TELEVISION HORROR MOVIE HOSTS

ELENA M. WATSON

"Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed" is a comprehensive encyclopedia on 68 horror hosts; authoried by Elena M. Watson, and first published in 1991. Elena M. Watson, who died in 1994, successfully captures the history and pop culture impact of these mostly-forgotten local celebrities in Television Horror Movie Hosts. ELENA M. WATSON From IMDB: Elena M. Watson was born in 1958 in resident of Norfolk, Virginia, USA; She has Muscular Dystrophy, a progressive disability. She was interested in mythical beings, including mermaids; and UFOs. Elena kept a small mermaids above her computer keyboard. Muscular Dystrophy put her out of her element in the physical world; but in the cosmos of ideas, and in communion with her associates, she swam free. A professional conjurer pal of hers once noted with precision that she was "fiercely rational." In that, she was tough; she stood up fearlessly to fraud and pretense, in person and in print. Toward the end Elena went about the world in a motorized wheelchair, defiantly unconfined at the keyboard to Internet and editor of the National Capital Area Skeptical Eye, a newsletter serving 300 critical thinkers banded together for the sole purpose of poking holes in hooey. She felt that a substantial number of the more academic membership were "humor-impaired" and set about doing something about it. The consequence was a lively and literate publication that drew from a wide range of offbeat sources on unscientific misapprehensions, from scholarly journals to supermarket tabloids. She loved to ponder the implications of such compelling Weekly World News headlines as "Earth's Water Supply Came From Dinosaur Wee-Wee". Elena, who held a degree in psychology from Christopher Newport College, wrote a book titled "Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed". She documented the low-budget likes of Ghoulardi, Sir Graves Ghastly and Dr. Maximilian Madblood. Elena was an inveterate enemy to unexamined opinion, superstition and smugness. For her, the daughter of a minister, truth was a sword that protected people from every sort of snake oil, be it totalitarian government or sneak-thief 900 numbers. Instinctively, she identified with the underdog. In some ways, she had been one. As a child her schoolyard peers had not been kind to the short girl who walked differently. That sense extended to critical judgments. Performers and films long since consigned to "B" status and below were often tops with her. It was never production values that impressed Elena in a movie; it was flair. Among her favorite actors was Peter Lorre, whose ability often transcended his material; on the wall beside her computer, Elena kept a photograph of him as Mr. Moto, the bantam super-spy of late 1930s films. She loved magicians, too. They fooled the public but made no bones about the hustle. She loved only one thing more, and that was her husband, John S. Pickel, a project engineer at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. She passed away in 1994, in Norfolk, Virgina, USA. In 2012, Elena M. Watson, was inducted into "The Official Horror Host Hall of Fame", Behind the Screams category: author of "Television Horror Movie Hosts".

LINKS

Internet Movie Data Base "Elena M. Watson"

E-gors Chamber of TV Horror Hosts "Credit Where Credit Is Grue"

Classic Film & TV Cafe "A Review of Elena M. Watkins' "Television Horror Movie Hosts"

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