- 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.

- [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)