Creature Features (1971)

The weekly San Francisco Bay Area horror movie program launched on KTVU in February, 1971 with the 1964 movie "The Horror of Party Beach", hosted by Bob Wilkins. The show ran Saturday nights at 11:00pm (1971 - 1973), Saturday nights at 8:00pm to 1:00am (1974 - 1979) and then Friday nights 11:00pm to 1:00am (1976 - 1979). In contrast to the many ghoulishly costumed contemporaneous horror hosts, Wilkins opted for an urbane Ivy League type persona with a trademark cigar. During the show's thirteen year run , numerous horror, science fiction, and film industry luminaries made guest appearances, including Ray Harryhausen, Christopher Lee, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, John Landis, Cloris Leachman, William Marshall, and Forest J Ackerman. Though Wilkins continually mocked the quality of the films he presented in a humorously acerbic manner, the show proved immensely popular, prompting KTVU to extend its length for double features, even adding a second weekly slot. In 1979, Wilkins bowed as host and was replaced by genre-expert John Stanley, who brought an erudite genre incisiveness to the show until its ultimate end in 1984. Today, Creature Features is historically noted as the confluence for broadcast premiers of the 1959 "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and the 1968 "Night of the Living Dead".