Eerie music plays as we pan over a slimy, moss-covered green wall. An off screen voice spills the shpiel in a disjointed falsetto: "Good Evening, Fringies! Welcome to Seymour Presents!. . . and here he is, the Master of the Macabre, the Epitome of Evil, THE MOST SINSTER MAN TO CRAWL THE FACE OF THE EARTH. . . Seymour!" The wall swings open to release a burst of swamp mist vapor from beyond and in strides Sinister Seymour, elegantly attired in wide-brimmed fedora, ruffled shirt and an undertaker's suit.

Larry Vincent spent some twenty years working in television control booths as staff director and had been associated with many horror film hosts. According to Larry Vincent in Mark Evanier's article from "The Monster Times" (issue 10 May 31, 1972) "They always came out with the spiders and the coffins. . . they'd leave the film alone and try to be funny or spooky themselves. To me, there's nothing amusing about a guy making himself up to look horrible and coming out of a coffin. They ended up competing with the film, trying to do something even more fantastic with sets and make-up. . . I thought that, some day, I'd like the opportunity to try it with a different approach."

Along the way, Larry Vincent landed small parts in many TV series, Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, Mannix and Mission: Impossible. A bit part in the Julie Andrews movie Star and a minor turn in the films: The Witchmaker (1969), playing Amos Coffin. The movie, about a Luther the Berserk (John Lodge), who seduces beautiful young women into witchcraft and then sacrifices them, Amos Coffin is a member of the coven, where they are summoned to life from the past. Larry Vincent makes his entrance surrounded in eerie green light appearing in a Seymour like costume of wide brim hat and coat. He grimaces and grins, has no lines but cavorts about with the other coven members, especially the pretty female ones.

Scene from Doctor Death

In The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971), Bruce Dern portrays a doctor who does the transplant. Larry Vincent plays Bruce Dern's gardener Andrew, who has a very large sized, mentally retarded son with a kind, child-like nature. The film finds the "good doctor" practicing his head transplants on animals, when a homicidal maniac breaks into the house to rape the doctor's wife. Andrew, going above the call of duty for your average gardener, comes to her rescue, only to be killed for the trouble. The doctor is too late to help Andrew but follows the killer, shooting him and then bringing him back to the lab where he decides to put the maniac's brain on Danny's body. So what's a poor, orphaned, mentally retarded gardener's son with two heads to do? Never mind, the maniac's head takes over and he and Danny go on a killing spree, while Danny cries a lot. The film also stars Pat Priest (Marilyn Munster from The Munsters) as Bruce Dern's wife and Casey Kasem as a family friend and doctor.

Doctor Death, Seeker of Souls (1973), is Larry Vincent's third movie. It starred John Considine and has the distinction of being Moe Howard's (of The Three Stooges) last film. Larry Vincent's character is the Strangler.

(from: The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant and The Witchmaker)

Seymour made his first appearance on KHJ-TV, channel nine, when they needed a host for their Saturday "Fright Night" horror show which began in 1970. The show started as a late Saturday night double feature and was introduced by "Wayne" and later "Herkimer Eugenski") who was a never seen foil (s). Annoying the cantankerous Seymour; Wayne would come to work in squeaky bunny slippers and/or generally cause a disturbance. According to Larry Thomas, stage manager for KHJ at the time, the announcer was originally scripted to be very heavy and serious with the intro, then Seymour would come out and destroy it all. The staff announcer during that shift couldn't quite pull it off so they changed the part making Wayne a lousy announcer and a foil for Seymour to react to. Also according to Thomas, Oblath's, a restaurant around the corner from Paramount, was a favorite hang-out were they would retreat. Back in 1969, it was here that Larry Vincent told him the station wanted to put a fright-type host on the air. Vincent really wanted to do the part and had some definite ideas about the character. Between the two Larrys, they dreamt up the show. A few Paramount staffers got in their jokes, sarcastically asking "Yeah, why don't you do this? Or "I'll come over and play Frankenstein...ha ha...if you want!" not knowing that this would be the best thing Paramount had going for itself at the time.

Pizza Fella was another character whom Seymour would call on the pay phone to try and con him into sending over pizza. Seymour would try to gather a collection to pay for this enterprise and usually had to borrow the dime for the phone. Banjo Billy was Seymour's overly cheerful, brightly attired-alter ego, who would sneak into the show as the Banjo Whiz. Banjo Billy would succeed in being generally repulsive, his cheery disposition and bad banjo playing unbearable to the Sinister One. Larry Thomas told of Banjo Billy's humble beginnings; "Banjo Billy was Seymour's alter-ego, played by Larry. We wanted to devise a bad character, so we went out to the prop room at 9, which wasn't very extensive, and there was this old, stupid, orange John Philip Sousa-band coat hanging there. It just looked so ridiculous! And we found this funny cap with it's visor and the eyeglasses with the eyebrows and nose up on a shelf. Well, one of Larry's talents was playing the banjo, so we weaved all that stupid stuff thrown together. Banjo was always trying to sneak onto the show as 'The Banjo Whiz', horning his way into the act."

KHJ at the time was noted for it's poor equipment and weak film library, a little less than stellar station that must have been exceptionally pleased when Seymour began attracting viewers. Larry Vincent worked hard to refine his character and he'd also view a movie through a couple of times, as he and Thomas would request the film editor to go fast forward, taking it back, finding little snippets and lines they could play with (similar to Elvira's show in the early 80's). Then they would head out to Lucy's Cafe El Adobe, across from KHJ, channel 9, and scribble out their show. Sometimes just in time to get it on the Teleprompter and go into the studio to record that day--cutting it down to the wire.

Frank Casado, owner of the El Adobe said that he "would always give them a corner table to figure out their ideas and script for the show, they're so funny! They'd come over during the day or night, sometimes having their own spontaneous party. There was a St. Patrick's day --I can't even remember the year--when they came over with only a few people. And soon we had about 30 or 40 guys here who decided they were all Irish, doing pantomime and jokes! Vincent was a serious guy too, at times. He could get temperamental sometimes when the show wasn't going right, the way he wanted it to go. He was a hard working man who wanted his show to make it." It did. A great success! (This would be repeated again on KHJ with Elvira. In the first season, Elvira had the same writer and Larry Thomas as well, from Seymour's show. Back in the early 1980's, if you called KHJ's archives and asked for information on Seymour, you would routinely be met with a quizzical "Who?" and a statement that no such host ever existed. It seemed they couldn't afford to muck up the Elvira gravy train they had going at the time.)

Larry Thomas would later recall the numerous hours he worked with Larry Vincent at Lucy's El Adobe. "Frank had just knocked down the wall to next door's vacant store, opening a back room. Well, nobody would go in there because they didn't know about it, so Larry and I would sit for hours writing the show. The winter we were doing the show--it was so cold, just a nasty winter--the owner didn't have any heat in that back room. So, Frank brought out this little electric heater and put it by our feet. That thing would be cooking away! You know, it probably cost Frank more to run that heater than we spent sitting there drinking a couple glasses of wine or margaritas while working. The place was totally empty, just the two of us, and the Larry lapses into his Banjo Billy routine! It was just a very special time. It always comes back to me whenever I think of Larry and the show ...that damn heater at our feet!

"You're bigger fools than I took you for," he would rib his viewers, "if you've stayed up this late for this little. When they called this bomb the sleeper of the year, they must have had a Nytol commercial in mind. Frankly, the picture you are about to see is so bad that it could bring back radio. Please, I beg you, take a sleeping pill before settling down to watch MA & PA KETTLE MEET THE FLYING SAUCERS FROM THE WHITE LAGOON, AD 1927, introducing Mary Pickford and Fatty Arbuckle."

Seymour refined his style at KHJ. "Tonight I have a pair for you, Monster From The Surf and The House on Haunted Hill. I can never get any swell movies! You can stay here and watch these turkeys, if you like. I'm going to go crash the party down the street---!" Seymour was ahead of his time, humorously commenting on bad movies before commenting on such things, became the great American pastime. "I call them as I see them, and if there was a letter in the alphabet beyond Z, that's how I'd grade the flop you're about to see--SON OF SLIME MONSTER, formerly THE WIZARD OF OOZE".

Seymour's insults and comments on bad movies were like no other; he was witty and sharp. Larry Thomas remembers that "Larry could always get a chuckle. He just had this style about him! There wasn't much of a change between the on-screen Seymour and the off-screen Larry Vincent. He was just so natural in that part". (A favorite tactic was to show well-known stars in their bad horror movies). Seymour started having a large and loyal fan following. It let itself be heard one evening as Fright Night went on without Larry Vincent. Moona-Lisa (a precursor to Elvira, descended from Vampira), a busty Vamp type took over the hosting reigns for one evening. The KHJ switchboard lit up and angry letters of protest went far to prove that the talent of Larry Vincent as Seymour, an emaciated cynical ghoul, could even beat the voluptuous charms of the pretty vamp with spiders and coffins, all the things that Seymour broke away from.

Three years later, Seymour left KHJ, taking a better offer from KTLA, channel five. The show aired on Saturday afternoons at five and Sundays at one. At this time the show was called Monster Rally. KTLA had the ability to combine tape and film, which allowed for Seymour's wisecracks to be inserted into the movie. Larry Vincent's years of directorial experience paid off in the creating of many special effects that allowed Seymour himself to be inserted into the films as one of the characters. Tuning into "Dracula" on Seymour's show meant that when in the opera-box scene, Bela Lugosi is introduced to several people, he also got to meet Banjo Billy, Seymour's bright and cheery alter ego (who would be attired in a blazing-orange marching band outfit and a pair of glasses with a plastic nose attached) superimposed on an empty chair, complete with opera glasses. (Larry Vincent would move back to KHJ later to host Seymour Presents.)

Special thanks to RICK ALHADEFF for sending in this cool photo of his poster!

Seymour's cult continued to grow. (As a kid, I remember being green with envy when a teenage boy on my block put a "Seymour Presents" bumper sticker on his car!) T-shirts began popping up; a fan club sprouted with an official Seymour newsletter, The Slimy Wall Times. The fan club's certificate announced "To Whom It May Concern (and it won't). . . This is to certify that (have a friend help you spell your name) is a member in bad standing of Seymour's Society of FRINGIES. Because you enjoy such outstanding Horror Films as Attack of the Mushroom People and Monster from the Surf, etc. & etc., you are truly on the LUNATIC FRINGE and deserve all the help and recognition you can get. You are and idiot of the first order. Disrespectfully, Seymour." There were Seymour posters, showing him rummaging through a garbage can and he was in demand for personal appearances. Larry Vincent tried to merchandise Seymour but unfortunately most of these fell through. A proposed Seymour Magazine, a record album and a stage version of Dracula as a Seymouresque version of the famous vampire. He did syndicate Seymour in 1973 with Rhodes Productions. There were "Seymour Days" at Marineland and "The Seymour Show" at Knott's Berry Farm's Halloween Haunt (the first and second), and a West Coast "screamiere" of "Tales from the Crypt".

In speaking about his show in The Monster Times, Seymour mentioned that John Carradine would be an upcoming guest on the show and that he would give him the same treatment that he gave Vincent Price. "We were showing some Vincent Price film and I spent the first half talking about what a terrible job Vincent Price was doing in the film. . . I was really giving it to him and, then, the phone rang. It was Vincent Price, of course, and I began telling him what a great actor he was: 'Like I was just telling the people, Mr. Price, you certainly are delivering a splendid performance in this movie we're running!' Then, when we got off the phone, I went back to saying what a rotten film it was, et cetera, et cetera. . . "

Larry Vincent was as much fan as star, attending his first science fiction con back in 1973 (Equicon in Los Angeles). So facinated and enamored by the whole thing that he booked himself a room for the entire con. (He also traveled to the San Diego Comic Con that same year where they were to show The Witchmaker except the print didn't come back in time). Larry Vincent was always willing to plug the conventions on Seymour Presents, including them in bits on the show. It was his way of showing how much he loved the people around him, his fans.

To close, Seymour would utter his traditional line "I'd like to thank you. . . I'd like to, but that's not my style" In reality, to be loved by his fans and return that love was his style. 

"Actor Larry Vincent, 50, the mock-macabre host of late-night television horror shows, has died of cancer at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank. Vincent, who died Saturday, created a tuxedo-clad character called Seymour who introduced vintage science fiction and monster movies on KHJ's Saturday "Fright Night" show in 1971. He moved his show to KTLA four years later. The sunken-faced actor, dressed in a wide-brimmed black hat and cape over his tux, would comment sarcastically on the horror movies throughout the show, his voice often drowning out the dialogue in some two-reelers. Vincent's career began more than 30 years ago as an understudy to Kirk Douglas in a Broadway play called "Alice in Arms". He later worked in television in Indianapolis. He leaves his wife, Lynda, four daughters, Diane, Valerie, Beth, and Kathryn and a son Daniel."

A sentiment shared by all.

Click here to see Seymour's Certificate of Demerit

Click here to read Douglas McEwan's account of his days as a scriptwriter for Seymour.

Click on the links below to hear Seymour audio for the show.

Seymour 1

Seymour 2

Seymour 3

Seymour 4

Seymour 5

Seymour 6

Seymour 7