Count Floyd
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Count Floyd is a fictional character featured in television and played by comic actor Joe Flaherty. He is a fictional horror host in the tradition of TV hosts on local television in the United States and Canada.
The Count Floyd character originated on the Canadian sketch show SCTV, but also later appeared on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley and Cartoon Planet, as well as Rush’s Grace Under Pressure tour.
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[edit] The concept
As originally conceived, Count Floyd was the alter-ego of another SCTV character: Floyd Robertson, co-anchor of the SCTV News sketch, a parody of CTV National News host, Lloyd Robertson. The premise was that employees at this very low-budget TV station had to double up on jobs. Floyd Robertson may also have been a member of the "5 Neat Guys" vocal group, but this is never made explicitly clear.
He was the host of SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theater, wearing a cheap vampire costume and speaking in a bad stereotypical Transylvanian vampire accent. Oddly, although he was supposed to be a vampire, he would also open each show howling like a werewolf, presumably indicating that Floyd Robertson had only the vaguest of ideas what a vampire was. Near the end of a howl, he would break off disarmingly into a weak chuckle.
Although a parody of the typical 1950s and 1960s local TV horror hosts, the real-life hosts were often themselves so silly and “over the top” that Count Floyd was not really too far off the mark.
The name Monster Chiller Horror Theater was taken from the Chiller Theater, a longtime local horror film show on WIIC (now WPXI television in Pittsburgh, Joe Flaherty's hometown. While host Bill Cardille aka "Chilly Billy" was nothing like Count Floyd, his Dracula-like persona may have been based on another Pittsburgh TV horror show host. The 1958-59 Friday night program "The Thirteenth Hour," broadcast over KDKA Channel 2 featured the vampire-like "Igor," actually KDKA staff announcer George Eisenhauer who bears no small resemblance to Count Floyd.
[edit] Running gags
The main running gag of the sketch was that the station would usually provide truly awful films for the show that were not in the least bit scary (including such genres as softcore pornography with a horror theme and Swedish Independent), forcing Floyd to struggle to hype them to his mostly juvenile audience. (“Vow, kids...vasn’t it SCARY vhen the vaitress put ketchup on those french fries?”) He would also show cheesy 3D horror films as a means to sell 3D glasses which would vary in price from show to show. The 3D effect of the films was merely a sad attempt to create a realistic effect, as it usually consisted of the actors getting extremely close to the camera and lunging the object of 3D emphasis (or their own faces) back and forth at the lens.
[edit] Related works
During the Grace Under Pressure tour by Rush, a video played on the rear screen of Count Floyd introducing The Weapon, “a scary song with real special effects” which could only be enjoyed if the listener was wearing 3D glasses. 3D glasses were actually given to the fans during the Toronto shows of the tour, most likely because these shows were filmed for the Grace Under Pressure tour video. An edited audio portion of the Count Floyd introduction was included on the single version of The Weapon, that actually appeared on Rush’s Signals release of 1982.
One audio recording, Count Floyd (RCA MFL1-8501), was released in 1982 featuring tracks such as "Reggae Christmas Eve in Transylvania" and "The Gory Story of Duane and Debbie".[1] This was the only SCTV related audio recording apart from the Bob and Doug McKenzie discography.
In 1988 new Count Floyd skits were made for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, in which The Count Floyd Show was Ed Grimley’s favorite TV show that he never wanted to miss. In Count Floyd's Scary Stories (the only live-action segment of The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley), Count Floyd would be seen in a television studio set attempting to entertain children. This appeared to be more of a nod to Bozo the Clown than horror hosts he is used to mocking, possibly an additional factor to the boredom of the children he is shown performing for. In his appearances on Cartoon Planet, he would be introduced by either Space Ghost, Zorak or Brak, and the same segments from the Ed Grimley cartoon were shown.
