covered, and they do a nice job talking around the lack of Elvira, but this is a lot of fun. I especially liked the opening clip (it could have been Vampira, for chronology, or Zacherle, for popularity, or Svengoolie, for cult appeal, but I thought it was a nice choice that summed the whole thing up and gave it a humble face) and the title sequence, which is just grand! Good work. Now everyone go buy VIRGINIA CREEPERS on DVD!

If you grew up in a time when TV wasn't a huge conglomerate and reality crap spilled over the airwaves, you'll love this very good look at local tv horror hosts throughout the years. Everyone is profiled from Vampira to Commander USA. The interviews are excellent and the clips are priceless. I highly recommend this DVD for anyone who remembers this from their childhood.