Review – American Scary

Many of us have childhood memories of late night horror movies hosted by people dressed up as vampires. Mine are of Crematia Mortem, who hosted fright night on one of the Kansas City U’s back when I was a teenager in the early 80s. Usually KC doesn’t get much of a mention in national documentaries, so I was surprised to see some old Crematia clips show up in this, along with some talking head footage of Roberta Solomon, the actress who played her. Of course KC wasn’t alone. This is a fairly comprehensive documentary about fright night hosts, featuring some of the better-known personalities (Vampira, Elvira, Joe Bob Briggs and John Stanley) as well as more obscure acts from smaller media markets. This would have been a better movie if it had devoted more screen time to vintage video from the shows themselves and spent less time dwelling on interviews going on at length about boring anecdotes. The music (a constant stream of low-level retro lounge noise) was also unwelcome. Otherwise this was an entertaining account of a now largely bygone venue for bad movies bracketed by improv character acting. Mildly amusing