Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong - 10/29 Santa Rosa

[thatguy]

Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong: A Journey Into Creature Features

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Wednesday, October 29th Only!

Q&A With with filmmaker Tom Wyrsch, host John Stanley and filmmaker Ernie Fosselius

Tickets On Sale Now!

On Wednesday, October 29th Rialto Cinemas Lakeside presents Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong: A Journey into Creature Features, a documentary about Creature Features legends Bob Wilkins and John Stanley. There will also be a bonus short: Hardware Wars the classic Star Wars spoof by Ernie Fosselius. This is a one night only event and will feature a Q&A with filmmaker Tom Wyrsch, host John Stanley and filmmaker Ernie Fosselius.

For 14 years, from January 1971 through September 1984, CREATURE FEATURES ranked in the Nielsen ratings as one of the most popular TV shows in the San Francisco Bay Area. Broadcast from KTVU Channel 2 in Oakland, the Saturday night series was hosted by former TV advertising writer Bob Wilkins for eight years, followed by San Francisco Chronicle entertainment writer John Stanley who kept the series alive for another six years. To those who grew up watching CREATURE FEATURES with family members and friends, the mixture of host commentary and classic and not-so-classic horror movies remains a nostalgic memory. Wilkins' wit and unusually droll personality and Stanley's celebrity interviews and satiric minimovies are all part of Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong: A Journey into Creature Features, a full-length documentary journeying back through those years. Featuring interviews with Wilkins, Stanley and other key figures close to the show, as well as classic clips, this historic journey illuminates an era of television that should never be forgotten.

Petaluma filmmaker Tom Wyrsch produced Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong: A Journey into Creature Feature and is the author of the Bob Wilkins / John Stanley Scrapbooks and archivist of Creature Features media.

John Stanley took over hosting Creature Features in 1979 after Bob Wilkins left the show. Stanley refocused the show to include frequent celebrity interviews and "minimovies," short Hollywood-style films spoofing themes central to the series. Literate but with a wry sense of humor, Stanley kept the series rolling successfully through the ratings-system for almost six years.

Sebastopol resident Ernie Fosselius is best known for his satirical short films the most popular of which is Hardware Wars. Fosselius has worked as a director, actor, screenwriter, and in sound effects.

--tg

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

If I dig in the old memory bank, I think I first saw Horror at Party Beach on that show. Nothing says entertainment like radioactive teenagers. I also had a party where we watched a very frightening Abbott and Costello meet Frankentstein.

[thatguy]

Forgot to mention:

It's actually playing tonight in Santa Cruz (a double feature with Night of the Living Dead), as a benefit to raise money for Bob Wilkins' health care. He's in a nursing home with advanced stage Alzheimer's disease.

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--tg
PS: Somewhere I have a signed autograph from Captain Cosmic (and his robot 2T2).

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

I remember Bob WIlkins well, but I always thought John Stanley to be a pallid substitute.

Bob Wilkins and Pat McCormick ("Dialing for Dollars" "Charlie and Humphrey" and the weather guy on Channel 2) used to have bets and whomever won could choose a movie for the other's show. That is how I came to be traumatized by Invasion of the Body-Snatchers while I was staying home, sick, and innocently watching Dialing for Dollars on a rainy afternoon.

[El Dingo]

I was on 'Creature Features' and met Bob Wilkins.

Twice. mt004

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

You are a God to me! :prayer:

[thatguy]

I can't beat being on Creature Features (even once), but I did go to "Stargate Central" (I think that was the name) in the San Antonio Shopping Center to see Bob and get a Captain Cosmic signed pic.

Around that same time I also went to JC Penny's in the old Valley Fair to get Darth Vader's 8x10 autographed.

It was really him, I'm sure of it.

--tg

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

On Creature Features . . . . That would explain a lot.

[Drunk Monk]

Bob Wilkins - host of 'Creature Features'
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2009

Bob Wilkins, the cigar-wielding host of "Creature Features," the late-night movie show that aired on KTVU's Channel 2 through the 1970s, died Wednesday in Reno from complications of Alzheimer's disease, his family said. He was 76.

For a generation of science fiction and B-movie enthusiasts, Mr. Wilkins was the bespectacled TV host who drolly introduced underground flicks with titles such as "Attack of the Mushroom People."

"Don't stay up tonight," Mr. Wilkins sometimes told viewers. "It's not worth it."

For the same generation of Bay Area children, Mr. Wilkins was also the host of the after-school KTVU program "Captain Cosmic," donning a silver motorcycle helmet and crimson cape to introduce Japanese cult shows such as "Ultra Man."

"I wouldn't be the movie fan I am today without Bob Wilkins," said Don Hicks, 45, a rare-film collector and projectionist who grew up in Napa and maintains a tribute to Mr. Wilkins' career on his Web site. "At school, we'd all talk all week long about the movies he was going to show; he instructed you on how to appreciate these films, without talking down to you as a kid."

Hicks recalled the watershed moment when Mr. Wilkins showed "Night of the Living Dead," which became a late-night staple in an era with limited channel-surfing choices, and long before cable ushered in movies on demand.

Mr. Wilkins' selections (he previewed the films before airing them) suggested an aficionado's taste for genre cinema, but he held no special attachment to the movies, said his longtime friend and sometime co-host John Stanley.

"Bob had no passion for horror," laughed Stanley, who described the Indiana native as bemused by the subject. "I'm sure he enjoyed it, but he didn't take it seriously."

Robert Gene Wilkins was born the only boy among seven children in Hammond, Ind. The son of a steelworker, Mr. Wilkins served in the Korean War (beating a bout with tuberculosis along the way), and later graduated from Indiana University with a degree in marketing.

Mr. Wilkins worked his way up from the mailroom at a Chicago advertising agency to become a copywriter, then headed to California in 1963, where he landed a job as an ad salesman at television station KCRA in Sacramento.

In those days, ad salesmen helped hold the camera equipment when shooting commercials, even serving as the on-camera talent in a pinch, Stanley said. After watching Mr. Wilkins entertain as a master of ceremonies for a retirement party, a station manager suggested Mr. Wilkins host a late-night movie show designed to run through the station's library of old films. The show was meant to compete with local stations that played the national anthem and went off the air after the 11 p.m. newscasts.

Tom Wyrsch, author of "The Bob Wilkins Scrapbook," said Mr. Wilkins' understated demeanor became a hit with viewers. During breaks, Mr. Wilkins interviewed amateur filmmakers and local eccentrics who tended to believe in flying saucers, Stanley said.

To calm his on-air nerves, Mr. Wilkins purchased a Windsor cigar, the cheapest and largest of the lot, and rocked slowly in a yellow rocking chair. After the Sacramento show brought in high ratings for its time slot, in 1970, Oakland's KTVU offered Wilkins a 9 p.m. weekend slot for "Creature Features," a show he hosted until 1979.

Sally Wilkins said that during the "Creature Features" run, and even after, her husband continued his work as an ad man, with clients such as Macy's and Chuck E. Cheese. He was particularly proud of a television campaign that helped Macy's turn profitable in three weeks, Sally Wilkins said.

In the 1990s, Wyrsch and Stanley helped usher a resurgence of Mr. Wilkins' fame by attending conventions such as WonderCon, and producing "Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong," a documentary about the horror show genre.

Sally Wilkins said her husband, in his retirement years, remained passionate about his family and helping others; while she attended church, Mr. Wilkins used the time to paint over graffiti in Reno, she said.

"I don't think he ever realized how many young people he influenced," Sally Wilkins said. "Every once in a while, a person would recognize him on the street and say, 'Hey, you're the guy I would watch from my bedroom late at night.' "

In addition to his wife, Mr. Wilkins is survived by two children, Rob and Nancy.

Sally Wilkins said the family is planning a memorial for fans in the coming weeks.

Mr. Wilkins' Web site is at <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.bobwilkins.net">www.bobwilkins.net</a><!-- w -->.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...01&sc=1000

[El Dingo]

mt059

Go in peace, good sir!

:prayer:

[cranefly]

I watched Blood Feast tonight. Directed by Herschel Gordon Lewis. Hopefully that serves as some sort of tribute to Bob Wilkins.
Was he local to the Bay Area? If so, I may never have seen him. I moved to the Bay Area around 1981. Saw John Stanley on late night..
But it seems I've had a lifetime of exposure to the late-night Creature Features concept. Maybe other people doing similar things in other places.
Did Bob do anything in Indiana (where he hailed from) before moving to the Bay Area?

Questions without answers...

RIP.