“The movie was a hoot!”

From the Blog “Red Nose“:

Last night Joe and I went to a world premiere movie at the AFI Theater! It was a documentary, part of the theater’s renowned documentary series, Silverdocs. I read about this film in the newspaper yesterday morning and immediately knew we had to go.

Had. To. Go.

The film was Every Other Day Is Halloween — it’s about the career of Washington D.C. personality Dick Dyszel, who worked for the new UHF television channel WDCA back from the early 70s to the late 80s. Some people remember him as Bozo the Clown — yes! Bozo, that famous franchise clown. Other people remember him as Captain 20, pointy-eared host of the Captain 20 Club, an afternoon kids’ show with cartoons and contests.

But Joe and I remember him best for his late night horror movie show, Creature Feature, which he hosted as Count Gore DeVol. Here’s the Count in person, posing with the Countess Von Stauffenberg, a recurring character on the show.

Count Gore was a vampire. He was a more, say we say, adult character than Bozo and Captain 20. He had a full size poster of Vampirella on the inside lid of his coffin. He had Penthouse Pets as special guests. He hosted champagne parties on set.

And he showed terrible horror movies late on Saturday nights. They were so cheesy, and so much fun; just the thing for hippies who were too stoned to get up and go out on the town. Much better to sit in the lounge and laugh at the Count!

The movie was a hoot. The audience included other horror movie hosts and a whole bunch of Count Gore’s fans, from grown-up kids who watched Ultraman on Captain 20 in the afternoon and then snuck out of their bedrooms to watch Creature Feature with the sound turned low late on Saturday night to people like us, horror and monster movie fans who got their fix from the courtly Count.

We had a great time! Now we keep in touch with the Count and the movies on his site, where he still runs a weekly movie. The Count is dead; long live the Count!

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Just a note to clarify: SilverDocs finished their programing the week Every Other Day Is Halloween premiered, at the same theatre. but it was not part of any SilverDocs program.