Sir Graves Ghastly Presents (1967– ) User Reviews

Waiting for Sir Graves

[marcmagisana · 10/10 · 16 April 2022]

A great thing about the Internet is that you find that other people out there have as much affection for something you thought few people would feel about in the same way. The Graves man was also part of some of my best times as a kid and a big part of that was because my best friend was as big a fan as I was. I lived near Baltimore and Sir Graves at first came on at night on Friday and then after some time they put him on in the afternoon as well. He was getting popular enough that there was a special program for Sir Graves' showing of "Dracula" early on Friday and an ad for it in the local tv guide. The first time I saw "Dracula". I found out later they had edited out a good chunk of the movie to make time for Sir Graves, but it was special and so what if he badly lip-synched to Spike Lee? I practiced his laugh and the eyebrow thing. Recorded his shows on my portable cassette player. It gave us something to look forward to on the weekend after a grueling school week. Impossible for kids nowadays to get it the way we did. Definitely a context of the time thing. My kids were amazed we had horizontal and vertical on our console tv. They'll have the same warm feelings about Pokemon. Which is another thing that strikes me about Sir Graves: there's something very American about it, not in a flag waving way, but it's the kind of entertainment that could only come out of America at a particular moment of history, we needed some innocent media fun - I remember people on the radio talking about riots in Baltimore in the same time. Yeah, we are lucky we were born when we were.

Sir Graves Rules!

[sawyertom · 29 July 2002]

As a six year old kid I could hardly wait for the weekend. Every Saturday afternoon I could count on Sir Graves Ghastley to keep me and my friends and sometimes my cousins entertained. He would show all of the dracula,Frankenstein, wolfman and Mummy movies and then throw in the classic B movies like Fiend Without a Face, The Monolith Monsters and others. On top of that you got to see drawings that kids like myself and older drew and sent in there as well as musical skits, jokes and other little vignettes. It was a good way to waste a few hours on Saturday. Sure it was a a little bit cheesy, in retrospect, but so what. Some time just having good clean fun is that. It was harmless. But, man it was entertaining. Those were some of my best days as a kid. I remember me and a friend on a rainy day playing and watching Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, while my dad who worked nights took a nap. Man we had a ball. I miss shows like that. I agree with the other guy that local t.v. is now too polished and they would not take a chance on a show like this today. I think it would work. Just look at MST3K on Sci-fi channel. While I liked Elivra and the Ghoul, Sir Graves was King. I can't watch any of those movies without thinking of my childhood and those Saturday afternoon. Sir Graves even took his show to his annual Halloween special on Friday nights with a double feature as a bonus. Man that was great. Sir Graves where are you when we need you? Just give us older kids one more show! Sir Graves rules!

Clever, entertaining hosted horror show from television's long-gone past.

[jimmyshine · 13 October 2001]

Anyone who grew up in the Michigan and Ohio area remembers Sir Graves Ghastly, who hosted this horror movie show. His distinctive, blood-curdling laugh ("Neeeeeeeahhhaahhhhahhhhhahhhh!"), and his salutation "Happy Hauntings!" were two of his most enduring trademarks. What really set Sir Graves apart from other horror movie hosts was a sense of playfulness and wit that he brought to his bumpers, inbetween station breaks and whatever film happened to be showing that day. This was during the day when local tv still had a certain glamour to it, a certain allure to the local communities, when tv stations had their own in-house shows and celebrities - that sense is now long gone. Also long gone are the movie packages that these local stations bought, and which fueled shows such as "Sir Graves", where classic films such as "Frankenstein" or "The Wolfman" would appear, followed by "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Now every film title known to man has been hoarded and reserved by huge media enterprises, to be shown for a premium on cable tv, or worse, withdrawn altogether. Sir Graves was known to everyone within his broadcasting circle, which isn't surprising when you remember that when he was at the peak of his success, tv was still relatively cable-free, and many communities still had only three or four channels to view. It's hard to believe that today, what with all the hundreds of channels now available. I'm not sure if Sir Graves would have the same impact he had on so many back in the 1960's through the early 1980's, if he was lost amid the thousands of shows that are available today; certainly not because his clever show is somehow lacking in comparison to current television fare - quite the opposite. It would be because his quirky, entertaining, charming little show wouldn't be considered worth the effort and money anymore; charm and wit are very low on the lists of requirements for most television shows today. It's too bad the environment for his kind of art is now gone.