by Dan Johnson
In the December edition of Monster News, we had the privilege to sit down and talk with Kerry Gammill, the creator of the new online horror magazine, Monster Kid. As I explained last time, besides being a renowned comics and graphic artist and (now)editor, Kerry's contributions to the world of horror actually began back in the early 1970's in his home state of Texas. It was on the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC affiliate, KXAS, Channel 5, that Kerry helped to open the doors to The Museum of Horrorson Saturday nights. Along with the show's host, Dr. Cerberus (aka actor Greg Bransom) and the various monsters that lurked through out the museum, Kerry brought his fellow Texans a weekly dose of horror movies. Some of the films shown were good. Some of the films shown were bad. Some of the films shown were downright terrible. But regardless of whatever movie might be running, it was Dr. Cerberus and his crew at the Museum that viewers tuned in for. Judging by Kerry's interview, it seems he and the rest of the cast at The Museum of Horrors were having as much fun on air as the audience at home was having watching them. After filling us in on Monster Kid, Kerry was nice enough to sit down with Monster News again and recall his days with The Museum of Horrors. So come along, kids and pay close attention. We're about to get a tour down the history wing of The Museum of Horrors.
MN: When and how did you and Greg Bransom (Dr. Cerberus) first meet and become friends?
KG: I didn't know Greg when "Museum of Horrors" first went on the air. A friend of mine worked part time at Harris Costume, the main source in the Fort Worth area for make-up, masks, etc. Knowing what a huge monster fan I was, he told me that the guy who hosted the new local horror show sold masks on consignment there and usually came by every Saturday afternoon. The next Saturday I went up to the shop and pretty soon Greg came in and my buddy introduced us. We talked for a while and I realized that he really knew his stuff when it came to horror films. We hit it off right away and he invited me down to the station that night to watch them do the show. This was probably in early 1974. We became friends very quickly and I started helping on the show on a regular basis.
MN: How did the idea for "Museum of Horrors" first come about? What about the character of Professor Cerberus? How did Greg go about creating his horror host, Professor Cerberus?
KG: Greg was close to my age and we both grew up watching the old Shock Theater show "Nightmare" every Saturday night. He was an aspiring actor and had done several industrial films and commercials, one in which he played a mummy. When Channel 5, the local NBC affiliate, began showing horror films every Saturday night, Greg approached them with the idea of letting him host them. He owned the whole line of Don Post masks which I think impressed them. Once they decided to do the show, they wanted to put it on the air THAT WEEK. Greg had a few days to create a character. He came up with this sort of evil old mad scientist/ supernatural guy he called Professor Cerberus. He colored his hair gray and used blobs of collodion on his face to give it a decrepit look.He borrowed some props from a local effects artists and got some friends to help out as assorted creatures. The station had their carpenter build a set that was only a partial wall with a door that said "Museum of Horrors" on it. The door just stood in front of a black curtain so it looked pretty bad. They cluttered the rest of the set with as many scary props as they could, sprayed cobwebs all over everything and had a fog machine going full blast. Later they built three other sets, a dungeon, a laboratory and a graveyard, and we would alternate between them.
MN: How did you come to play Ygor on "Museum of Horrors"?
KG: That actually started fairly late in the show's short history. The station didn't want anyone but Greg Bransom to speak much on the air since he was the only one of our weird little troop who was an official station employee. The rest of us just helped out for the fun of it. When we started performing live at shopping malls, midnight movies, fundraisers, etc. Cerberus needed a second banana to interact with on stage so I started playing Ygor. We had a good comedy team chemistry so that became my main character.
MN: What other inhabitants of the Museum did you play?
KG: We used all the monsters with no real rhyme or reason. There was always just a bunch of characters wandering the halls of the Museum during the commercial segues and I did a variety of those bits, usually wearing one of our Don Post masks. One thing I wanted to do was make the show connect more with the specific movies being shown each week, especially when we actually got some decent movies. I started doing more make-up and played characters from some of the films. I remember playing a Vampire, a Werewolf, a Mummy and a Neanderthal Man. We had lots of fun one week showing "The Beast with Five Fingers" and my disembodied hand was running all over the Museum. I also made Karloff and Lugosi masks the week we showed "The Body Snatcher" and I played Bela. One week they put a bunch of my artwork up in a set and said it was the Museum's art gallery. I did a portrait of Professor Cerberus and we unveiled it on the show with me playing the mad artist with big bulging eyes.
MN: Tell us about some of the other performers on "Museum of Horrors". Who were some of the other folks that were recruited to work on the show and when did they join the cast?
KG: When I first came on board, Greg's main helper was a young high school kid named Jody Dean. He was a devoted horror fan and put a lot of work into the props and costumes for the show. He was very tall and loved playing Frankenstein. He was a very good performer and could do a great Vincent Price impression. Sometimes his enthusiasm went a little too far, though. One week he thought it would be cool to set part of his Frankenstein suit on fire for a live segue shot. He had done several tests at home and was sure it was safe. He finally talked the director into it, but they wanted to do it at the last commercial break in case anything went wrong. The break was coming up and Jody had dumped a jar of alcohol or something on a "Son of Frankenstein"-type vest he had made out of a bath mat and was getting ready to light it while Greg and I stood by with fire extinguishers. Suddenly there was some commotion in the booth and the floor manager said we were already on the air. Jody had to forget about lighting the fire and just act monstery for the camera until the fade-out. It turned out the film had broken a little before the break was scheduled and they had to cut to the commercial early. He wanted to try again the next week, but the director said no. Jody became a radio personality in Dallas and is now a TV news anchor. When he started becoming more involved in high school sports and theater (and girls), a young guy named Jess Sherman took over as Frankenstein. He later co-produced a low-budget horror film called "Creep Tales" which I appeared in and did some art for. He did a second film called "The Young Producers" and now does stand-up comedy around Dallas. My friend Mike Davis started helping out too and usually wore an Uncle Creepy mask and did little silent shtick in the background during shows. Mike now writes reviews for my webzine, Monster Kid.
MN: From what I have heard, "Museum of Horrors" had a really unique opening.
Each episode would begin with the quote, "Like one who on a lonely road doth
walk in fear and dread", from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" accompanied
by the music from "Rosemary's Baby" played backwards. Certainly that set the
tone for a night of chills. How did the idea for that opening come about? KG: I think Greg was trying to do something similar to the old "Nightmare"
opening, which started with an announcer reading a few creepy, poetic-sounding
lines. The show's music was always a little disappointing to me. It wasn't really
music, just weird horn sounds or something. I don't know where the station got
it. Supposedly it was a segment of "Rosemary's Baby" played backwards, but it
didn't have enough of a tune to really be able to tell what it was. The neatest
thing about the opening each week was Cerberus' entrance. He would dissolve
into the picture every week which was a simple, but effective trick. They'd
set up the wide shot and lock the camera down. Then they would shoot several
seconds of tape of the empty set. Then Greg would take his place in the scene.
They would run the tape and then do a slow dissolve to the camera still locked
in position. Greg who would appear to fade into the scene. They'd dissolve him
out again at the end while he gave his devious little laugh. One week they faded
Greg in over a skeleton sitting in a chair. It looked really creepy. MN: Based on what I have read, "Museum of Horrors" really took off in the
Dallas-Fort Worth area. When did you first become aware of the show's success? KG: We were getting a fair amount of mail and the local ratings showed that
we were doing pretty well. We also had a couple of nice write-ups in the newspaper.
When we started making live appearances it was clear that most kids in the area
watched the show. I was going to college at the time and was told by some classmates
that they watched it every weekend. I don't know what else they were doing while
they were watching it, but at least they were watching. MN: What was the process for creating an episode of "Museum of Horrors"?
Where did the crew of the show start in pulling the show together on a weekly
basis? KG: Greg didn't like to spend a lot of time scripting and rehearsing things.
He was more from the Dean Martin school and liked to do things off the top of
his head with just a general idea of what he had to say. He was pretty good
at that too. We knew about a month in advance what movies were coming up. If
someone had an idea for some fun stuff to do for a particular film, we'd talk
about it and if Greg liked it we'd figure out what preparations needed to be
made and which set to use. We'd make all the stuff we needed during the week,
usually at Greg's house and bring it to the station late Saturday afternoon.
The intro, mid and closing segments were taped that night between the six o'clock
and the ten o'clock newscasts. The show went on the air at 10:30 and most of
the little bits going in and out of the commercial breaks were done live.
MN: Were there any films in particular that you guys loved to show on "Museum
of Horrors"? Were there any that you really didn't care for? KG: Most of the early films were terrible. They included "Dracula vs. Frankenstein",
"Astro Zombies", "Mad Doctor of Blood Island" and a Christopher Lee film called
"The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism". And those were the good ones. We would
have killed to have the classic Universal horror movies, but they were already
taken by another station in the same market so [they] were unavailable.Later
the station picked up a really nice package from UA that had some great stuff
in it like the Val Lewton films such as "Bedlam" and "The Cat People" and some
solid 50's stuff like "The Monster that Challenged the World" and "I Bury the
Living". One of my personal favorites was "The Black Sleep". We did a pretty
elaborate production for that one. Of course we had a Don Post Tor Johnson mask
which we used often. My older brother was in town and we made him up as Chaney,
Jr.'s character "Mongo" and he looked great. Jody played Basil Rathbone and
did brain surgery on various characters through out the show. We always got
a kick out of showing anything with big genre stars like Boris Karloff or Christopher
Lee. Lee came to the station once when he was promoting "The Man with the Golden
Gun". We all came in that day to meet him. We were going to ask if he would
tape a little promo for the show, but he had just announced on "The Tonight
Show" a couple of nights before that he didn't do horror films anymore and didn't
care to talk about them. He was very pleasant to us and happily chatted about
his horror films, but we didn't have the nerve to ask about the promo. MN: I had heard that, like so many horror hosts, the end for "Museum of
Horrors" came when NBC started airing "Saturday Night Live". Either the hosts
faced it as competition or they were pushed back even later in the evening.
What steps did you guys take to try and keep the show on the air? Were you sad
to see the show come to an end? KG: Well, SNL was the beginning of the end. Being in the central time zone,
night time programming started at 10:30. That's where the show started, but
it was later moved to 11:30 when the station picked up a syndicated Sammy Davis,
Jr. talk and variety show. That wasn't too bad, but when "Saturday Night Live"
premiered, the station moved everything back another 90 minutes which put us
on at one o'clock in the morning! After a while they tried running the show
on Saturday afternoons with a Republic serial added. It never caught on and
pretty soon the show was history. We shopped it around to other stations in
the area, but none of them were in the market for a weekly horror show. Greg
and I even tried out as hosts of kids' show at one station. We looked into producing
a syndicated 30-minute anthology show similar to something like "Night Gallery",
but nothing ever panned out. As much fun as the show had been, it also brought
it's share of headaches and frustrations. It was clear it was time to move on. MN: Now I know in talking to you before you had mentioned that you didn't
own any footage from "Museum of Horrors". Is it possible that somewhere out
there someone might have even a few clips from that show? KG: It's pretty unlikely. The station never saved any of the tapes, they just
recorded over them after they aired. This was in the earliest days of home video,
before VHS recorders. Home video players at that time were very expensive and
used a larger format tape that cost $30 for a one hour cassette. Unless somebody
recorded some of it on one of those dinosaurs and still has the tape, there's
no way it will ever be seen again. The only video we have is from a few years
later when Greg and I made a quick guest appearance on another local station's
Halloween special. MN: What mementos did you keep from your time on "Museum of Horrors"? KG: Not much. It all seemed to happen so quickly, and we were all so young,
we didn't really think to preserve much of it at the time. I have a few photos
and newspaper clippings and the posters from our live shows. I have one of the
T-shirts which I did the art for and I still have the coat I wore as Ygor, although
it doesn't fit anymore. If I could go back again, I'd never be without a camera.
So much great, fun stuff just came and went and is gone forever.
We want to thank Kerry for providing us with another great interview in this
edition. We also want to encourage you readers to check out Kerry's excellent
online horror magazine, Monster Kid. The website address is: www.monsterkid.com
Also, stop by Kerry's personal website and see some of his terrific artwork.
The website address for that is: www.gammillustrations.com