Sammy Terry– Photo courtesy of George Wallwaker.
If you grew up in Indianapolis in the 1960s, 1970s, or even 1980s, you probably remember Sammy Terry. Before cable, before movies came out on VCR or DVD, before Netflix and Hulu, if you wanted to see the classic (or classically awful) horror movies out there, you had to hope that your local television station had spent money on Universal’s “shock theater” package, and put together a low budget midnight movie show, complete with creepy host. The local station here was WTTV4, the show was Nightmare Theater, and the horror host was Sammy Terry, played by Bob Carter. Sammy’s impact didn’t stop in the Indy area (I was wowed by this tribute at Horror Hosts and Creature Features), but this is where he started, and when Bob Carter died on June 30, it was clear what a major influence he was on so many of us who grew up to love scary movies (and books). Sammy Terry’s official website can be found here, if you’re interested.
Mike Redmond, an author, humorist, journalist, and speaker who grew up in the Indianapolis area (and still lives here) agreed to share a tribute to Sammy Terry he had written here.
Bob Carter Is Dead, But Not Sammy
By Mike Redmond
The news came in the form of a text that said, simply, “Sammy Terry died.”
How sad. And how wrong. If you took a look at the World Wide Interweb thingie in the days after the story broke, with comments by the hundreds on Facebook, you would have seen that Sammy Terry was more alive than ever in the memories of all us kids who peeked from behind sofa cushions (or, in the case of my brother, the sofa itself), when “Nightmare Theater” was showing on WTTV Channel 4.
The death of Bob Carter, who created and played Sammy from 1962-1989, brings a couple of ideas to mind.
The first is how much fun it used to be to watch a scary movie. Of course, my definition of scary has little in common with what passes for a scary movie today, unfortunately.
I’m a big fan of the classic monsters– Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy. Why? Because despite the visual impact of the monsters themselves, their movies rely on your mind to do most of the scaring. Blood and gore– the stock in trade for scary movies for the last three decades or so– aren’t necessary. The sight of the Frankenstein monster coming to life or Dracula’s riveting stare was more than enough to send a kid’s imagination into high gear. One of the greatest– and spookiest– shots in any classic monster movie has to be in The Mummy, after Im-Ho-Tep comes back to life. As he shuffles away, the camera fixes on a piece of linen trailing after him out of the room, and you just know bad things are going to start happening.
Bob’s death (I met him a couple of times so I’m taking the liberty of calling him Bob) also brings to mind how much we’ve lost with the death of local entertainment television. Kiddie shows like “Cowboy Bob’s Corral,” “Janie,” and “Harlow Hickenlooper” were just the beginning. Remember Jim Gerard’s interview show? I always thought that was one of the best things about being home from school.
Oh, well. That’s why we have memories, I guess. Which gets us back to Sammy Terry.
Bob Carter, the man who played spooky ol’ Sammy on Channel 4 during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, might have gone, but Sammy himself? He’ll be around forever, or at least as long as guys like me remember his spooky laugh, his spider George, and the creepy-campy fun of the classic monster movies he loved.
— This tribute first appeared in the July 16, 2013 issue of Current in Carmel.
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