Hollywood-based ‘multimediatician’ Josh Roush dropped some pleasing video news last week: He’s posted his first edition of AntiCurrent.com Video Archives, revolving around old Ghoulardi clips (see embed below). The video clips come from Roush’s own collection of bootleg VHS, DVD and digital recordings. Much of his stash is super-rare stuff.
Here’s Roush with some background info for the uninitiated:
Cleveland’s Horror Host (or at least the first of them) was a character named Ghoulardi and was played by the notorious Ernie Anderson. Ernie had somewhat of a disdain for authority and brought a touch of that young rebellion to the beatnik inspired and beloved character. Every late Friday night for damn near 3 years WJW’s Shock Theater aired the crappiest of Horror Movies which were openly scoffed at by Ghoulardi (Plot holes so big only the Swiss could love it!). But the movies weren’t the only thing he mocked… he also openly made fun of the management for being cheap, neighboring conservative communities for being uptight (Parma!) and even the Mayor of Cleveland himself. Ernie lambasted anyone and everyone he chose to in the guise of Ghoulardi and it frightened the shit out of “the powers that be.”
And some tech background:
As to this video, over the years I have purchased numerous Ghoulardi bootlegs and have a treasure-trove of digital bits. This is my attempt to take the best source of every nugget I have and put them end to end in one complete video for you to enjoy… and I hope you do. I imported all of my DVD’s and VHS’s into 1080p (overkill I know) then desaturated the black and white footage to remove annoying VHS color artifacts, added a slight sharpening filter, adjusted the white/black levels, and outputted it via h264.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2015.
wow this brought back soooooooo many good memories!!!
Thanks for the write up guys! I have so much love for Cleveland, growing up I’d drive out there from Middletown once a month for shows.
I used to religiously watch the ghoul, on fri nites in boston, where a local uhf channel had picked up the show for it’s second and third seasons overday. Really hope to see more footage somewhere soon….. hiya hiya hiya…. preferably some scenes that include froggy, the baked bean eating frog puppet…. love to see him get his face smashed in again! Cheers Josh! Big thanks!
The Ghoul was Ron Sweed- he was a different actor/character that used to be on Channel 61, as I recall…
Overwhelmed.
Words are not enough.
Stay sick you purple knifs!
As a big Ghoulardi collector, I hate to tell you, these clips are hardly rare….they’ve been shown over and over on Ch. 8, especially on the two “Ghoulardi Nights” that Ch. 8 ran back in the 90s.
I loved watching Ghoulardi on Friday nights whether I was at home or over to a friends house.
I used to go to the studio as a guest of Ernie and watch there. There were no seats or anything. Just hang out.
its unfortunately that channel 8 did not have the foresight to save more of the old Ghoulardi shows..