HIGH POINT CONFIDENTIAL: The demise of Count Shockula: Late-night horror host killed his predecessor

Oct. 21—DIE POINT, N.C. — Dearly beloved, we're gathered here today to pay our final respects to the late, not-so-great Count Shockula.

Alas, you may not even remember Count Shockula — his time here was admittedly short-lived — but longtime High Pointers surely will recall his successor, the ever-ghoulish, frightfully foolish Dr. Paul Bearer, a late-night horror movie host who built quite a following here in, ahem, Die Point, North Carolina (as the dreadful doctor jokingly called High Point).

Dr. Paul was also, among other things, Count Shockula's murderer, a crime he was never charged with, despite actually committing the heinous deed ON THE AIR.

The year was 1966, and High Point's WGHP-TV — like a lot of stations around the country — was showing late-night horror movies. WGHP packaged the movies in a showcase called "Shock Theatre," which featured an unimaginative host introducing cheesy horror movies and sci-fi flicks. Viewer reaction was, um, less than enthusiastic.

When the host left WGHP, a relatively new employee at the station — a horror movie fanatic named Dick Bennick — offered to take over "Shock Theatre," with the understanding that he would create a spooky character to be the host. Station officials agreed.

The character Bennick created was not Dr. Paul Bearer, though — not yet, at least. No, the character was a skeletal-looking fellow named Count Shockula, who wore tie and tails, an opera cape, white gloves, a white skullcap, ghastly makeup and a set of hideous teeth.

Unfortunately, Count Shockula didn't fare much better than his ho-hum predecessor, and after only a few weeks Bennick realized he needed an even better character. First, though, he had to get rid of the count, so he came up with a killer idea ... he launched a "How Do You Kill Count Shockula?" promotion, inviting viewers to suggest how the count should die.

"I already knew how I wanted to kill him," Bennick once told an interviewer, "because I knew where I could lay my hands on a magic trick where it looked like you were nailing a stake through someone's heart."

So that's what he did. He created Dr. Paul Bearer, a creepy undertaker who drove a stake through Count Shockula's heart and took over "Shock Theatre."

Dr. Paul was an immediate hit with viewers, broadcasting from a spooky-looking set — featuring a casket, a heavy, creaking door, and a ginormous spider web — that he designed and built at the old Sheraton Hotel, where WGHP's studios were located at the time.

The character wore a vintage tuxedo and had a sinister-looking face, complete with a goatee, exaggerated eyebrows, stringy hair parted right down the center, and a menacing scar on his cheek.

The kicker, though, was Bennick's artificial eye — the result of an automobile accident when he was younger — which he intentionally put in his eye socket at an odd angle to make himself look creepier.

True to his character, the corny host often told viewers he got his scar from the "used scar lot."

You see, there was only one thing Dr. Paul Bearer enjoyed more than a good pun, and that was a bad pun. He often spoke of his favorite soft drink (Choke), his favorite cereals (Lice Krispies and Mourn Flakes), his favorite fast food (a McDonald's "Bug Mac" hamburger), and his favorite magazine (Better Tombs & Gardens). He was once visited on the show by a vampire named, ahem, Fang Sinatra.

With his awful puns, campy humor and silly sight gags, Dr. Paul essentially turned "Shock Theatre" into "Shlock Theatre" ... and viewers ate it up.

He closed every show with his signature sign-off, "I'll be lurking for you."

Bennick enjoyed a scary-good run as Dr. Paul Bearer, hosting "Shock Theatre" locally from 1966 to 1971, when he took a job in Florida. He continued freelancing the show for WGHP for another year or so, then began doing a similar show for a station in St. Petersburg — or, as he called it, "St. Creaturesburg."

Bennick died in 1995, ending a nearly 30-year run as the longest-running horror-series host in the country. And more than half a century after he left the Triad, Dr. Paul Bearer's memory lives on in Die Point.

And as for Count Shockula, though, whose job Dr. Paul actually killed for?

Well, may he rest in pieces.

Sorry, but we think Dr. Paul would appreciate the pun.

jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579