Nostalgic for Boston TV? Show your best ‘feature’

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Margaret Smith
Filed Under Television |

Aaron Chauncey thinks of himself as “a child of the 1970s.”

And if you were a child in the greater Boston area in the 1970s, Saturday afternoons were a time to hunker down in front of the television, after only four hours of morning cartoons, to watch horror movies in the low-budget Bacchanalia that was “Creature Double Feature.”

Chauncey and other fans reminisce, share trivia and revel in the glories of a bygone past at Chauncey’s Web site.

The site includes a movie list, message board, and for fans of the show, many monstrous memories. To date, the site has received more than 6,000 hits, among them visitors who have moved out of the area but like to indulge their Boston nostalgia, Chauncey said.

The show was born, or spawned, or hatched if you will, in 1972, on WLVI Channel 56, at that time under the auspices of Kaiser Broadcasting, and endured changes of station ownership until its final airing 1983. It had a counterpart televised in Philadelphia.

For Chauncey, an Attleboro resident, it’s a small effort to preserve the fast-disappearing local character of television and radio.

He said “Creature Double Feature” continues to symbolize a vanishing regional identity in a media shaped by the likes of “Candlepins for Cash” and “Rex Trailer.”

“Creature Double Feature” typically showcased two back-to-back films in the afternoon, followed that same night by a one-hit “Creature Feature” — in case viewers actually had errands during the day Saturday and needed to catch up.

The film tended to showcase themes and were aired in cycles. “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” a cult favorite starring a very young Michael Landon, would invariably be paired with the lesser-known “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.”

All over the country, television stations were airing their own weekend horror films, winning new fans not only for the campier fare but for more the more classic films, and respected actors such as Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Like many of the ghouls that appeared in the films, “Creature Double Feature” arises periodically from its tomb.

Recently, Ernie Boch Jr. — son of another local TV icon, the late car dealer Ernie Boch — has starred in occasional specials in 2006 and 2007. For these, Boch dressed in costume and introduced the likes of “Horror Express,” a 1973 film in which a frozen prehistoric beast thaws out, attacks the passengers, enslaves a priest and even takes on a brutish warlord during a trans-Russian train trip.

Oh, and the warlord is played by Telly Savalas, all you children of the 1970s.

For now, if you cringed at “Attack of The Giant Leeches,” cheered as Gamera the giant turtle rescued cute little kids from the city he just incinerated, or had nightmares about that bald, scarred atomic Goliath, you can pay your respects by visiting Chauncey’s site.

Where, as voice over announcer Dale Dorman would have it: “There’s more Creature Double Feature coming your way…if you can stand it.”

Station identification image courtesy WLVI.

Margaret Smith is Arts and Calendar editor at GateHouse Media’s Northwest Unit. E-mail her at msmith@cnc.com.