The multi-talented John Stanley, host of KTVU’s “Creature Features” for nearly two decades, has been a publisher, columnist, TV host and, now, member of San Francisco State University’s Alumni Hall of Fame. In his long-running show on Channel 2, be brought top-tier guests and low-brow humor.

By Kevin Wing

If there is any appropriate time of year to check in with John Stanley, it is now. After all, this is
the time of year for Halloween ghosts and goblins, right? And, if you have lived in the Bay Area
for the better part of the last 50 years, you’ve undoubtedly heard of “Creature Features,” the
long-running late-night cult favorite that aired on KTVU Channel 2 for nearly two decades
between the early 1970s and the mid-‘80s.

Stanley hosted the show — which aired science fiction and horror movies late into Friday and Saturday nights — from 1979 to 1984, succeeding Bob Wilkins, the show’s original host who practically hand-picked him to take over hosting duties upon his retirement.

And as far as checking in with Stanley around Halloween, visiting with him right now is actually very timely. Not only has it been exactly 40 years since Stanley first graced Bay Area TV screens as the second host of Creature Features, something special happened to him Nov. 1.
That is the day he was inducted into the 2019 Alumni Hall of Fame for San Francisco State University at a dinner ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco. The Hall of Fame list is long and illustrious, including people from every industry, every walk of life. In Bay Area television, Stanley joins the likes of Fred Van Amburg, Dave McElhatton, Ken Bastida and Dennis O’Donnell, to
name a few. Stanley graduated from the school in 1962 with a bachelor of arts
degree in literature. Soon after, he would go on to become an entertainment critic for the San
Francisco Chronicle. His newspaper career lasted nearly three decades from the
1960s to the early ‘90s.

“I’m so truly honored by this,” Stanley said over lunch at a restaurant not far from his
home on the San Mateo County peninsula, where he lives minutes from the Pacific
Ocean. On the day of the interview for this story, Stanley, now 79, was looking dapper. He had just finished a photo session with a university photographer for the Alumni Hall
of Fame induction.

Stanley is also a noted publisher, having written 18 books since he started his own publishing company in 1981. His books include six editions of the long-running “Creature Features Movie Guide,” an A-to-Z
encyclopedia reviewing the genre’s horror, fantasy and science fiction flicks through the
decades. His others include 1977’s “Nightmare in Blood,” “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater” from
1987 and “John Stanley Meets Jack the Ripper and 25 Other Deadly Encounters” from 2011.

“I’ve been having a lot of fun through the years,” Stanley said. During his long tenure as an
entertainment critic for the Chronicle, along with his five years as Creature Features host,
Stanley has interviewed hundreds of celebrities and movie stars.

While Stanley was working steadily for the Chronicle, he was making a name for himself
as entertainment critic. He was already friends with Wilkins, who had been hosting
Creature Features for KTVU since 1971. Wilkins, in the mid-1970s, had become so popular on
Channel 2 that the station asked him to be its weatherman on its flagship 10 p.m. newscast.
Wilkins did that for a year or two before deciding he wanted to host only the late-night
Creature Features show. He was also traveling between Oakland and
Sacramento’s KTXL Channel 40, where he hosted a late-night show much like Creature
Features.

By the late 1970s, Wilkins wanted to ease his workload. Wanting to leave Creature Features, he
suggested to Stanley that he audition for the show. In 1979 Stanley took the
reins, serving as the late night ambassador for Channel 2’s foray of late-night monster flicks and
horror movies.

The Creature Features set at KTVU looked much like a dungeon of sorts. Of course, it did. How
could it not, with coffins and cobwebs and everything you can imagine in set design to make it
look scary and frightening at 11:30 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday. While the show was known for
its horror-like persona and midnight-movie madness, it was also known for its guests, Stanley
said. The guest list ranged from celebrities and movie stars to locals who built robots in
their garage or knitted a sweater big enough to fit King Kong to stars like Dracula’s Christopher
Lee and the casts of Star Trek and Star Wars.

“It was on Christmas Eve, I got a phone call from the publicity department of Channel 2 to tell
me that I had been picked to replace Bob because he was going to leave the station,” Stanley
said. “It was a shock to me, because that had never been my dream to be a horror host.
“I guess because of my contacts through the San Francisco Chronicle, where I was an
entertainment writer, they felt that I was kind of an expert on horror films and the science
fiction genre,” Stanley said.

Under Stanley, Creature Features became goofier and more literate at the same time. He
interviewed literary heavyweights such as Ray Bradbury and Psycho author Robert Bloch, while
the “mini-movies” he produced for the show had him getting strangled by mummies, demented
scarecrows, and even Chuck Norris. Stanley may have had authorial aspirations, but he wasn’t
above taking pratfalls.

The show was an opportunity for Stanley to share his love of movies, especially from the
science fiction and horror genres.

Though the show has been gone for 35 years, it lives on in Stanley and all of his books.

Kevin Wing is senior correspondent for “Off Camera,” a monthly publication of the San Francisco/Northern California chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He is also a chapter governor.