Category: default || By jt3y

A friend swears that this is true.

He says that once, on "Chiller Theater," Channel 11's notorious Saturday late-night horror movie show, the film was so bad that host "Chilly Billy" Cardille spent all of the station breaks apologizing for it. At one point, he showed the audience the preview reel the station had received: "See? From the trailer it didn't look this bad."

I have no idea whether Pittsburgh-born comedian, actor and writer Joe Flaherty saw that particular episode of "Chiller Theater," but I have a hunch he might have.

In any event, that same on-air desperation was a key part of the character of "Count Floyd," the horror movie host portrayed by Flaherty on "SCTV."

It's no secret that "Count Floyd" was based in part on Cardille; Flaherty has been quoted as saying that "Chiller Theater" was one of his inspirations. One of Flaherty's colleagues on the Canadian sketch-comedy show said that his ideas for TV parodies were born when he was growing up in Pittsburgh, watching self-important "show-business frauds" make fools of themselves.

Well, I don't think anyone considers Cardille a "show-business fraud" --- he has a reputation as a being a pretty nice guy --- and the keys to the popularity of "Chiller Theater" were that no one was taking it seriously, least of all Cardille, so that the audience was always in on the joke.

But on "SCTV," Count Floyd's "Monster Chiller Horror Theater" was deadly serious business, no pun intended. For one thing, Floyd deeply resented hosting a kiddie show --- under the bad vampire makeup, he was Floyd Robertson, co-anchor of the SCTV News.

For another, the station invariably booked either terrible films ("Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Stewardesses") or the wrong films (at one point, Floyd was stuck introducing an Ingmar Bergman film, in Swedish with English subtitles).

Floyd inevitably found out about the mistakes after the film was on the air, leaving him to first try to convince the viewers at home that the movie was better than it appeared, and then apologizing profusely, practically begging the audience to tune in again.

One of the greatest things about "SCTV" was its ability to layer comedy on comedy on comedy. In later episodes, Floyd, frustrated with being stuck at this low-budget, bottom-feeding TV station, became a raging alcoholic, finally appearing on the evening news bombed out of his mind.

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He wound up in rehab, reduced to making on-camera public-service announcements for the alcoholism treatment clinic where he was drying out. ("They don't beat you or anything," said a glassy-eyed, dissipated Floyd.)

What does this all have to do with the Mon-Yough area? Well, if you're Joe Flaherty or his brother, Paul, a writer on "SCTV," you might work local Pittsburgh references into your scripts. You might ID the fictional station as "Channel 3 in Pittsburgh, Cable 102 in Blawnox." You might bring Rocky Bleier and Mean Joe Greene on as guest stars.

Or, you might have Count Floyd introducing a movie called "The Blood-Sucking Monkeys of West Mifflin, Pennsylvania."

Accept this audio clip, from the Feb. 19, 1982, episode of "SCTV," as a little post-Halloween treat to get the taste of candy out of your mouth. (If you want to buy this sketch, it's part of SCTV, Volume 2.)

P.S. Flaherty is currently teaching comedy writing at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. Not bad for a Pittsburgh boy.

P.P.S. Yes, I meant to have this up last night. So sue me.