Ghost Hosts With The Most: How the Horror Host Laughs With Horror (And Not At It)

It’s 1954, nearly ten years after the conclusion of the Second World War. It’s an era filled with a sort of silicone charm, a desperate clinging to the image of the nuclear family in post-war melancholy.
Somewhere in a studio in Los Angeles, 32 year old actress-hopeful Mailia Nurmi affixes a black, widow-peaked wig, cinches her waist down to an astonishing 17 inches, and dons a funeral-style floor length gown. With her pale, death-like makeup and dramatically arched brows, Nurmi is transformed into the sexy, macabre, and hilarious Vampira. And she’s about to create a sub-genre of horror that will put the ‘cult’ in ‘cult classic’.

Following in the footsteps of 1954-55’s The Vampira Show, Horror Hosts are a collective of performers who host television (and, later, internet) shows revolving around the showing of low-budget horror movies, or ‘B-movies’. The widely-agreed low quality of these films can often provide enough basis for comedy in a sort of tragic sense, but the Horror Host pairs this with their own, larger-than-life, campy aesthetic, and running comedic commentary during the feature. As instigated by Vampira, a Horror Host often has a macabre appearance, reflecting the motifs of the genre they’re discussing, and leaning into gothic aesthetics.

For a sub-genre of entertainment built around the mocking of horror movies, it’s important to note that Horror Hosts, at large, are avid horror fans themselves. Some – as we will discuss later – even appeared in their own B-movies. The ideology of a Horror Host is not to laugh at horror – but to laugh with it, revelling in the gore and cheesy scares even as they poke fun at it.

 

SOMETHING QUEER THIS WAY COMES

There is something undeniably camp about horror. The crimson splash of blood, the over-dramatic squeals, the aggressive poltergeist who just won’t let go of the house she still sees as her own. Horror has long been considered a gateway of expression for queer people, a way of leaning into our ‘otherness’ and turning it into something that is grimly uplifting – a means of getting revenge, and looking fabulous doing it. The horror motifs of being a thing that haunts, taking bloody vengeance at any cost, and causing havoc in typically heteronormative family settings can be something of a vehicle for queer people, allowing us to root for the monster inside the closet after many of us have been forced in that position ourselves. And Horror Hosts have not only picked up on that campness but have fully leaned into it.

There’s no discussion of a camp Horror Host without mention of my personal favourite host, Elvira. Through her hilariously blatant sexual jokes, constant unfiltered desire for men, and plunging neckline boasting her now-iconic cleavage, there has never been a more amusing caricature of the heterosexual woman. In many ways, what actress Cassandra Peterson (who has recently come out as being queer herself) does with the character of Elvira is not unlike that which we are used to seeing from drag queens – a sort of lighthearted poke at the classic conventions of cisheteronormative feminine gender expression. This subversion of femininity blends beautifully with the role of the Horror Host. Throughout episodes of 1981-86’s Elvira’s Movie Macabre, Elvira made fun of herself as much as she did any of the B-movie titles she presented on the screen – making her character just as much a spectacle and ‘the butt of the joke’ as any over-dramatic movie monster. This is something that queer people can relate to through our community-wide enjoyment of camp aesthetics, and the almost intuitive way we associate ourselves with horror movie villains; we aren’t the woman shrieking down the hallway, we’re the masked killer with a knife behind her, the ghost trapped in the walls of the old manor. And when Elvira laughs at the screen and makes her dirty jokes, she’s reminding us that she’s one of us, encouraging us to take a moment to laugh at our own dramatics in a way that doesn’t disregard them, but rather finds a genuine joy in them.

 

HORROR? I BARELY KNOW HER!

Following on the tangent of horror and finding joy in ‘otherness’, is the concepts of Horror Hosts mocking conventionality as a whole. The appearance of Horror Hosts can range from the evidently macabre (such as in the case of Svengoolie and The Cryptkeeper) to the relatively conservative (like The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling and Creature Features’ Bob Wilkins). The resulting effect from both of these approaches is the same: a lighthearted poke at societal convention and its penchant for conservatism. Again, the Horror Host isn’t mocking horror as a genre, but rather, its relationship with societal standards. This, I believe, splits into two approaches – the mocking of gender and sexuality roles within the B-movie subgenre, and making fun of how horror, at large, is received by society overall.

It’s no secret that horror – especially low budget, B-grade horror– can exhibit some problematic themes. Prevalent motifs include scantily clad women behaving badly, receiving violence at the hands of male counterparts, or otherwise being diminished to the good old ‘damsel in distress’ archetype. And it’s these themes that most commonly fall into the category of ‘fair game’ for Horror Hosts. When viewed objectively, the male fantasy ultra-masculine men, campy ‘othered’ villains, and weak, helpless women are genuinely funny – especially when these archetypes are blown up to the scale that they often are within B-movies, and paired with a weak script, bad acting, and lacklustre special effects. Horror has never been a genre for the conservative-minded, and Horror Hosts make that abundantly clear in their comedy-criticism.

The other half of the Horror Hosts’ ‘conventional mindset killing spree’ is poking fun at how wider society views not only horror as a genre, but ‘weirdness’ in general. In a theme we see reflected in shows like The Addams Family and The Munsters (the latter of which also had its own Horror Host show spin-off, with Grandpa Munster (Al Lewis) as its Host), Horror Hosts tend to laugh at the ‘clutching of pearls’ many societies enact when faced with the macabre. In the same tone in which Morticia Addams nearly faints when Pugsley joins the boy scouts, or Lily Munster casually refers to her conventionally attractive niece Marilyn as “plain”, the Horror Host gives us an invitation to find joy in the scary; shrieking in terror and excitement in equal measure. When Hosts like Rod Serling, Sammy Terry, and The Cryptkeeper grin and wring their hands at the horrors yet to become unveiled, they’re bringing us with them on a journey to find delight in the abysmal. And that’s something that, in every society from the 50s through to modern day, is something that is so sorely needed by anyone who doesn’t fit conventional expectations.

 

BABY’S FIRST MASSACRE

If you ask me what my first horror movie was, I’d probably say it was Killer Klowns from Outer Space, watched sneakily from behind my Dad’s armchair. But if you asked me what my first interaction with horror as a wider genre was, that honour would have to be bestowed upon the child-friendly cartoon rendition of Tales from the Crypt. Featuring the same haggard, rotting corpse we all know and love, this version of the Cryptkeeper still enacted his role as a Horror Host, presenting all manner of horrid tales – but this time, the content was relatively PG, stripped of its gore and sexual content.
This cartoon rendition of a classic Horror Host programme may be the best example of what a Horror Host does. Not only do they present horror in a tongue-in-cheek way for existing horror fans to consume and laugh along with, but they create an entertaining, accessible route into horror fandom for those who haven’t already sold their soul to the cult classic. Many horror fans are familiar with the adage of “I can’t watch horror, I’d have nightmares.” But with the comedy injected by a Horror Host, in an environment designed to outline the camp-ness and joy to be found in the macabre, horror movies suddenly become funny – their scariness not removed but diluted into a sort of cordial that can be consumed with a chaser of laughter. This is something that is especially important in times of societal hardship; horror often acts as a reaction to societal fears and anxieties, so blending horror and comedy in this way allows audiences to experience fear while finding joy in it. It’s accepting darkness as a condition of existence and basking in it just as openly as we would the light.

 

CONCLUSION: A B-MOVIE OF THEIR OWN

Horror Hosts love horror. Their playful mockery of the genre and its motifs is a celebration of the macabre, of the gory and, most of all, of the downright awful. And nothing speaks more to this truth than the Hosts themselves appearing in their own B-Movies and cult classics. Vampira reprised her old character alongside Dracula star Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood’s infamous 1959 disaster Plan 9 From Outer Space, and in 1988, we saw Elvira take to the big screen with her feature film Elvira Mistress of the Dark – a film that, in many ways, is what firmly rooted her as an iconic figure. In fact, Cassandra Peterson, to this day, still attends events as Elvira, and recently released a Shudder-exclusive series reprising her old act. True love never dies, after all - and our celebration of the Horror Host is an affair that’s long-term and still as passionate as ever.

If bad, low budget horror movies really are cults, then Horror Hosts are the charismatic leaders guiding us into the ritual of gore, terror, and unapologetic joy.