Horror Host A Go Go: Dale Kay Interview

Dale Kay has been a fixture in the  Cleveland, Ohio horror community for many years. He is not only the producer, writer and host of Dale Kay's Spookshow but also runs the Eerie House Televison internet streaming service that features horror hosts from around the country and classic science fiction and horror films. In addition, he can be heard Friday and Saturday nights on Eerie House Radio with his partners, Dave Binkley and Gar The Ghoul, bringing you the best in old time radio.

Dale Kay

Casey Redmond:  Tell me about your early life.

Dale Kay:  I was adopted at the age of four. One of the things you do when you want to be adopted in foster care, you want to show that you have a little something. So I always liked to joke around and gain positive attention that way.

CR: Did you get into horror movies at an early age?

DK:  I'm what they call a "Monster Kid". I don't know if you're familiar with that expression. If you were born anywhere

between 1950 and 1980, we were inundated with pop culture at the time with so many different things. You had "The Adams Family" and "The Munsters" on TV. One of the the things that ignited the horror hosts was the release of these shock movie packages that the horror hosts showed on their programs. When they re -released the Universal stuff, kids were watching it for the first time on television, instead of at the movies, and it became wildly popular, along with magazines like Famous Monsters Of Filmland. They were printed monthly with great pictures of horror fims, informative stories and trading cards with monsters on them. They became very popular with kids and, of course, I became very caught up in that.

CR: So the pop culture of the time around Cleveland made a big impression on you.

DK:  I was influenced by Ghoulardi, The Ghoul, Big Chuck. WIXY 1260 was an AM radio station back in the sixties and seventies where all the jocks were personalities. They were fun. Such a different era than radio now.  So, they were all influences.

CR: Do you remember the first horror movie that made a big impression on you?

DK: It was on Ghoulardi's show when he was on in the afternoon.

I was extremely young when he was on television. I was very frightened of that walking monster tree which must have been Tobonga in "From Hell It Came". It is on a list of films Ghoulardi definitely played at that time.

CR: Do you have a favorite Cleveland horror host?

DK: The Ghoul because of the time it was on and the age I was at.

The Ghoul: Teen Idol!?!

The Ghoul spoke out to me because he had that rebellious, sarcastic approach and he had that great patter. Some of it was taken directly from Ghoulardi but a lot of it was his own spin on things. One thing that he did that blew me away was on one of his shows in the seventies. Somebody sent him a paper mache Gammera, you know, the flying turtle. He had a cable running across the station and this thing suspended on these hooks. The Ghoul sticks a couple of sky rockets in it's back feet, it takes off and the cable broke or something and the thing goes flying wildly and there's smoke everywhere and you can hear the camera men laughing their behinds off. It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. When you're 13 or 14 years old in the mid-seventies, tv was a big influence and when you saw a crazy guy like that and you happen to latch onto him, that's your guy.

CR: You ended up working for The Ghoul.

DK: Yes, I became a regular caller and I met The Ghoul and he ended up inviting myself and my first wife, we were dating at the time, to come on his show. He found out I could do character voices and I did stuff for his radio and television shows.

CR: When were you on the show?

DK: In the early 80s. The Ghoul was on WDMT-FM 108 and WCLQ, Channel 61 in Cleveland.

CR: What did you do on the show?

Dale Kay & Friend

DK: I played various characters on both venues but also on TV.  I was "Spike Who Ride A Bike" a sort of stupid motorcyclist. That character was introduced during the "Date For Blanche Figmeyer" segments. "Blanche" was my first wife and the date was rigged, of course.

CR: What was Ron Sweed (The Ghoul) like off camera?

DK: I really didn't know Ron well. To this day he is uber-private about his personal life. But I was friends, more so, with his first wife, Barbara King, whom I still chat with often.

CR: You spent many years as a live dj around Cleveland, how did you get into that?

DK: After about a year of working for the Ghoul, I met someone on the show who tells me he plays records in a bar and they're paying him. This is roughly 1981-82. I had been working in the tool and die industry, which was floundering here, and I had time on my hands.  Instead of fooling around with The Ghoul, I realized I needed to make some money and this was like I hit the jackpot. 'I can go to a bar and play records?' 'You're kidding me!'
From there I had a dj career for about 15 years.

CR: You got to know Cleveland radio personality Uncle Vic (WGCL-FM) during that time. How did that come about?

DK:  He ran the circuit of clubs on the west side and we got to

Uncle Vic

know each other well. He came into our bars, like, 'oh, the big radio jock' and I was the house jock and I would set up routines with him. I'd say, 'Hey Vic, do you mind if we do this?' Like, there'd be a wet t-shirt contest and I'd say, 'Interview the guy who's pouring the water on her and hold the microphone in the nether-regions', and I'd make a sound effect or whatever. He just ate that stuff up. From watching The Ghoul do sound bites in the movies, I adapted that into the bars with a comical routine. I saw myself as a comic dj not just some bubblehead that plays records.

CR: Is Uncle Vic still around?

DK: He's not in the limelight right now. He'll write a comedy parody, once in awhile. I believe he has a good relationship with Doctor Demento, so he will get some kind of play. Doctor Demento still does a show online. I believe you've got to pay a buck or two an episode.

CR: So, when did you decide to become a horror host?

DK: About 15 years ago, my son and I were collecting science

fiction soundtracks on the internet. Through one of those random searches, I stumbled on a website, Doctor Ghoulfinger (Mike Monahan) out of California. He was documenting all these horror hosts out of their little areas. It just became interesting to me. So, I got together with a local cable station and started making a show. I found these people on the internet and it's blown up from there.

CR: From your cable show you went on to co-create Kreepy Kastle television which steamed horror movies and horror hosts from around the country. Kreepy Kastle shut down a few years ago. Since then you have started another streaming service called, Eerie House television.

DK:  After Kreepy Kastle went down, I missed it and decided to do something a little different. I am going to have not just horror hosts but I am going to have unhosted movies. Some people don't want to hear the hosts. I've caught some flak with Dale Kay's Spook Show from a few people. 'Don't put the funny sound effects in it. We want to see the movie as it was.'  So I thought, 'Well, if that's what you want, then I'm gonna have periods of unhosted movies.'

CR: Eerie House TV runs Friday thru Sunday, right?

DK:  Well, I create a schedule that I can fire up when I get home from work on Fridays. Because usually, Friday and Saturday nights are the best for the horror host shows. My schedule will run from Friday at 7pm until Midnight on Sunday and then I loop that schedule. It's running 24/7. There is always something running on Eerie House TV.

CR: When you are programming Eerie House, I know that licensing laws make it imperative that you show only movies that are in the public domain. How do you know if a movie is okay to run?

DK: I try to use a method of cross checking things between different lists on the internet, by reading, doing my best to run

through the Library Of Congress to look for things. There are probably 40 movies that are in the public domain that the vast majority of hosts would agree that they are public domain. Does that make them legal authorities? No, but they are movies we know no one has ever caught flak over. Whether it's cable, YouTube or whatever. I have never hosted it but Plan 9 is hotly debated.

CR: Tell me about your friend, the late Jim "The Colonel" Klink.

DK:  He was a fixture in northeast, Ohio. Well loved. A super fan.

Jim "The Colonel" Klink

The guy was so creative. He went everywhere. He went to every single trade horror show. He was friends with television horror hosts all over the world. He was a savant. in a way, with the genre. The things he loved most were horror, cartoons and comedies.

RRC: I have heard you say he had an amazing collection of memorabilia in his garage.

DK: He was constantly going to flea markets to find the coolest stuff. He had a van with all the monsters and toys glued all over the hood and roof. I did a video tribute to him that I played on the channel. I still play it periodically. He was a fixture. He was so well known in horror circles. Friendly as hell. Never had a bad thing to say about anybody. Just a great guy. Unfortunately, he became very ill and he passed very, very quickly.

CR: He was on Spookshow with you, correct?

DK:  He was a regular on my show. This guy, I didn't even have to ask him to do stuff, he would make stuff. We did "The Eye Creature", which is Larry Hill's remake of "Invasion Of The Saucer Men". He made the eye creatures and a monster from "The Saucer Men" out of paper mache. That view of his garage, it will just blow you away. Every inch of the wall is covered with posters and pictures and drawings he made. And there's dummies all over the garage, some with Christmas lights on them. He was like a giant child. I envied him, in a way, because he got to be a child 24/7. He was very responsible. He took care of his mom, very deeply family rooted. But, boy did he get to play a lot.

CR: You also do a radio show too.

DK: Eerie House Radio is on every Friday at 7:30pm and Saturday at 6:30 hosted by me, Dave Binkley (from Weirdness Really Bad Movie) and Gar The Ghoul. We present old time radio shows and discuss horror, science fiction and fantasy in radio, tv and movies.

CR: Who are your favorite modern horror hosts?

DK:  I love Tar & Feather. They are over towards the Toledo area.

Fritz The Night Owl

Psycho Cinema, those guys are hilarious and it's a quality show, as well. Their are so many that are so good. If you get a chance to see any of Penny Dreadful's old shows, she's an amazing actress  If you ever get to see Fritz The Night Owl's stuff, interesting man to talk to. His shows were great quality, especially the 80s and 90s stuff. He pioneered a lot of trick photography effects that they used in the course of the presentation. Another favorite show and it appears here locally is Dave Binckley's show (The Weirdness Really Bad Movie) who's my partner on Eerie House Radio. Much like Fritz, he is not exclusively a horror host. He's a movie host. Film noir, comedies, whatever, he'll host it. He's got a great cast of characters and the shows are well scripted.

CR: I know you go to a lot of horror movie conventions, what are your favorites?

DK:  When I was with my partners, I really enjoyed Horror Hound Weekend. I love the idea of Monster Fest Mania. We have

Cinema Wasteland but it's geared towards slasher films. It's very successful and it's fun. A show I want to go very badly is Monster Bash in Pennsylvania. It's a show that's geared more towards your classic horror like your Universal Frankenstein and Dracula and things like that.

CR: What is your favorite horror movie of all time?

DK:  My absolute favorite is "Bride Of Frankenstein". You realize

the monsters misunderstood and you wonder who the monsters really are. James Whale, the director, did a fantastic job of mixing in so much Catholic imagery. The crucifixion like scene of having him tied up to a post and the cemetery scenes had so much religious backdrop to it. It was very much influenced by German Expressionism. It was just a fantastic film and it had a decent soundtrack for the day, as well.

CR: What other projects do you have in the works?

DK:  My partner Dave does radio for the blind and edits down our radio show and cleans them up little bit and puts it out there. We're also taking a look at doing something on Mixcloud.

Dale Kay's Spookshow Facebook Page
Eerie House Facebook Page
Casey's Website