Bitter Cinema

Bitter Cinema on Tumblr

A sister site, if you will… a bit easier to update and post for the time being. This particular site is not dead by a long shot, but longer form thrills and chills may not be on hand for the foreseeable future, and even then, the subject matter and main thrust of the site may be something completely different than what’s been here for more than eight years. We shall see, won’t we?

But, if you’ve liked the grab-bag aesthetic of pics, movie posters, odd juxtapositions, check out http://bittercinema.tumblr.com. Maybe you’ll even like some of it…

Naked…. You Die

Nude… si muore in Italy, The Young, the Evil & the Savage in the American fleapit and drive-in circuit. Cool tune “Nightmare”. Seems to live more in the shaggy days of 1964 rather than the hairy tumult 1968 when it was actually released.

IMDB

DVD Drive-In

Eccentric Cinema

Classic-Horror.com

Slant

The Naked Witch

A  TV spot.

Out of the Mists of Time…

A Larry Buchanan production, shot in Texas!

IMDB

Bad Movie Report

1000 Misspent Hours

Don’t Open the Window TV and Radio Spot

2 funky radio spots for Don’t Open the Window on YouTube.

Dr. Zekow!

My first horror movie host! At least the first that I can remember. About 10 years ago, I emailed some info about him to E-gor’s Chamber of TV Horror Hosts. The site is still around, as is what I wrote:

During the late sixties and early seventies, Laredo, Texas TV station KGNS channel 8 broadcast a horror movie program featuring a host called Dr. Zekow. I don’t remember the actual name of the program (maybe one of those generic titles like “Shock Theater” or “Creature Feature” but don’t hold me to it). Dr. Zekow was portrayed by Francisco “Frisco” Aguilar. Sadly, he passed away about five years ago, and some of the information I have here was gleaned from his obituary. He was dressed in a black suit (tuxedo?), with a black cape, white gloves, his face greasepainted gray, with popped eyes manufactured from halved ping-pong balls. I shook his hand at a supermarket opening when I was about six and he scared the bejesus out of me, not so much as to what he did, but with my 6-year old imagination running wild and rampant…. The show was broadcast late on Fridays (maybe Saturdays, but I do seem to recall the show starting after The Tonight Show signed off, which would make it at midnight, but then I can’t see my parents letting my 6 or 7 year old self staying up that late; maybe the Friday Tonight Show was pre-empted for Dr. Zekow — these are really ancient memories). He probably showed classic Universal horror, because I do seem to recall watching the 1931 Dracula. Don’t remember if it was a single or double feature. He performed silly sketches between commercial breaks. One I do remember was Zekow performing surgery, maybe on a sidekick I can’t recall, and pulling all sorts of stuff out of his belly like a toaster, a football, and other sundry items. I do remember his show being sponsored by Butterkrust Bread, because he used to do on-air commercials for them. He would eat a slice of bread slathered with butter and say to the camera in his creepiest voice, “…and it always tastes better with butter!” I have no idea how long his show lasted. My family moved from Laredo in ‘71, and we returned in ‘74, and Zekow was no longer on the air.

I recently met someone whose dad was a newscaster on KGNS in the early seventies. She remembered Dr. Zekow and Frisco Aguilar quite fondly. Her family a his family used to have cookouts together, and she recalled cutting and painting the ping-pong balls for him before one of his shows….

Some additional info was provided by Francisco’s son, Randy:

My father used to host the Dr. Zekow show in Laredo. He was in advertising. He passed in August 1994. He did do skits where sometimes he would use neighborhood kids to do them. The movies were the classic horror movies like The Mummy, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Blob etc.

His name was pronounced ZEE-coe. My father made it up himself. He was in advertising and came up with a way to make extra money and sell adds in the same time. He came up with Dr. Zekow and sold all the advertising for it. The show was on Saturday night at 10:30. I don’t recall the years exactly but can get you that later. I know it ended in ‘71 or ‘72. He went on to advertising manager of Laredo Times Newpaper. There are no surviving tapes because the majority was done live and the little that was taped was sadly thrown out by KGNS one time they were cleaning up after the station was sold.

The pic was provided by Randy to E-gor’s site, which I gladly and humbly appropriate above. This is the first photo I’ve seen of Zekow in many years, and I’ve trolled through the newspaper archives through intermittent visits to my old home town library looking for snippets of clues or even a speck of a breadcrumb.  Instead I found cool as ice ad mats for movies I never knew existed (Alfred the Great with David Hemmings?), or exotic drive-in features like Jess Franco’s 99 Women. Sadly, the prints I could manage to get from the microfiche were piss-poor and smeary-gray, a waste of my pocket change.

Still, the photo is a revelation of sorts. He’s a lot creepier than I remembered, and the photo has that strange ancient quality that just always lends that imperceptible but small taste of outer-worldliness, much like photos of Hallowe’en of many years past.

Slaughter of the Vampires

Known in the US as Slaughter of the Vampires. Released in Italy (its country of origin) as La strage de vampiri

DVD Drive-In

IMDB

Encore des Maitresses…

Via The Hammer Collection de Daniel Frenette

Les Maitresses de Dracula

Manuel d'Exploitation

Cover of the French pressbook from Brides of Dracula

via Yvonne Monlaur’s Official Blog

Heresy of Dracula

Via Rotating Corpse