This Week's Travel Reading (Shocktober Edition)

While it's good to have a book devoted to Chicago's first official horror host, Mad Marvin (a.k.a. Terry Bennett), much of this territory was already covered in Chicago Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie by Ted Okuda and Mark Yurkiw.

Also, Don Glut includes a couple of huge factual errors--he claims the late Jerry G. Bishop "abandoned" his role as the original Svengoolie (if, by "abandoned," he means "was let go by WFLD and moved on to other things," then Glut is correct); and he claims the current Svengoolie, Rich Koz, has been at WFLD since 1979 (he was there for six-plus years, but was let go in 1986 and has been part of the WCIU family of stations since New Year's Eve 1994).

Still, Glut does bring a personal perspective to the topic. He saw the programs when they aired live in the late 1950s (no footage is known to exist) and met Terry Bennett and his wife, Joy. He also had access to various documents related to the show, so it's a somewhat more in-depth look than Chicago Horror Movie Shows provided.