Anyone remember Bob Wilkins and "Creature Features?"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

In the days when everyone didn't have a VCR and DVD players were non-existent, you had to keep an eye on the TV Guide if you wanted to see your favorite "classic" monster flick. The program mixed all of the classic Universal B&W movies (all variants of Frankenstein / Dracula / Wolfman), the Hammer Christoper Lee & Peter Cushing Dracula / Frankenstein films, and a heapin' helpin' of Grade-Z "Golden Turkey" epics. Tuning in to this show was a regular Saturday San Francisco Bay Area ritual for many years...we had the Airplane, The Dead...and Bob Wilkins.

There were no "bots," no "Mike" or "Joel," but Wilkins' intro / outro / between breaks bits were MST3K-calibre:



"Our second film is Monster From the Ocean Floor. This movie is so bad that it was delivered to Channel 2 in a brown paper bag. When we're through showing it tonight, it will be part of a garage sale in Alameda tomorrow."



"Our feature tonight is Target Earth. It's a story about an army of robots from Venus. Of course, Switzerland is known for their watches, and Venus has always been known for their robots."


Wilkins has an "official" Web Site:

http://www.bobwilkins.net/indexpage.htm

He also did time as "Captain Cosmic"...



...who had a robot sidekick, "2T2"...



Here's a July 2001 photo from the Web Site of Wilkins and John Stanley, the guy who followed him on "Creature Features" when he left the show (KTVU Oakland) in 1979. He took the show to Sacramento's Channel 40, where it remained until 1982.

[Servo300]

1. We used to have a "Creature Feature"

night (Saturday night if I recall) in Kansas City on channel 41, hosted by a local who called herself "Crematia Mortem" and wore a costume similar to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (but a little less revealing). Personally I always thought Crematia was a little more classy than Elvira.

Thay always had good, campy, monster flicks like "The Giant Spider Invasion", "The Wasp Woman", "Mothra", etc. Great way to kill a late Saturday night.

[soothsayer]

In DC, we had Count Gore Dival

doing our creature feature. He was also our pointy eared Captain 20---they had gerbil races on the latter show.

[EstimatedProphet]

4. Crematia Mortem was a blast!

She had an extremely dry wit. I loved that show!

[Servo300]

7. Agree

She was much funnier than Elvira.

[charlie]

2. Bowman Body was my Friday Night guy

http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/3257/bowmanbody.html

Outta Richmond VA. I was in the Chesapeake Bay area, so I had to fuss with the rabbit ears every ten minutes to lessen the snow.

You can look up your local horror host here:

http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~u0e53/horhosts.html

[villager]

3. I produced a local sci-fi/horror "con" and invited Wilkins!

...back when I was teen, in the halcyon 70's -- and the word is not misused when speaking of growing up in the Bay Area at the time.

Yup -- friendly guy and dry wit, as memory serves.

Too damn bad they wouldn't let him smoke those cigars on TV, anymore!

Thanks for posting -- oddly (?), I was wondering about Wilkins not too long ago...

[flamingyouth]

6. Really? That's wild, villager!

:hi: How are ya?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

11. Yeah, and he was the Bill Graham of mixing and matching flicks...

...as is evidenced by this:

[flamingyouth]

5. I religiously watched "Sci-Fi Theater" on KSTW-11 in Seattle

And having spent a lot of my childhood in the Bay Area, I also remember Creature Features with great fondness! Bob Wilkins was hilarious, and he had a great look too. LOL - thanks for posting this, it brings back very happy memories!:hi:

[flamingyouth]

8. I also love this quote from his site:

"Weird Women. This is a story about witchcraft, the occult, mysticism, price fixing and tire rotation. I think you'll like it." :D

[Taverner]

9. OMG BOB WILKINS RAWKED!!!

Ahhh the good old days of KTVU when they had local programming.

I remember him on that, Dialing for Dollars and even the kids show "Captin Cosmos" where you could get those decoder cards (still have mine) and play a TV video game "Pow!" where you just shouted out "Pow! Pow!" and the gun would fire at spaceships.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

10. OK, Taverner, this one's for you, bro...

:toast:

[Taverner]

12. WOO HOO!!!!

Just like mine, but less faded and worn.

I felt so "Christmas Story" when decoding those messages....

[Ratty]

13. Okay, do you remember this message?

One of the messages was "Captain Cosmic is NOT Bob Wilkins."

A very surreal moment for me as a kid when I decoded that. If he wasn't Bob Wilkins then who was he?

I bet I'm the only one here who ever decoded THAT message. I still don't know what it means--were they just plain lying, or was there some grammatical trick or what?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

14. Never saw that one, but it's typical of Wilkins' humor...

...very, very dry, tongue-in-cheek, the guy basically had one facial expression and those huge cigars and he was a master of his craft.

I'm really happy to see responses to this one...Wilkins really did contribute to the "Wonder Years" of a lot of folks...

:toast:

[Ratty]

15. BW and Night of the Living Dead

Ah, fond memories. Staying up late with my friend on the phone, us watching Night of the Living Dead on Creature Features "together" so we wouldn't get scared.

Don't you just love how if a movie was bad he'd tell you? He'd say it was a real stinker, he was embarassed to even be presenting it, and that we should all turn our TVs off and do something else or go to bed. Of course, that only made me want to watch it more, but he was usually right.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

17. Yeah, and boy do I remember the Night of the Living Dead nights...

...Wilkins even looked like the twin brother of the "He's coming to GET you, Barbara..." guy at the beginning of that one.

[Sapphocrat]

16. Very much so!

In fact, I can even recall the theme tune, tho' I haven't heard it in decades. I LOVED "Creature Features" -- it gave me my first-ever viewing of "Night of the Living Dead" -- and I was thrilled beyond words one night to hear Bob read my fan letter to him aloud on the air. (Hey, I was, like, 11 or something.)

I still miss CF. But I was compensated somewhat for the loss many years later, when I moved to L.A. and discovered "Movie Macabre" before anybody outside the Big Orange had ever heard of Elvira.

Thanks for the memory-jogger, and the link.

P.S. Since you're obviously a Bay Arean who goes back a bit, B_E_B, you must remember "Captain Satellite" and "Charlie and Humphrey."

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

18. Oh man, what was that guy's name...oh yeah...Pat McCormick!!!!

...here's the good Captain:





...and this, regarding McCormick and "Charlie and Humphrey":

""After Captain Satellite went off the air, about 1971, another Ch. 2 personality, Pat McCormick, brought back his creations "Charley and Humphrey." The "Charley and Humphrey" show had originally aired in SF on Ch. 7 in the 60s, and was brought back by McCormick on Ch. 2 when he became the fulltime host of "Dialing For Dollars." (McCormick had also previously hosted another children's show, "Brother Buzz.")"

http://www.tvparty.com/lostSF.html