- On this edition of "ArtEffects".

Meet the Man Behind "Zomboo's House of Horror Movies".

- I believe that television was invented to entertain people.

(suspenseful music) - [Beth] Discovering art on every street corner.

- And so it's just a wide variety of designs that get placed throughout the city.

(bright music) - [Beth] blackwater Photography.

- My whole goal is to help science.

The other thing is make people aware of this environment because we don't know what's there and it all has a purpose.

- [Beth] And celebrating what was once a forgotten children's book.

- It deals with educating children from the standpoint of humanity.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "ArtEffects".

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "ArtEffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Meyers, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

- Hello, I'm Beth MacMillan and welcome to "ArtEffects".

For 20 years, "Zomboo's House of Horror Movies" has graced the airways on Kolo channel eight, the local ABC affiliate.

The show's creepy yet comical host Zomboo is the creation of Frank Leto.

How did Frank bring Zomboo to life and how has the show maintained its cult following?

Let's find out.

(spooky music) - I grew up on Long Island.

I watched Chiller Theater on Channel 11 in New York and Zacherley was the host.

That's when I became interested in horror movies and science fiction movies.

When it was time to go to college I decided that I wanted to major in film and television.

- [Announcer] Do you like scary movies?

Well, do you?

- Hello everybody.

Boys and ghouls, mummies and daddies.

It's your old pal Zomboo welcoming you to "Zomboo's House of Horror Movies".

"Zomboo's House of Horror Movies" is basically a showcase for public domain movies.

Public domain horror movies are interesting because it is over such a wide spectrum of movies.

We had movies like, "Monster From A Prehistoric Planet", "The Brain That Wouldn't Die", and a whole slew of movies from outer space, like, "Killers From Space", or, "Phantom from Space".

And they were all pretty much done in the fifties and sixties.

And they are public domain because they were either never registered with the Copyright Office or when the copyrights expired, they were not renewed.

(spooky music) Kolo is channel eight in Reno, Nevada and it is the ABC affiliate.

When the opportunity to do the show came up, the station asked me to come up with an idea for something to run after the 11 o'clock news.

Ooh, this week's movie is one of the scariest movies ever made.

We decided that we would do a skit in the beginning of the show and then during the movie we would take the character Zomboo and insert him in certain scenes where we could come up with a clever line or a clever visual.

- I see you are quite well.

- I bet you see a lot of things.

(suspenseful music) Zomboo is the zombie vampire that lives in the castle in the mist.

Because it came off of Count Zombozo, we decided to make him like a clown.

The Zomboo makeup is basically clown white which is Ben Nye White Makeup.

And then you take the Ben Nye Black Makeup and do the highlights on it.

You get some cheap lipstick and you draw the blood on there.

Zomboo has a top hat.

He has a wizards robe with a capelet.

It was made by upholstery fabric that we found in a new age store.

He has a bunch of characters that stop by his castle.

I wonder who's that the door.

We had a character, Miss Transylvania.

We also had a character, Bianca the Rack Girl.

Paul Dancer plays Officer Not So Friendly.

The angry man behind the door, he's in almost every show, played Werewolfie.

Working at a television station, it's a lot of fun and interesting because so many people say, "Oh, I want to be on your show, I wanna help you out."

So we had a janitor.

He became Quasi the Hunchback and he would interact with Zomboo too.

Zomboo is a victim of circumstances.

It means I'm in the wrong house.

And Miss Transylvania is trying to straighten him out.

Or Officer not so friendly is trying to take Zomboo to jail where he belongs.

Try it again.

So you're doing, okay, so you're doing the thumbs.

We had a lot of talented people work on the show.

David Allan was a very talented cameraman.

He did a lot of the effects in Light Wave and in After Effects.

I had editors that worked for me.

I had script writers and they all wanted to get involved with the show because it was an outlet to let your creative juices flow.

We did everybody else's work for the eight hours that we worked our regular jobs.

And then afterwards, "Okay, let's go work on Zomboo."

You've gotta have a release and you've gotta have something fun.

And this is, to me, this is the fun part.

I tell people now, when I go to the nursing home, I'm gonna have the coolest stories and a lot of those are going to involve Frank and this set behind me and Zomboo.

And action.

- All kinds of people all ages watch the show because bad horror movies, which are basically the public domain horror movies, people like to watch them because they're not only semi-scary, but they're bad and they're funny and they can escape into this realm of this show and have a laugh and get on with life with a smile on their face.

- To learn more, visit zomboo.com.

When you ride your bike, drive or ride the bus in Reno, you'll often pass utility boxes on many street corners.

A utility box is usually gray and unremarkable.

But to many local artists, a utility box is a blank canvas.

Let's learn how the city of Reno has found a way to splash some color in unexpected places.

(bright music) - The Art Signals project started back in 2008 with just a few select signal boxes in downtown Reno.

You know, they're kind of the unsightly utility boxes that have to exist.

We have about 50 boxes total right now.

They are for sure down in the city center and all the way up Virginia Street.

But on every corner that there is a utility box in the neighborhoods and in our downtown city center, we are trying to make sure that we get artwork on them.

It's a wide variety of designs and so the city doesn't actually dictate what goes on the boxes.

We put a call out to artists and they submit proposals.

And so it's just a wide variety of designs that get placed throughout the city.

(bright music) - My name's Kendel Leslie and I'm a local artist in Reno, Nevada.

So my style, I would say it's very colorful and whimsical and a lot of my work focuses on animals and nature.

Lots of plants usually.

Usually the backgrounds are more blocks of color and different patterns, and the main focus is going to be either the animal or the plants.

(bright music) The first signal box I did, it is focused on Nevada wildlife and Nevada scenery.

So that one includes a coyote, a jackrabbit and a pronghorn antelope.

(bright music) My second one was more focused on just plants and really bright colors and patterns.

(bright music) This one's going to be a jackalope and it's more of a space, kind of mythical fun design.

(bright music) My first step was to kind of get a rough sketch of what I was going to do onto the signal box.

I then went in and added blocks of color and then I'd go in and kind of add more details and just build up that detail until I got to the very end.

And usually with all of my art the last step is kind of adding outlines, adding fine details to just make it pop.

(bright music) - The thing that I feel most connected to about it is that it's giving young artists in our community exposure for their work and it is giving them an opportunity to work with the city on a public art project.

I think public art is becoming more and more prevalent.

This project is scaled in a way that we can give a lot of opportunity to a lot of artists - Working on these signal boxes and having my work shown more publicly has really made me want to keep pursuing that and keep trying to share my art just because it's so great how the community responds to it and how much it brings people together.

Having art like this around Reno, it really lets artists express themselves and I think it's really fun to just drive around and you see murals and you see the signal boxes around town and it just kind of brightens up the city.

(bright music) - There's a call for artists each spring for the next round of Art Signals.

To learn more, visit For decades, Linda Ianniello has been capturing photographs underwater.

Recently, she has experienced blackwater dives, taking images of small, fascinating creatures at night and capturing tiny yet exquisite features.

(somber music) - People are in awe at what's out there, I think.

And I think they're also in awe at how small it is.

You know, everything is, the vast majority is an inch or smaller and so it's like eye-opening at the detail and the fins they sing have and the filaments and everything and how the gorgeous colors, some of them have just stunning colors and you wonder why.

There's a sea butterfly that has appendages that look like leaves, absolutely like leaves.

So things like that, you know, I think are fascinating and you get people thinking about stuff like that.

And that plus the pretty pictures helps.

(somber music) My name is Linda Ianniello.

I am an underwater photographer.

I've been diving for over 30 years, taking pictures.

I am also the co-author of "Blackwater Creatures" which is a book devoted to the subjects found on blackwater dives in southeast Florida.

Myself and Susan Mears have developed this book for educational purposes so people doing these dives will understand and learn about what they're seeing.

I usually say it's the most challenging underwater photography there is.

Because of that, you can't stay in one position.

Your your subject is constantly moving.

They don't wanna be seen.

So you come along with these big lights shining on them and they may book to the surface or book to the bottom and they very seldom freeze.

So, you're chasing the subject and basically what I end up doing is shooting probably 20 or 30 shots until I lose it.

(mellow music) Every one of these has eyes.

And it took me a while to realize that, "Oh there's eyes," and if you're shooting something with eyes, you should get the eyes in focus.

Well, I swear these little guys know and you shine your lights on them and they turn their back and they're very small.

The shell portion, the center portion is gonna be like the size of your little fingernail.

So it's really hard to know if you're shooting the eyes or the butt.

So this is another example where you take a whole bunch of shots and try for the eyes and try to get them in focus and do your best.

- All right, Linda's got her camera.

She's ready.

She's going.

(water splashing) - These creatures are small.

They're one inch or less.

A lot of them are transparent, so they need a lot of light to take the pictures and to focus.

They're hard to focus.

So I'm hunting with those lights and using them to focus.

I just focus on the stuff that's in front of me, 'cause I shoot everything.

I'm shooting all of the little creatures I can find.

It's not like muck diving where the subject's gonna sit there and let you take your pictures.

These subjects are moving constantly.

It's gorgeous.

They're just gorgeous.

So there is a definitely a degree of art in these subjects.

The scientists have been a tremendous help because we started out, we didn't know anything about these and there were no books on blackwater subjects except for a few scientific ones were drawings and it's very hard to correlate a drawing to a live animal.

A couple of the fish scientists started telling us what they were, and three or four of them would start discussions and then eventually someone would say, "Okay, this is a species."

So it evolved with the tremendous help from the scientists.

And then once we got, you know, a couple years into it, started communicating directly with scientists.

And I provide images for scientific papers.

Anybody that wants any of my images for papers or publications, whatever.

So we built up this rapport with fish scientists and a lot of gelatinous zooplankton people.

So we've got pretty good ideas on those kinds of things.

My whole goal is to help science.

The other thing is make people aware of this environment because we don't know what's there and it all has a purpose.

From the very beginning, I wanted to know what I was shooting and I started keeping pretty good records of everything that the scientists were telling us so that I would know looking back what that was and who said it and et cetera.

When we were doing these dives, about a year or two in, people were coming and doing the dives and they were excited, but they get back on the boat and they say, "I don't know what any of it was."

You know, "I saw all these things but I don't know what it was."

And so we started thinking, "Okay, we've got, we're starting to build up enough images and enough information that we could put together a book that would help."

And specifically for our area, you know, it's strictly things found here.

And I would write out little information about things.

So it's not, I didn't want just pictures.

I wanted information and education.

So the more attention I paid to these, I started to build up this resource.

And so we thought, "Okay, we can do this, we can do this."

And it's worked out.

I think it's helped a a lot of people, new people, and it's helped people maintain their interests that they, that yes, they can learn about these subjects.

And it's fun on the boat too, now that, you know, people come up from a, a dive and I talk to them and I say, "What did you see?"

You know, "This is a test, what did you see?"

And we go get the book and figure it out.

So it's been very challenging, but it's been productive and I think hopefully it served a purpose.

(somber music) - Discover more at lindaiphotography.com.

In the 1930s, poet Langston Hughes and artist Elmer W. Brown worked together on a children's book called, "The Sweet and Sour Animal Book."

The book was forgotten for decades until a group of high school students in Cleveland, Ohio shined a light on this book and its collaboration.

- {Sabine] Langston Hughes, a noted poet, author and activist was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

- Elmer Brown was a well-known African-American artist and illustrator.

He worked at the Karamu House, he was educated there also at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

He didn't graduate from the Cleveland Institute of Art but he made some important murals here in Cleveland.

And also he was the first African American to work at American Greetings.

It was at Karamu house that he came into contact with Langston Hughes - Between 1936 and 1939, sometimes called the Cleveland Years, Langston Hughes had a close connection with Karamu House and even premiered three of his plays here.

During that time, he got to know the people, the black artists who were active at the Karamu House, including visual artist Elmer W. Brown.

Brown and Hughes developed a friendship.

It was around then in about 1936 that Hughes and Brown got together to create a children's picture book.

Hughes wrote 21 poems and Brown created illustrations.

"The Sweet and Sour Animal Book" contains 21 poems.

And for each of the poems except one, there were two illustrations that were done by Brown.

They are lovely, whimsical verses about various animals for children that literally have the sweet and the sour in them.

"A lion in the plane roaming free is happy as ever a lion can be.

A lion in a zoo shut up in a cage lives a life of smothered rage."

Scholar Michelle H. Martin, who wrote the book, "Brown Gold", the definitive book of African American children's picture books, really feels that this is an illusion specifically to the plight of African Americans.

I think one of the reasons that Hughes still resonates today so much is because in spite of such adversity, there is that optimistic thread and expressed in such a poignant, but very direct way.

- Langston Hughes tried very, very, very hard to get the book published for many decades.

- It seems like publishers liked it, but objected to things like the expense and perhaps racism was a factor in it not being initially produced.

And the fact that nobody knew about them and that this wasn't our story to sit on that we really needed to get the story out there.

It kind of lit a fire that I just knew I needed to get the story out there so that people could know that this amazing Cleveland artist worked with this internationally known author.

For me, it's a great footnote in the history of Cleveland art as well as children's literature.

- When I first heard about it, it was like I felt like I had been let in on the secret.

- Currently, under curation is a program that, it's run by the Cleveland Museum of Art, and it's through the Cleveland Foundation's Arts Mastery Initiative.

And it is meant to give teens real world experiences of doing exhibitions, community-based exhibitions but really upping the bar, having them really high quality exhibitions.

But it really is about this real world experience.

(upbeat music) - Oh, it's so cool.

Like this is the first time I'm seeing the pictures up on the walls.

- So what this exhibition is doing for the first time is looking back to that approximately 1936 manuscript and using those drawings, bringing Hughes's verses and Brown's illustrations back together on the walls in the gallery.

- It's like you're walking into the book, like you're holding a part of history, that not only a part of history that everyone knows about, one that no one knows about.

Part of what I appreciate about his art is that in the pictures, you can tell it's like drawn for children.

It's these very animated cartoonish pictures.

But then if you look at pictures like his World War II picture, his painting, it's a completely different style.

(upbeat music) - He was involved in a style of art making that was oriented to representing people in ways that would be accessible to the general population.

- This has a really important place in the history of children's literature as one of the very first if not the first children's picture books both illustrated and written by African American artists that doesn't depict them in a racist or stereotypical way.

- The fact that Langston Hughes wanted to create a book for children that did not have the kinds of racist stereotypes that so much children's literature throughout the 20th century had.

And so to have this kind of material and connect that to the backstory was really, really very important.

(upbeat music) It deals with educating children from the standpoint of humanity.

The kinds of things that children need to learn are the kinds of skills that they will engage as they grow up as adults.

Learning about how it is that life isn't necessarily fair.

Sometimes you have disappointments, sometimes you have triumphs.

The fact that you have to be self-reliant and learning about that is something children's books do.

And so "Sweet and Sour" is really important in providing those kinds of lessons.

(upbeat music) - I think it is delightful to behold.

It is such a thrill to get the story out there.

It's been many years in the making and hopeful that it finds a bigger platform.

- Learn more at artneo.org.

And that wraps it up for this edition of "ArtEffects".

If you want to watch new "ArtEffects" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel and don't forget to keep visiting pbsreno.org to watch complete episodes of "ArtEffects".

Until next week, I'm Beth MacMillan.

Thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for "ArtEffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors, Meg and Dillard Meyers, in memory of Sue McDowell, the Carol Franc Buck Foundation, and by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(upbeat music)