TV'S EPITOME OF EVIL

"Master of the Macabre, the Epitome of Evil, the most sinister man to crawl on the face of the earth!" So went the introduction to L.A.'s Fright Night, hosted by Larry "Seymour" Vincent. Although there were numerous other TV horror hosts on the local channels, Seymour and Elvira were my favorites.

Much like Elvira, Seymour was a one-man MST3K, and he was relentless in his jokes about the movies he played. The feature shown here is from The Los Angeles Staff from April 21, 1972. The Staff was formed by personnel of The Los Angeles Free Press after "The Freep" was busted by the IRS for missing a tax payment (the Feds had been after the notorious underground newspaper for years for its "subversive" political content). On an odd note, the second section of The Staff, which was its entertainment and culture section, was edited by members of the rock group, DEVO (!).

Seymour hosted L.A.'s TV airways from 1969 through 1974 until Vincent became ill and died of stomach cancer on March 9, 1975.

A NEW TOPSTONE DISCOVERY

I discovered yet another Topstone mask sighting on a YouTube video this weekend. While searching for some information on TV horror hosts, this link came up. I would have never known it was there except for the image of the ubiquitous Caveman on the still frame.

The first of two 16mm short clips shows Larry Vincent and his sidekick scaring each other at an amusement park in a comedy shtick by donning Topstone masks.

Vincent would later become famous as L.A. TV horror host Seymour, The Most Sinister Man to Crawl on the Face of the Earth, but here he is "Captain Starr", a kid's show comedy character he played for a while earlier in his career in Indiana. One of the people commenting on the post says that the first clip was shot at the Indiana State Fair and the second at a Halloween Haunt in Indianapolis.

It just goes to show you that you never know where a Topstone mask may pop up!

Larry Vincent is the skinny one.

Here is the clip from YouTube:

THE MONSTER TIMES NO. 18 (PART 1)

THE MONSTER TIMES
Vol. 1 No. 18
December 31, 1972
Publisher: Monster Times Publishing Company
Produced and Created by: Larry Brill and Les Waldstein
Editor: Joe Kane
Managing Editor: Joe Brancatelli
Pages: 32

For your pleasure, today feature is a randomly-selected issue of the world's first and only print monster newspaper. For a monster "zine" with a relatively small page-count, MT had an impressively large staff, which might have been a contributing factor to its demise after just four years in July 1976 with its 48th issue, which is not a bad run, all things considered.

Created by the team of Larry Brill and Les Waldstein, it becomes apparent why MT was printed in newspaper form instead of the more conventional magazine format -- Brill and Waldstein were designers for the porn and counterculture newspaper SCREW (the inspiration behind Larry Flynt's HUSTLER) -- they simply just used the same format and changed the content.

This issue includes an article on one of my favorite "guilty pleasure" B-horror films, THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS. While it contains the obligatory summary of the film, it also includes some production info as well. Also included is a column written by TV Horror Host Seymour (Larry Vincent), coverage of Hammer's DRACULA A.D. 1972, and an article on a Willis O'Brien concept that was never produced.

 

 

THE MOST SINISTER MAN TO CRAWL ACROSS THE FACE OF THE EARTH!

"The Master of the Macabre -- The Epitome of Evil --The Most Sinister Man to Crawl Across the Face of the Earth . . . Seeeeeeymour!"

And, with a fanfare of spooky music along with this chillingly goofy epithet appeared on the Saturday night TV screen the character who likely was the most popular of the Los Angeles Horror Hosts outside of Elvira. Seymour, played by Larry Vincent was different from a lot of other late-night TV monster movie hosts -- he was actually funny.

Another element of Seymour's show that contributed to his success was that he showed classic monster movies and not just B-movie dreck. The same couldn't be said about the latest Elvira revival. Despite her enduring cleavage and familiar shtick, no serious movie monster fan wants to watch lousy prints of public domain flicks that they could see anytime on You Tube.

In THE MONSTER TIMES #10 (May 31, 1972), pop culture, comics historian and Jack Kirby biographer Mark Evanier recounts the humble beginnings of the channel-hopping horror host.

Bad Evening!