Shock Theatre!

When I was around 11 or 12 years old, this ridiculous-looking man and his even sillier-looking sidekick completely dominated my Saturday nights. Dr. Shock (actually the station's programming director) was the host of a local television station's attempt at being creative with some unused airtime and a few cheesy horror movies. Add in Dingbat, a stupid bat puppet who spoke in a retarded hillbilly accent, and you had pure Southern, half-assed genius. So great did the the pair's influence become they were asked to numerous grocery store openings and are directly responsible for local weirdos Dr. Shock and the Go-Go Monsters:

Every city during the 70s had some form of creature feature horror theatre cheese-fest. (A Google search reveals a frightening number of Dr. Shocks alone). Spending Saturday night learning to be a smartass by laughing and ridiculing some clown on TV was a very cool way to spend that time in youth when you were too old to play with toys anymore, but too young to get drunk or do drugs. Oh, yeah. Shock Theatre also used a Black Sabbath song as their theme music! Ya-Hoo!