Bummed to hear this. No one like him at that time. Brought a lot of laughter to many.
RIP
Sad news. I have many fond memories watching the Ghoul on Saturday nights in the 1970's with my late brother. A lot of laughs and good times.
'turn blue! scratch glass! but don't get caught!'
blast from the past.
I actually lived both in Michigan and suburban Cleveland during that period and he was on the tube in both places. Spent many a Friday night up late with friends as a middle schooler watching The Ghoul and Houlihan and Big Chuck back-to-back. I probably watched every Vincent Price movie ever made a couple of times.
I would have thought he was already dead and a lot older than 70.
Same thing here. I was expecting to see 80 or 90.
Born January 23, 1949. That makes him a little more than 10 years older than me.
Which means in 1974, when I was 15 and watching the Ghoul religiously, he would have been about 25. I had him pegged at something in his 30's or 40's when I was watching the show.
Michigan native, Cleveland area resident here.
I never knew or watched The Ghoul. I was probably too young in the late 60s, early 70s, and then I moved to northern Michigan in 1972 and lost contact with Channel 50, offbeat TV, and the movie host genre. (I still have fond memories of Sir Graves Ghastly from when I was growing up in Detroit, as well as Bill Kennedy.)
Having lived in Cleveland for over 20 years now, I have picked up stories about the culture here during the late 60s and early 70s that my Cleveland friends experienced. I have especially heard a great deal about Ghoulardi. I wondered whether there was a connection with The Ghoul. Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that The Ghoul was a fan of Ghoulardi, showed up at a public appearance, got Ghoulardi's attention, and wound up as an intern. Eventually, after Ghoulardi went to Los Angeles, the kid started his show at another station based on the same character, but for copyright reasons (the original station owned rights to the name), he had to shorten the name to The Ghoul.
The attached article is interesting to those interested in reading more. It is mostly about Ghoulardi, but references The Ghoul several times.
The Ghoul started his own show in 1971, when he was only 22. Very precocious.
As you mentioned, Sweed was a very young fan and eventual intern of Ghoulardi, who was played by Ernie Anderson, who was the father of famed director Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed such films as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood.
11:30 Saturday night on Channel 50. Many fond memories ...
... pluck your magic twanger, Froggy. Holy Amrap.
At one point I had a Ghoul t-shirt. I wish I still had it.
Channel 50. Boy that brings back memories.
That weird channel that you had to go to adjust the outer dial to go to more channels... within that channel... or something.
LOL.
Same here, I grew up near GR with 3 TV channels: 3, 8, and 13, occasionally being able to pick up channel 6 from Lansing when weather conditions allowed. Then suddenly, when I was in high school, two new channels appeared in what was previously unknown territory, uncharted waters: UHF. Channels 35 and 41 had arrived!
Then just a few short years later I discovered TV heaven in the form of cable TV when I moved to WMU and Kalamazoo and signed on to some 20-25 channels, including WKBD, on Fetzer Cablevision.
Remember my dad buying a 12"bw portable tv with UHF.What great tv I had been missing.
Kimba,roller derby,big time wrestling,Hogan's Heroes reruns,superman
and Voltron.
That was always one of the good aspects of growing up in Detroit area. While most metropolitan areas had like 5-6 over-air TV stations(major networks plus an independent or 2 and PublicTV), we had 8-9 because you could add in 4 Canadian networks coming from Windsor. (Or the Toledo stations if you lived more southwest suburbs and a good antenna. LOL)
Loved the Ghoul and his derogatory comments of "shlock movies he had".
Hey-yah Hey-yah! Wonder if he was covered with Cheez-wiz and buried with Froggy? /s
Piker! Growing up in Grand Blanc and with a really good antenna on a tower, we could pick up all the Detroit stations (a couple underpowered ones like 56 being a little snowy), Flint of course, Saginaw, Lansing/Jackson and if the conditions were juuuuuust right, a very snowy channel 3 from Kalamazoo (which was good for Lions games that were blacked out, which was all of them). So maybe a 12-15 stations. Bizarre how much things have changed in a fairly short period of time. I mean, imagine being on (fill in cable channel here) and they announce they're through for the day, play the Star Spangled Banner and shut down, among other things.
You got it. Some of the stunts he'd pull were hilarious - and probably would not get away with today. One time he staged a pizza-eating contest between some guy and a German shepherd. The dog won convincingly not surprisingly. Another time he hooked up a plastic model of Gamera (the Japanese flying turtle monster) with some roman candles on a wire and shot him out of the studio (garage or wherever he shot the show). I never figured out whether the guy was just really off-beat, high when he did the show, or just a certifiable nut.
He was probably all of those things.
I had a cat that I named dog.
Wow, one my favorite shows as a kid in the 70s. First he was on WKBD CH. 50 then he went over to WXON CH. 20. Aaayyyyoverdayyyy. I thought he was older but 70 is way too young. RIP Ron Sweed!
I absolutely loved the Ghoul. He inspired me to blow up all my monster models (except for Godzilla). Although I loved those models, I never regretted my decision to blow ‘em up.
Wow. Brings back memories of jr high and high school in Akron.
Some burger chain did a special burger with “turn blue” sauce with him. Looked awful.
Spent many Sat. nights watching him goof on old sci-fi movies. I’ll never forget that Parma spelled backwards is Amrap.
Thanks to the Ghoul, to this day I can't drive by the Parma, Michigan exit without saying to whomever is in the car, "What's Parma spelled backwards? A-M-R-A-P" in that ominous, announcer voice.
Sad to see this, but what a blast from the past looking at that video clip on that link. I used to watch The Ghoul all the time on channel 50 WKBD when I lived in Kalamazoo for several years in the 70's and early 80's.
Great show, great introduction and commentary on the movies he would show. Especially when buzzed.
Finally, Froggy can rest easy. RIP.
Never forget. Surfin Bird!
My Halloween costume circa 1974!
That's fantastic. You should win this thread.
While I started at UM as a freshman in 1979, I was from the Philadelphia area and am not familiar with The Ghoul. But the Philly area did have someone that seems to have done just like what the Ghoul did, a guy with the stage name Dr. Shock.
Dr. Shock hosted was a TV horror movie host from 1969-1979 on UHF channel 17. He had a number of vocations, including as an amateur magician. Sadly, Joseph Zawislak (his real name) died of a heart attack in 1979 at age 42. Like many of you with The Ghoul, I thought he was much older.
*waves* to fellow 1979 freshman.
And a wave back.
I was in the College of Engineering (Chem. Eng.). You?
Economics in LSA. Lived in MoJo for the first two years. I finally left Ann Arbor after 8 years with a law degree in 1987.
I loved the Ghoul in HS, but he was preceeded in fame and fortune by Sir Graves... loved that show also when I was just a wee one...
The Ghoul was great.Parma,Amrap late night lousy creepy movies.Next day watch more lousy movies with Sir Graves and the good ole Bill Kennedy.The Ghoul was the the best thing to come out of Cleveland besides WMMX.Being a Detroiter and growing up on W4 and Steve Dawl the home of the Buzzard could really rock.
In the days of VHF and UHF, I'd sometimes rotate the UHF dial over to Ch 50 to see what epic film the Ghoul would present that evening. When introducing that night's feature, the Ghoul would go to a trash can, pull out a reel of what was presumably that night's film, and saturate it with deodorant spay, exclaiming that the film was so bad it deserved such a fate.
Ah yes --- local TV in Detroit in the 60s - 70s: Soupy Sales, The Ghoul, Sir Graves, Rita Bell, Bill Kennedy, and of course others, as well as the drive into work in the morning with Dick Purtan on XYZ. Good memories, actually.
Dodge is on it.
https://carbuzz.com/news/dodge-reveals-plans-for-200000-challenger-srt-ghoul
Nothing against him personally, but The Ghoul was a cheap knockoff of Ghoulardi, who was truly hysterical before he took his mellow voice to LA and became rich doing voice overs for commercials.
As I recall, The Ghoul is sometimes cited by some of the people involved in MST3K as something from which they drew some basic inspiration (as well as Svengoulie), some of them having grown up in markets where the show was available.
"Pluck your magic twanger, Froggy!"
Ghoulumbo sends his condolences.
I never heard of the Ghoul, but this thread got me curious. There are some clips of him and Ghoulardi on YouTube, and there is some funny stuff. Ghoulardi was the originator and, from the little that I saw, seems funnier. Anyway, I’m happy to have learned a little bit about this stuff – it was a really interesting time in the evolution of television!