Famous Hollywood Star on TV

Famous Hollywood Star on TV

Top 10 TV Horror Hosts

Growing up as a kid I was fascinated with horror movies, from the classics to the low budget stinkers. Most local television channels had a show that presented these horror movies at night or on weekends. These shows usually had a host who was tasked with presenting low-grade films to television audiences. These hosts were most often in costume, and were taken from the ranks of the studio staff.
A few of these horror hosts became icons and gained nationwide, or international, recognition for their roles. However, most of these hosts were local and not recognized outside their local areas, but their characters added to the enjoyment of the movies.
My criteria for the list are that the host must have started as a local program that presented horror movies. All of the hosts on the list, except for one, were presented in costume.

10. Zacherley  (The Cool Ghoul)

Zacherley was the host of WCAU’s Shock Theater, which debuted on October 7, 1957, and ran for 92 broadcasts, through to 1958. Actor John Zacherle wore a long black undertaker’s coat’s as the character “Roland,” who lived in a crypt with his wife “My Dear”, and his lab assistant Igor. The hosting of the show involved numerous stylized horror-comedy gags that have now become standard on television.
In the opening sequence, Zacherley would descend a long round staircase to the crypt. The producers erred on the side of goriness, showing fake severed heads with blood simulated with Hershey’s Chocolate syrup. The show sometimes featured live “cut-ins” during the movie in which the soundtrack continued to play on the air, while the visual feed switched briefly to a shot of Zacherley in the middle of a humorous stunt, such as riding a tombstone.

9. Svengoolie

Svengoolie is the name of a character from a long-running series of locally produced television programs in the Chicago, Illinois area. Svengoolie was originally played by Jerry G. Bishop and debuted on Screaming Yellow Theater, which aired on WFLD from September 18, 1970, until the summer of 1973.
The show featured various low-budget horror and science fiction movies hosted by horror host Svengoolie, who wore face makeup, a wig and a top hat. In between film breaks, the character presents various sketches, tells corny jokes and presents song parodies spoofing the film being played.
Svengoolie is currently played by Rich Koz, who was originally a fan of the show who wrote in with some sketch ideas. On June 16, 1979, a new series named Son of Svengoolie debuted on WFLD, with Koz in the role of the Son of Svengoolie.

8. Sir Graves Ghastly

Sir Graves Ghastly was a character created by Cleveland-born actor Lawson J. Deming, for the popular television show of the same name. Sir Graves Ghastly had its longest run on WJBK, TV2 in Detroit, from 1967-82.
Sir Graves Ghastly was a middle-aged man in vampire makeup with a deep voice like Boris Karloff’s. He started and ended the show by climbing out of and into a coffin and showed classic horror films, and gave good background on them. At end of the show he wished viewers “Happy Haunting,” and gave an evil laugh as he lay down in his coffin.
Other characters on the show included Sir Graves’ sidekick, Baruba, a ghostly apparition known only as The Glob, and a cemetery caretaker named Reel McCoy, who traditionally opened each episode by unearthing a movie reel from what appeared to be a grave. The show followed a consistent format of back-to-back horror films, interspersed with brief sketch comedy pieces featuring the many characters. The program was originally billed as Sir Graves’ Big Show, but later became known simply by the character’s name.

7. Sir Cecil Creape (Phantom of the Opry)

Sir Cecil Creape, aka The Phantom of the Opry, was played by film editor Russ McCown, and was perhaps Nashville’s best known horror host. The show was aired on WSMV, channel 4 Nashville from 1971-1973, and was called Creature Feature. During that time Sir Cecil hosted horror movies and always had lots of skits in between breaks. The set was a dungeon, with stone walls and fireplace which always had a picture of Floyd Kephart, local political analyst, on it.
Sir Cecil would descend the stone staircase into his dungeon set to utter the words “Did someone call?” in his unmistakable droll. Sir Cecil wore a dark blue cape with a huge purple collar and a chain mail tunic. He had a hump back and walked in a slow, lurching style. He had a large scar across his forehead and wore a monocle in one eye, as well as a set of deformed teeth. Sir Cecil signed off his show each week by saying “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the beddie bugs bite.”

6. Morgus the Magnificent (Momus Alexander Morgus)

Morgus is a quintessential mad scientist that originated in the New Orleans, Louisiana, television market, and first appeared on late night television on January 3, 1959, in the House of Shock. Morgus hosted the science fiction and horror movies in between experiments, and was created and portrayed by actor Sid Noel.
The doctor was assisted by executioner styled sidekick Chopsley. His well-intentioned experiments typically go awry at the last minute. Dr. Morgus also has an assistant, Eric. In the early version of the show, Eric was a talking human skull. When Morgus returned in the 1980s, Eric had become part of the computer known as E.R.I.C. (The Eon Research Infinity Computer), and holds all the knowledge of the universe in his memory banks.
Dr. Morgus was the first horror host to star in his own motion picture, The Wacky World of Dr. Morgus (1962).

5. Count Floyd

Count Floyd is a fictional horror host who was played by another fictional character, newsman Floyd Robertson, on the comedy series SCTV. Both characters are played by comedian Joe Flaherty.
Count Floyd is the host of the cheesy, and unscary, Monster Chiller Horror Theater. The show was set in a dungeon where he would emerge from his coffin wearing a cheap vampire costume, including a white turtleneck, and speaking in a bad stereotypical Transylvanian vampire accent. Oddly, although he was supposed to be a vampire, he would open each show howling like a werewolf, then start to laugh as he addressed the audience. It’s obvious that Floyd Robertson is embarrassed by his role as Count Floyd and doesn’t enjoy it much.
The movies he would host were fictional and had titles like “Dr. Tongue’s 3D House of Stewardesses,” “Dr Toungue’s 3D House of Pancakes”, “Tip O’Neil’s 3D House of Representatives,” “Blood-Sucking Monkeys from West Mifflin Pennsylvania” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Whispers of the Wolf”.

4. Vampira

The Vampira Show aired on Saturday nights at midnight on KABC-TV, Channel 7, May 1, 1954 to April 2, 1955, and the show featured mostly low budget suspense films. Vampira was portrayed by Maila Nurmi, and she is generally accepted to be the first television horror host. Despite the shows short run, The Vampira Show set the standard format for horror host shows to follow.
Each show opened with Vampira gliding down a dark corridor flooded with dry-ice fog. At the end of her trance-like walk, the camera zoomed in on her face as she let out a piercing scream. She would then introduce that evening’s film while reclining barefoot on a skull-encrusted Victorian couch. Her horror-related comedy antics included ghoulish puns and talking to her pet spider Rollo.
Her most notable film appearance was in Ed Wood’s camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as a Vampira-like zombie, filmed in 1956.

3.E Nick Witty

Monster Movie Matinee aired on Saturday afternoons on WSYR Channel 3, Syracuse, from 1964 – 1980. The show opened with creepy organ music and sounds of howling wind as the camera followed a path through a scale-model cemetery, to a bridge and path leading to a haunted mansion on a hill with dry ice as fog. Once inside Monster Mansion you see Dr. E. Nick Witty sitting off camera in an ornately decorated chair in a darkened room. You can only see his arm and it is clad in a black silk smoking jacket with a white cuff, a pale hand with long, sharp, black fingernails and large ornate rings. The doctor’s hand continuously gestures as he speaks. Dr. E. Nick Witty was played by the station’s weather man, Alan Milair. Supposedly his facial disfigurement was too terrible for his audience to ever view. The doctor had a deep baritone voice and unforgettably evil, sardonic laugh.
Epal was the doctor’s assistant. His face was crisscrossed with shoelace-like stitches running the length of his face and forehead, punctuated by an eye patch. Early in the broadcasts Epal had a hook which was later replaced by a metal hand which Dr. Witty built for him. He was played by the late Williard Everett Lape, Jr.
The segments between the movies followed a continuous plot thread drawn out for several weeks, such as finding a cure for Epal’s lycanthropic condition, building a time machine, and Dr. Witty’s attempt to restore his facial features.

2. Mystery Science Theater 3000

MST3K is a cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999. MST3K originally aired on WUCW, Minneapolis-StPaul, Minnesota, from 1988 to 1989.
The series features a man and his robot sidekicks who are trapped on a space station by an evil scientist and forced to watch a selection of bad horror and science fiction B-movies. To keep sane, the man and his robots provide a running commentary on each film, making fun of its flaws, and wisecracking their way through each reel in the style of a movie-theater peanut gallery. Each film is presented with a superimposition of the man and robots’ silhouettes along the bottom of the screen.
During its eleven years, 198 episodes and one feature film, MST3K attained critical acclaim. The series won a Peabody Award in 1993, and was nominated for writing Emmys in 1994 and 1995, and nominated for a Cable ACE Award.

1. Elvira (Mistress of the Dark)

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark was the host of Movie Macabre, a weekly horror movie presentation on Los Angeles television station KHJ-TV, in 1981. Elvira was played by actress/showgirl Cassandra Peterson. She wore a black, gothic, cleavage-enhancing gown, giving her a vampish appearance, which was offset by her quirky, quick-witted personality, and valley girl-type speech. Elvira presented low budget horror films and made fun of them during the intermissions.
In 1989, Cassandra was sued by actress Maila Nurmi for alleged infringement of her pioneering original Vampira TV horror hostess persona. The case was thrown out when Nurmi failed to appear in court.
Elvira is undoubtedly the most famous and the most highly-publicized TV horror host, ever, both nationally and internationally.

via listverse.com

18 movie stars who disappeared

They were on the path to stardom. The world was at their feet. Then they disappeared! We meet the movie stars that were, then weren't!

Hollywood is a fickle mistress. The road to superstardom is littered with her used-up conquests: child stars who never made it as adults, pin-ups who had the temerity to grow old or raise a family, boyish heroes who suddenly weren’t so boyish and side-splitting comics who found out the hard way just how fast comedy can date.

While Tinseltown is filled with performers who never made it to the big time, the strangest and saddest tales belong to those who hit the dizzy heights of  fame but could not, for whatever reason, hold on to it. What happened to them? Find out below.

Molly Ringwald

 A Breakfast Club star, Ringwald was the pin-up on every mid-80s bedroom wall. She almost seemed to decide against stardom when she turned down the Julia Roberts role in Pretty Woman (1990) and the Demi Moore role in Ghost (1990), escaping her US fame to live in Europe.

Mark Hamill

Despite starring in the Star Wars trilogy, arguably the three most famous films ever made, Mark Hamill’s movie career never really got off the ground. After a few dodgy sci-fi titles (slipstream anyone?) and cameo appearances in video games, Hamill has settled nicely into voice animation work. He does a mean Joker in the animated Batman.

Geena Davis

 With her kooky good looks and feisty screen presence, Davis was the quintessential 1980s poster girl, starring in such box office bonanzas as The Fly, Beetllejuice and the iconic Thelma and Louise.  Appearances in a series of duds for director and then husband Renny Harlin eclipsed her star somewhat, although she won a Golden Globe for her TV performance as the first female US president in Commander In Chief.

Michael Biehn

 What the hell happened?! This guy was THE star of The Terminator. He was all buddy buddy with James Cameron after that, bagging parts in Aliens ('86) and The Abyss ('89) that should have seen him hit the big time. Perhaps it all slipped away when Cameron cut his scenes from Terminator 2. Not cool, Jim. For our favourite Biehn performance check out 1991's underrated K2.

Thora Birch

Her breakout performance as Kevin Spacey’s sulky teen daughter in American beauty promised great things, and Birch followed it up with a pair of smart, sassy roles in Ghost World and The Hole. Still landing regular movie roles, but the movies themselves tend to disappear without trace. Anyone reading this seen Dark Corners, Tainted Love or Winter Of Frozen Dreams? Nope, neither have we.

 Daryl Hannah

 It can’t be easy to be remembered as “that girl who was the mermaid in that Tom Hanks movie” and "her from Blade Runner", but Daryl Hannah has borne her cross with goodwill, concentrating on indie movies, stage work and activism. An appearance in Kill Bill threatened to resurrect her A-list career and she'll be back when Tarantino does KB3 in 2014.

Macaulay Culkin

 One of the most successful child stars of all time, Macaulay Culkin struggled to convert the worldwide success of the Home Alone movies into an adult career. Decent performances in films like Party Monster failed to set the box office on fire, and Culkin was last seen (well, heard) doing voices for the animated TV show Robot Chicken.

Michael Keaton

 The former Batman and Beetlejuice star has been missing from our screens for a while, unless you count co-starring in Herbie: Fully Loaded with Lindsay Lohan (we don’t, frankly). We miss Keaton’s twitchy, lip-chewing performances. He was superb in Jackie Brown: perhaps Tarantino can resurrect his career again, John Travolta-style.

Rick Moranis

 The star of Ghostbusters and Honey I Shrunk The Kids has seen his movie career perform a similar disappearing act, with innumerable shrinking sequels delivering diminishing box office returns. He effectively gave up on movies to concentrate on family in the nineties. Last seen voicing children’s cartoons.

Kelly McGillis

 As a sultry flight instructor, Kelly McGillis took Tom Cruise’s breath away in Top Gun, and two years later she showed her serious acting chops in harrowing rape drama The Accused. Hasn’t had a proper hit since, and currently spends most of her time working on stage and running a restaurant in Florida.

Judd Nelson

 A brat-pack star in the The Breakfast Club and St Elmo's Fire, Judd Nelson went on to give a strong performance in New Jack City in '91. But it all fell off after that. Entangled in '93 (Ouch!) and Caroline At Midnight in '94 (Eugh!) did not go down well with critics.

Judge Reinhold

 There was a period in the 1980s when you simply couldn’t make a comedy without casting Judge Reinhold, though he is still best known as the softly spoken Detective Rosewood of Beverley Hills Cop. Reinhold more recently appeared in Kevin Costner’s political comedy Swing Vote. If the Beverly Hills Cop reboot comes about we could be seeing a whole lot more of him soon.

Phoebe Cates

 Man, we had such a crush on Gremlins star Phoebe Cates, with her heartbreakingly pretty face and relaxed attitude to nudity (check out Fast Times at Ridgemont High). What happened to her? Well, she married Kevin Kline and had a bunch of kids. Her last screen role was in 1994’s Princess Caraboo, although she’ll be back this year for ensemble drama The Anniversary Party.

Michael J Fox

 The youthful star of the Back To The Future trilogy never quite overcame his boyish looks, but his lesser known cinema performances showcase excellent comic timing – check out The Frighteners for Fox at his funniest. A successful TV and vocal star in the 90s (he was the voice of Stuart Little), his diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease led to a semi-retirement in 2000.

Corey Feldman

 Gremlins, The Goonies, Stand By Me and The Lost Boys should have been enough to set Corey Feldman up for life (what a list!). Following a hiatus in the early 90s, he was unable to return to bigtime parts. Drugs have, famously, been an issue over the past 20 years or so for Feldman. He turns 40 this year.

Linda Fiorentino

 Fiorentino made a splash as one of modern cinema’s greatest femme fatales in the brilliant noir thriller The Last Seduction, and went on to star opposite Will Smith in Men In Black, a role she is rumoured to have won in a poker game with director Barry Sonnenfeld.  Since then her career has gradually waned, with rumours of a bust up with director Kevin Smith on the set of Dogma unlikely to have helped.

Chevy Chase

 File him under the "it-was-funny-back-then" category. He's not disappeared entirely, maintaining a stream of work in family movies and animations. But we all know him as the funny-boned slapstick man from National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Three Amigos! (1986) and, unfortunately, Caddyshack 2 (1988).

Jeff Cohen

 Chunk! Perhaps our favourite character from The Goonies, Cohen didn't pursue acting as a grownup. He's now a successful lawyer. He's also thin!

Christine Bleakley movie awards

Christine Bleakley movie awards

Christine Bleakley has been confirmed as the presenter of the National Movie Awards next month.

The Daybreak host will present the live event at Wembley on Wednesday, May 11. It will be broadcast on ITV1 at the same time.
ITV's director of Entertainment and Comedy Elaine Bedell announced: "The results of the National Movie Awards are voted for by the public and we're delighted to be broadcasting them live on ITV1.

"Christine will add her own touch of style to what is already one of the most glamorous evenings of the awards calendar, making it a night not to be missed."

Among the nominations for the ceremony are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, The Social Network and The King's Speech.

Source: Digital Spy

Source: Google