“Goodnight, whatever you are!”: Deceased Artiste John Zacherle

As I’ve noted before on the blog, Halloween is my favorite holiday, bar none. I’ve tried each year to find a suitable horror/monster/”shock” topic to write about (my detailed portrait of Jinx Dawson and the pioneering shock rock band Coven has been the most popular, hands down). This year I have to combine my Deceased Artiste department with the Halloween entry and present a tribute to the late, great John Zacherle, who died on Thursday (a mere four days before Halloween) at the daunting age of 98.

Zach will forever be best known as one of the all-time great TV horror hosts — he ranks with Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson and Maila “Vampira” Nurmi in terms of his cultural impact and the amount of fanboy/girls who became famous themselves. The many obits that have appeared in the days since his death have charted his TV trajectory, starting from performing on a local daytime Western (!) in Philadelphia (Action in the Afternoon) to creating the horror-movie host “Roland” in the same city on the weekly Shock Theater (1957-58).

As Roland he began playing the chuckling “cool ghoul” character that became his alter ego for the rest of his life. It should be noted that his own, real-life laugh, when he was out of makeup and his elegant mortician outfit, has the same resonant chortle he had perfected as the character.

Here’s a rare single, “Roland Rock,” written for his character, performed by the Flattops (unlike most horror-host 45s, Zach isn’t heard on this tune):

The Flattops recording is very rare, but it pales in comparison with Zach’s 1958 Top 40 “scream,” “Dinner with Drac.” The opening guitar, the killer sax, the “creepy” lyrics — the record stands just behind “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (from 1956) as the beginning of horror/monster themes in rock ‘n’ roll (yes, it preceded “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett by four years!). It was a favorite of many later bands, including, of course, the inimitable and amazing Cramps.

More interesting is the B-side, which was the first version of the song. It was considered too gross (by none other than the anodyne and truly dull Dick Clark), so Zach recut the song in the version that became the A-side. This is “Dinner with Drac, Part 2”:

He left Philly in 1958 (but did return in the Eighties to appear as “Roland” once again as a guest star on the local show Saturday Night Dead). He moved to NYC, where he continued his horror-host duties, this time as “Zacherley.” Shock Theater was renamed Zacherley at Large and was on two NYC stations — Chs. 7 and 9 (WABC and WOR). 

Interestingly enough, especially given what goes on these days with “intellectual property,” Zach played the same character with the same “cohosts” (his dead wife in a casket and a sidekick) on the different NYC versions of the show.

Zach’s “Shock Theater” shows on NYC channels 9 and 11 were wiped, but he owned three kinescopes of the WABC show. The kines were compiled onto a DVD called The Zacherley Archives (along with his segments for a Philadelphia show, introducing the 1931 Lugosi Dracula). Zach sold and signed the disc at his live appearances but, in this “everything should be free” era, the whole thing is now available on YouTube (from three different posters), lacking, of course, the nearly 90 minutes or so of bonus material that Zach shot in his apartment and on a "spooky" set:

It should be noted that Zach was not only incredibly friendly to his fans, he never charged for this autograph. If you bought his CDs, the DVD, or stills to be signed, you were charged a nominal amount for those (10-15), but he did the convention circuit for years — most notably the Chiller Theatre con in N.J.) signing things that fans brought from home for free.

While he was in the Big Apple, the 1960 elections came around, and Zach ran for President (“let’s put a vampire in the White House/just for fun!” as the song went). Here’s an amazing audio recording of a 1960 WOR show in which Zach presents his presidential platform (along with, of course, his wife whom he revealed would be the first bald-headed First Lady — not to mention that she was in a casket):

Zach moved to Ch. 11 (WPIX) in ’63 to Chiller Theater, which he hosted until 1965. I came onto the planet too late, however, to have seen Zach in his glory days on local TV but did see him doing his Zacherley shtick on programs like Clay Cole’s Discotek. There is no footage of him on that program (which, if you look at its Wiki entry, had an amazing array of guests), but we do have two clips on YT from Disc-o-Teen (1964-66), a no-budget teen “dance party” show that aired on WNJU, the very same UHF, Spanish-language station that aired Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest (I wrote about that show here).

He continued to do the Zacherley character for the rest of his life in items like a wonderfully enjoyable Goodtimes Home Video (which has not surfaced on DVD — and is not on YT) called “Horrible Horror,” where he introduced trailers and public domain movie clips while doing his whole Sixties TV shtick (as he also did on the N.J.-based music-video channel U68 for Halloween one year).

His incredibly strong voice remained with him throughout this life (here he is at 94, still blessed with “great pipes”), so it’s no surprise that his steadiest employment was a DJ. He was an jock in NYC who started out in the sublime “free-form” era and he was still around for the sad, sad tightly-playlisted Nineties.

He started at arguably the greatest East Coast free-form station, WNEW-FM, in 1967 and moved to his long-time on-air home WPLJ in 1971. His stay there ended in ’81, but he came back to FM in 1992 on the 92.3 K-Rock. He was dismissed, along with other NYC icons, in ’96 (and the station hasn’t been listenable since).

The invaluable NY Radio Archive site has a great collection of Zach on-air, showing the full range of his work on the radio. He was a truly great presence on the radio thanks to his incredible voice, but also because he had a “history” with the listeners — younger folks found him a friendly voice, while the baby boomers knew him very well (esp. when he laughed) from his “Cool Ghoul” incarnation. The NYRA Zacherle page can be found here.

Was Zach a hippie? (Keep in mind he was in his 40s when psychedelic music took hold.) Well here is he introducing the, as he calls them, “Grateful-goddamned-Dead!” at the Fillmore in 1970:

And here he is doing a Xmas day stint on K-rock in 1989. This is more comedy than he did on the station in his Nineties incarnation (where he mostly played Sixties music).

But he never turned his back on his alter ego. You can find a great 1974 article on Zach by Cynthia Heimel from New York magazine here.

In it he reveals he had done acid in the Sixties and he really enjoyed revisiting the “Cool Ghoul” character. That was perhaps what came across first and foremost when he did his undead-host shtick — how much fun John Z. himself was having. Especially since it was noted in his obits that in the Thirties when he was a child, his parents NEVER let him check out monster movies!
*****

Some bonus items from the archive of Zach-mania on YT:

First, a bizarre single, him covering “Hello Dolly” doing a Karloff impression (a la Bobby Pickett) while doing his Zacherley laugh — novelty records are the strangest corner of the Top 40 universe (esp. because this has a rock backing similar to “The Wah-Watusi” that Zach had earlier spoofed).

I could not ignore Zach’s “acting” turn in Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988) as the voice of a brain-eating parasite (what, did you think he was going to be a voice talent for his niece’s “My Little Pony” franchise?). Zach’s voice was incredible, and he really does a great job here — it’s a shame he didn’t get more cartoon work:

One of the catchiest of Zach’s horror-tunes, “Coolest Little Monster”:

And a “lost” number that more people should hear — a song only found on the 1996 Zach CD “Dead Man’s Ball” that finds the unwary listener descending into Satan’s domain, where the Seventies rule. “Everyone wears leisure suits in Hell/Great big disco collars and those platform shoes as well/They languish and they fester/in eternal polyester/because everyone wears leisure suits in Hell!” (The song doesn’t begin until the 1:19 mark):

And because Zach *meant* Halloween to a lot of us, here is a “telescoped” version of part of a Halloween stint on WCBS-FM on Halloween night, 1987 (given the recent death of “Crazy Eddie” it’s interesting that the segment begins with Zach touting Crazy Eddie t-shirts):

There are SO MANY Xmas songs (I covered that pretty well last year… ), but so few Halloween songs. Here is Zach’s one “carol” for the holiday. Just wonderful:

And the perfect way to close this out is with footage of Zach and Bobby “Boris” doing a duet on “Monster Mash” at the Chiller Theater in the outdoor tent (filled with people who both revered Boris Karloff and loved Bobby “Boris” and, of course, Zach…). The year was October 2005 and Zach was a mere “babe in the woods” of 87.

Farewell to you, Zacherley. You always were a scream.
*****

Thanks to fellow Zach lovers “Shiska Ravelli,” Dave Vitolo, and Robert Nedelkoff. Also, great thanks to George Orlay, who shot the Chiller performance footage.

Death of a Clown: Deceased Artiste Pierre Etaix

The death of the very gifted French physical comic and gagsmith Pierre Etaix last week at the age of 87 was not as sad an event as it could've been. That's because this wonderful comedian and fine filmmaker got his just due back in 2012 when his films were freed from a legal tangle and played around the world in beautifully restored prints, for the first time in several decades.

I wrote a review for the Disc Dish website of the comprehensive three-disc Criterion box that came out in 2013, after the films had played theatrically. The review presented the central details of Etaix's life and career, so I wanted to post it here (in slightly altered form) as a tribute to this fine artist.

Etaix was a multi-talented individual who at various times worked as a cartoonist, a cabaret entertainer, a character actor, and a circus clown. (He returned to the last-mentioned profession after his last self-directed film flopped in 1971.) His cartoons and clowning — plus his deep love for the American comedians of the silent and early talkie eras — led him to work with the legendary Jacques Tati as an assistant director and gag-designer on Mon Oncle (1958).

An Etaix cartoon depicting his heroes.

After his stint with Tati, Etaix began crafting his own comedy vehicles with the help of the great screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere (The Return of Martin Guerre, Belle de Jour, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). The five movies and three shorts he directed over the period of a decade are indeed a revelation for fans of classic film comedy, as Etaix and Carriere did a superb job of finding situations for Etaix’s schlemiel-like character to struggle with.

Although he praises a number of American comedians in a 2011 documentary included in the Criterion set as a supplement — Pierre Etaix, un destine animé, directed by his wife Odile — his onscreen character is most like Buster Keaton’s, as he is often financially comfortable, but never at ease with his surroundings. Carriere notes in the documentary that the situations they devised together found Etaix “confronting a hostile world.”

Using deft camerawork, careful framing, and precise editing, Etaix succeeded admirably in creating his own comic universe. A frequently used setup involves a succession of characters or objects interlocking to form the perfect live-action equivalent of a Rube Goldberg contraption, with the clueless Etaix moving on after having initiated the chaos.

Etaix’s first two shorts, “Rupture” and “Happy Anniversary” (which won an Oscar for Best Short Subject in 1963) are letter-perfect evocations of the classic two-reel comedies of Hollywood’s Golden Age. He followed those two gems (co-directed with Carriere) with his debut feature, The Suitor (1963). Here Etaix plays an empty-headed millionaire searching around Paris for a wife. Like all of Etaix’s features, the film is episodic and crammed with smaller gags that are just as funny as the major set-pieces.

“Happy Anniversary” and The Suitor are indeed the best introductions to Etaix, but his most ambitious and most touching feature followed. In Yoyo (1965) he plays another lonely rich man, who in this case runs away with the circus. In the present-day video introductions included in the box set, Etaix declares this to be his favorite film, and it certainly is his most layered creation. The first 35 minutes function as a self-contained silent movie, then the movie turns into a valentine to circus life — and, oddly enough, the price of TV fame.

Etaix talks about the failure of Yoyo in his video introduction. It was so poorly received that he made certain his next film was a very basic comedy. As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966), as it was re-edited by Etaix in 1971, is simply four well-crafted short films shown end to end. The standout is the second, a strange journey through a crowded movie theater then into an apartment where everyone speaks in TV commercial taglines.

When a retrospective of these eight films was held in October 2012 at the Film Forum in New York City, much was said about the fourth feature, Le Grand Amour (1969), being Etaix’s best work. The film is very accomplished, but its extremely linear plotline marks it as a comedown of sorts from the raucous nature of the preceding three features — although a bravura dream sequence in which the characters travel the back roads of France on moving beds is perhaps the finest (and weirdest) single set-piece he ever dreamt up.

Etaix's last film as a director is a fascinating anomaly — so much so that it merited only a single screening in the Film Forum retro and was the only Etaix feature not shown on TCM when the movies had their American TV debut in 2013. Land of Milk and Honey (1971) is a documentary Etaix made about the French on vacation in the period after May 1968 (when political riots paralyzed the city of Paris).

The film is indeed a comedy, but a crueler creation than any of Etaix’s other work — it doesn’t openly mock the vacationers shown, but it surely does depict them at their most ridiculous, ignorant, and self-satisfied. The film was disliked so intensely by both critics and the public that it killed his filmmaking career.

The documentary in the Criterion box by Odile Etaix offers a fascinating portrait of Pierre in all his guises. Included is a segment in which Etaix reflects on his longtime friendship with Jerry Lewis (who loved Yoyo). Sadly, no mention is made of the one time they worked together. For, in addition to Etaix appearing as an actor in Kaurismaki’s Le Havre (2011) and other dramas and comedies, he costarred in Lewis’ notoriously unfinished The Day The Clown Cried....