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Count Floyd
Count Floyd is a fictional character featured in television and played by comic actor Joe Flaherty. He is a fictional horror host in the tradition of TV movie hosts on local television in both the United States and Canada.
The Count Floyd character originated on the Canadian sketch show SCTV, but also later appeared on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (clips of which were used on Cartoon Planet), as well as Rush’s Signals and Grace Under Pressure tours.
As originally conceived, Count Floyd was the alter-ego of another SCTV character: Floyd Robertson, co-anchor of the SCTV News (The name was a joke based on that of Canadian news anchor Lloyd Robertson, but other than the name and occupation Floyd Robertson bears no real resemblance to his real-life counterpart).
The premise was that employees at this very low-budget TV station had to double up on jobs, so news anchor Floyd Robertson was also the host of SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, wearing a cheap Transylvanian vampire costume and speaking in a stereotypical Bela Lugosi type accent. Oddly, although Floyd was supposed to be a vampire, he would also open each show howling like a werewolf, presumably indicating that Floyd Robertson had only the vaguest of idea what a vampire was. Near the end of a howl, he would break off disarmingly into a weak chuckle.
Although a parody of the typical horror movie hosts that were seen on local television stations during the 1950s to 1970s, the real-life hosts were nearly always already employed in other positions at the TV stations and their horror host personas were often so silly and “over the top” that Count Floyd was not really too far off the mark.
The title Monster Chiller Horror Theatre was taken from the Chiller Theatre, a longtime local horror film show on WIIC (now WPXI) television in Pittsburgh, Joe Flaherty's hometown. While host Bill Cardille also known as "Chilly Billy" was nothing like Count Floyd (Cardille wore a coat and tie and spoke in his normal voice), the Dracula-esque persona adopted by Floyd may have been based on another Pittsburgh TV horror show host. The 1958-59 Friday night program "The Thirteenth Hour," broadcast over KDKA-TV Channel 2 featured the vampire-like "Igor," actually KDKA staff announcer George Eisenhauer whose costume bore no small resemblance to Count Floyd's. Much as Robertson's co-anchor, Earl Camembert (portrayed by Eugene Levy), was partially inspired by American newsman Irv Weinstein (as well as by CBC news reader Earl Cameron, who anchored CBC TV's "The National" newscast from 1959 until 1965), Robertson's doubling as Count Floyd appears to have been at least partially inspired by Weinstein's weather anchor, Tom Jolls, who likewise doubled as the astronaut children's show host Commander Tom.
Occasionally, Count Floyd would be joined by a vampire-caped sidekick known as The Pittsburgh Midget, played by Flaherty's brother Paul Flaherty, an obvious counterpart to diminutive Stefan, the Castle Prankster, played by Stephen Michael Luncinski on Chiller Theatre.
The main running gag of the sketch was that the station would usually provide truly awful films for the show that were not in the least bit scary, including such genres as biopics with very scant relation to horror (Madame Blitzman), softcore pornography with a horror theme (Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses) and Swedish independent ("Ingmar Burgman"'s Whispers of the Wolf which starred "Leave Ullman"), forcing Floyd to struggle to hype them to his mostly juvenile audience. ("Alright, it wasn't that scary but did you get a good look at those chicks?”). Occasionally, the films provided to Count Floyd would have absolutely no connection to horror at all—on one memorable occasion, he was stuck trying to plug The Odd Couple, on another, Four for Texas. Other times, the expected film would not materialize, and Floyd would be forced to fill time. A particularly notable example of this was when the film Blood-Sucking Monkeys From West Mifflin, Pennsylvania failed to show up at the station in time for the show, so Count Floyd improvised the plot of the entire movie on his own.
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Count Floyd
Count Floyd is a fictional character featured in television and played by comic actor Joe Flaherty. He is a fictional horror host in the tradition of TV movie hosts on local television in both the United States and Canada.
The Count Floyd character originated on the Canadian sketch show SCTV, but also later appeared on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (clips of which were used on Cartoon Planet), as well as Rush’s Signals and Grace Under Pressure tours.
As originally conceived, Count Floyd was the alter-ego of another SCTV character: Floyd Robertson, co-anchor of the SCTV News (The name was a joke based on that of Canadian news anchor Lloyd Robertson, but other than the name and occupation Floyd Robertson bears no real resemblance to his real-life counterpart).
The premise was that employees at this very low-budget TV station had to double up on jobs, so news anchor Floyd Robertson was also the host of SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, wearing a cheap Transylvanian vampire costume and speaking in a stereotypical Bela Lugosi type accent. Oddly, although Floyd was supposed to be a vampire, he would also open each show howling like a werewolf, presumably indicating that Floyd Robertson had only the vaguest of idea what a vampire was. Near the end of a howl, he would break off disarmingly into a weak chuckle.
Although a parody of the typical horror movie hosts that were seen on local television stations during the 1950s to 1970s, the real-life hosts were nearly always already employed in other positions at the TV stations and their horror host personas were often so silly and “over the top” that Count Floyd was not really too far off the mark.
The title Monster Chiller Horror Theatre was taken from the Chiller Theatre, a longtime local horror film show on WIIC (now WPXI) television in Pittsburgh, Joe Flaherty's hometown. While host Bill Cardille also known as "Chilly Billy" was nothing like Count Floyd (Cardille wore a coat and tie and spoke in his normal voice), the Dracula-esque persona adopted by Floyd may have been based on another Pittsburgh TV horror show host. The 1958-59 Friday night program "The Thirteenth Hour," broadcast over KDKA-TV Channel 2 featured the vampire-like "Igor," actually KDKA staff announcer George Eisenhauer whose costume bore no small resemblance to Count Floyd's. Much as Robertson's co-anchor, Earl Camembert (portrayed by Eugene Levy), was partially inspired by American newsman Irv Weinstein (as well as by CBC news reader Earl Cameron, who anchored CBC TV's "The National" newscast from 1959 until 1965), Robertson's doubling as Count Floyd appears to have been at least partially inspired by Weinstein's weather anchor, Tom Jolls, who likewise doubled as the astronaut children's show host Commander Tom.
Occasionally, Count Floyd would be joined by a vampire-caped sidekick known as The Pittsburgh Midget, played by Flaherty's brother Paul Flaherty, an obvious counterpart to diminutive Stefan, the Castle Prankster, played by Stephen Michael Luncinski on Chiller Theatre.
The main running gag of the sketch was that the station would usually provide truly awful films for the show that were not in the least bit scary, including such genres as biopics with very scant relation to horror (Madame Blitzman), softcore pornography with a horror theme (Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses) and Swedish independent ("Ingmar Burgman"'s Whispers of the Wolf which starred "Leave Ullman"), forcing Floyd to struggle to hype them to his mostly juvenile audience. ("Alright, it wasn't that scary but did you get a good look at those chicks?”). Occasionally, the films provided to Count Floyd would have absolutely no connection to horror at all—on one memorable occasion, he was stuck trying to plug The Odd Couple, on another, Four for Texas. Other times, the expected film would not materialize, and Floyd would be forced to fill time. A particularly notable example of this was when the film Blood-Sucking Monkeys From West Mifflin, Pennsylvania failed to show up at the station in time for the show, so Count Floyd improvised the plot of the entire movie on his own.