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WATCH C2E2: Svengoolie reflects on 40 years of horror hosting
If you don't know who Svengoolie is — skeleton pin, rubber chicken, top hat and all — you're probably not a horror fan.
The legendary host (or is it ghost?) also known as Rich Koz dropped by the SYFY WIRE Live Stage at C2E2 2019 to scare up some memories that have been haunting him from his 40 years on screen... even he can't believe his show and character have actually been lurking on TV for that long.
"People always ask me 'when you started, did you see you were gonna be doing it this long?' and I'm thinking, when I first started I felt lucky to have a job," he confessed to SYFY WIRE's Jackie Jennings.
Svengoolie still considers himself terribly lucky to still be doing this, never mind that he's collected so many fans, including Mark Hamill and Gilbert Gottfried, over the decades. He's dug up an entire graveyard's worth of lessons and chickens since he first went on air in 1979. He has a great respect for the genre and his audience, who he always talks to as if he's sitting on the same sofa they're watching from. Not that a guy in Alice Cooper makeup is your typical houseguest, but you get the point.
He also gets asked to sign a lot of rubber chickens. This is Svengoolie we're talking about here.
Something his phantom legions of fans have probably been dying to find out is what's his favorite part of making the show: He can't get enough of the crew that makes even him laugh. Something else that gets him every time is the parade of song parodies that sound suspiciously like the original songs, but with lyrics that body-snatch the original words and just happen to fit in really well and make fun of whatever movie is on.
Does he think he'll ever bury the character? Unless you've heard otherwise, Svengoolie is immortal.
Watch on to see the creeptacular highlights from forty years of scares in forty minutes!
Side note: One of our SYFY contributing editors (ahem) has had that exact same skeleton pin for many Halloweens.
This article was contributed to by Elizabeth Rayne.
