If you're from the shallow end of the Generation X swimmin' hole, you may not be familiar with Dr. San Guinary. However, if your one of the first Gen-X gerbils allowed into the Habitrail O' Life here in the Council Bluffs-Omaha area, you may yet remember the good doctor. Green skin, bloody lab coat, and the ever present "ah-ahhh!" cackle used to be the highlight of Saturday evening for me as a child in Council Bluffs, and nothing would send shivers of excitement as hearing that "haunted house" sound effect opening sequence , the words CREATURE FEATURE appearing on the screen. It used to be what I lived for. I wasn't the only kid how thought that. Most of the gang I hung around with on McBride St. in Council Bluffs in the early seventies thought that way too.

Before cable, VCR's and Saturday Night Live, local network affiliates had the job of filling their own late Saturday night scheduling. In the late fifties, Universal Studio's offered their lineup of horror films package for local t.v. studio's to air late-night. Referred to as the "Shock" package, it was picked up by KMTV in 1958, and hosted by "Gregore" till 1961. The sixties would see the passing of the horror movie host torch from Gregore to a multiple number of hosts. Unfortunately, none of them lasted very long. When "Star Trek" episodes became available in syndication, KMTV started showing them in the late Saturday evening slot, along with "The Best Of Carson" and held the evening in last place behind the other two local affiliates.

IN 1971, KMTV had to do something to reverse ther sagging ratings they were getting, so they came to Producer-Director John Jones with the idea of reviving the old CREATURE FEATURE format of the Gregore days. Jones created the persona of "Dr. San Guinary" and by February of that year, KMTV went from third place on Saturday night to holding 47% of the viewing audience. By September of '71, CREATURE FEATURE held a solid 50% of the viewing audience in that tme slot.

The doctor was in, and EVERYONE wanted to see him.

The show (and Dr. San Guinary) grew in popularity over the following years. The show's popularity allowed it to grow into a two-movie format (subsequentially renaming the show CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE for a while) and it because the local "hip show" to make a personal appearance on. Local and national celebrities would make stops to talk with the doctor, and thanks to the quick wit of San Guinary, they usually left either laughing, screaming or singing. Some of the well known celebrities who made an appearance on the show were James Drury of 'THE RIFLEMAN" tv series, Mavis and the Sherif from the old C.W. McCaw "OLD HOME bread" commercials from the seventies, several local newscasters and even Mayor Gene Leahe made visits to Doc's lab.

Dr. San Guinary was a unique character, mainly because Jones was a unique man. Jones came to KMTV in 1965 as a "floor man" and camera person, and was known around the satation for having an unusual sense of humor. This came through in his performance as the funny, strangely hip, ghoulish doctor. When Dr. San Guinary talked to you... regardless of your age...he was NEVER talking down to you. You were always treated as if you were on the same level with Doc San, which as any kid can tell you, is quite a refreshing change of pace in a world dominated by adults. He was also a head of his time for a lot of reasons, and very honest and upfront with his audience. If the mvie stunk, he TOLD you so...no bullshit hype, no condensending manner... just an honest opinion. It was as if he felt personally responsible for the movie quality, and took great pride in sharing classic movies with you or trashing bad ones. The experience of the show could salvage any bad movie. For example, when "Horror on Party Beach" aired, San Guinary did voice-overs, making snappy comments all throughout the show (ala MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000) or even showing up during movies ala "chroma key" or "blue screen" effects. Again, during "Horror on Party Beach", the doctor could be seen running across the screen with the actors in the film, screaming as the monsters attack!

Dr. San Guinary was what every boy in Omaha/Council Bluffs wanted to be...cool, hip and not afraid to say it like it is. While he was considered cool amongst the kids and teens, he was also known for his charitable work in helping raise money for worthy causes. He cared about people, and in doing so, showed a lot of us "lunkheads" who watched the show just how important it was to help each other out. Somehow, while everyone watched CREATURE FEATURE for the movies and for the laughs, we somehow came away from the experience better people, understabnding that while Dr. San Guinary was certainly a fun guy, there were important things we need to take care of in real life. Mainly, helping each other out.

Considering how much of a lunkhead I was, I would have to say that was a pretty amazing feat. Heh.

The show was *still* increasing it's share of viewers when SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE premiered in 1975. KMTV shoved CREATURE FEATURE to 12 midnight in order to air SNL, and in doing so, cutting off the audience growth (remember, VCR's were not to appear for home use for a few years yet, and if you wanted to watch anything, you had to make time to watch or you missed it). For the next six years, while the ratings for the show started to decline, Dr. San Guinary was still a hugely popular celebrity who continued to make appearances at a dizzying number of local events. The loyal fans remained with Jones and the show for the remainder of his tenure as the doctor.

By 1981, things were changing. SNL was still thriving, cable was pulsing like a heartbeat in the homes of most Council Bluffs-Omaha homes, offering more movies and shows on Saturday night than were ever possible from the local t.v. stations, and CREATURE FEATURE was going through a downward trend. Most of the classic horror movies Dr. San Guinary ran were being replaced by some gawd-awful British made- for-television movies, which were NOT worth sitting through (and of which the Doctor would tell the audience "Don't waste yer time...it's BAAAD..."), and in yet another unexplained move, KMTV moved CREATURE FEATURE further back to 12:30am (sometimes 1:00am) in order to run BENNY HILL right after SNL. Things were looking dim for the show, but Jones was still there, Dr. San Guinary still was meeting local celebrities who were talking about local events and even though by this point, his original dungeon/laboratory set had been taken away, he still could get his audience to laugh and feel good.

Unfortunately, by 1981, Jones left the show due to illness. For the next two years, CREATURE FEATURE ran without a host until it's cancellation in 1983. I remember the date approximately because an odd paradox with my own personal life; The year Dr. San Guinary first aired was my first year of elementary school, and the last year of CREATURE FEATURE was my senior year of high school. It was odd to think that something which I had grown up with like an old friend was suddenly not there.

Dr. San Guinary would still be around, helping out with the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon raising money for MD, but his appearances would lessen over the course of the eighties. About '87, there was hope. Rumors spread along the Omaha fans that Jones was considering recreating San Guinary and CREATURE FEATURE. Most of us were waiting with baited breath, hoping to see the return of the show that, for many of us, was held close to our hearts. Then, in '88. just as we were still waiting the revival, our hearts fell as news reached us about John. John Jones passed away, leaving behind family and friends and a lot of people who he never met, but who admired him all the same.

John Jones... and Dr. San Guinary ... left us for good.

This is not an easy thing, especially for me, who, quite frankly, considered The doctor and Jones as a local hero. MY hero.

As a kid, growing up in the early seventies, I was interested in a lot of things: Comic books, WackyPackages Sticker sets, Monster Movies, airplane models, SciFi Movies just to name a few. The gang of kids I played with on McBride Ave. also were into those things. One of the ultimate tests of coolness... the Olympic Silver Medal of Grooviness, as it were... was being able to tell a good gory story that was good enough to make the girls puke for blocks around. Well, here you are, your between 6-11 years old and there are fifteen kids. You have limited reading experiences to draw upon outside of the comic books , and you want the older kids to look at you in abject horror long enough for you to win the game hands down. You wanted to win soooo badly and completely that these older kids would WANT you to be "buds" with them, so you too could share in the shoplifting of candy activities or the sharing of their father's Playboy ceremony. So how do you do this? You tell the grossest story possible. How do you draw upon a source? Simple! Take last week's CREATURE FEATURE, and embellish it to taste!

Well, it sounded good, except as you started telling the story, one of the other lunkheads would speak up and say " HEY! That was on Creature Feature last week you moron!!", because, like you, they were huge CREATURE FEATURE fans. Some kids would look at me with disdain and bitterness, but I did not care. You see, once someone would mention CREATURE FEATURE OR Dr. San Guinary, the conversation would immediately go into talking about monster movies the guys had seen on the show and the antics of our hero, the good Doctor. The course of discussion would move many of us to do our best "Dr. San Guinary" impersonation for the fascination (and probably fear) of the neighbors around us. I did not care, because besides the fact that I loved the show, I knew that our competition had somehow switched from "who could tell the grossest story" to "who had watched more episodes of CREATURE FEATURE"... which, by the way, was the GOLD Olympic Medal of Grooviness amongst us neophile world movers and shakers.

I usually never won, because my father had a knack for catching me sitting up late on Saturday evening, causing me to miss a number of shows. I had a plan that I would implement every Saturday evening. Around 6:00pm, when dad would arrive home with the evening's treat from McDonalds or Red Barn. I would eat my sandwich, mouth half full, mentioning to dad that he "..looked tired..." and that maybe he should to bed early.

He would grumble a bit as he ate, his eye fixed on "Emergency" as he picked french fries off of his t.v. tray around 8:30pm, on schedule, dad would fall to sleep, the dog perched precariously on his side. Now the plan was this.. be very quiet. See, Mom loved to watch CREATURE FEATURE and actually liked the fact that I would sit up with her to watch. She didn't mind that I stayed up on Saturday evening. I would giggle to her as the half hour would pass, because dad was still asleep. The rest of the evening would go on as usual, and as The Carol Burnett Show ended, we would go into the final dead heat round of anticipation. See, the end of The Carol Burnet Show was usually just loud enough to wake dad, who would either A.) wonder off to bed or B.) lay half awake until he decided to go to bed, and would usually take a scan of the living room to see if any kids were still awake. If he wondered off to bed, I was in luck! He was asleep and I could watch Creature Feature without worry! If he lingered, he became more aware of the kid who was biting his nails in the corner, hoping to not be noticed, and would often send me to bed. THIS was a test of wills. Of course, to a kid of seven or eight, a test of wills meant I clutched my crossed fingers REALLY tightly. Should I have been lucky and somehow persuaded my dad to go to bed (Early Jedi Mind Tricks? Maybe that's it...) I nearly went nuts when I heard the announcer say "...that's it for the news, stay tuned, CREATURE FEATURE is next...". I had won! I was going to watch a monster movie. I was going to have a reason to go to Sunday School the next day, so I could brag all about it to the guys.

What other reason did you think I had to go to Sunday School for? Heh.

Perhaps the impact of Dr. San Guinary and CREATURE FEATURE could be better summed up by this. Here you have ten to fifteen kids, all of which are heavily into goofing off and having fun, but when the MD drive would start to come close, and we would get the Dr. San Guinary SPOOK-A-RAMA Kit commercials running, we would band together, order the kits and actually spend two weeks putting on our own Spook-A-Rama haunted house. For those of you not in the know, those kits had posters, badges, ideas for creating fund raising events to help MD and pictures of Dr. San Guinary in them, to boot!

Now, this situation is weird once you consider the kids involved. We were all poor... not very much money between all of us. We knew of a few kids who were low enough to walk door to door with an empty oatmeal canister "collecting" for MD and then would go and spend the money on candy, but we NEVER did that, despite our own lowbrow activities. Dr. San Guinary spent Labor day collecting money for Muscular Dystrophy, and if it was what he did, then we would as well.

And we did it. My friend Chuck would transform his garage into a makeshift "haunted house" , where I got to lay in a "coffin" smeared with greasepaint and ketchup for blood and play "The Undead Dr. San Guinary". I will never know if the attendee's were screaming at me out of fright because I would rise out of the coffin and grab one of them, or the fact that the flies that buzzed around me looking for a quick meal on the coagulated ketchup on my chest were actually quite disgusting... but the point was that we raised money for Dr. San Guinary, to help with the fight against MD. All of use kids came to help, and we raised the unbelievable of sum of $33.00!

The power of conviction, and the belief in helping others was all taught to us by this man in green gore makeup. We learned this from watching monster movies on CREATURE FEATURE. Can you believe this?

My last story about Dr. San Guinary is another oddity. As gangs of kids will do, we had enemies. Nothing terribly violent outside of the occasional bloody nose or fist fight, but we did not get along with everyone. Well, this one guy called some of my friends some pretty bad names, and we were angry and looking to fight them. We rode our bikes to the pre- determined "fight area" on McBride, which is at the east end of the block. For some odd reason, McBride bends towards the north, emptying onto a side street. We would meet at the bend, next to a telephone pole. As we gathered to fight these other goons, one of them noticed a bright red and white poster, advertising a Spook-A-Rama Haunted House nearby and had a picture of the Doctor on it. The head of the other gang looked at it and became interested in it. One of our gang mentioned he went to it the previous day and really liked it. Another boy from the opposing side said that he really liked CREATURE FEATURE. I said that I liked the show too.

That was as far as the "big" fight went. For the next three hours, we sat down under that poster on the pole and talked about CREATURE FEATURE. We talked about monster movies, comic books, apologized for whatever offense that was incurred previously and when we went home, somehow we ended up being friends... all because we shared a common interest in a local horror movie show.

I have had the fortune to meet a lot of other people who were big fans of his work and vision, and between us all, we have been able to collect and trade Dr. San Guinary memorabilia (which, surprisingly, there are plenty of items). Telling stories such as the ones I have related to you have been a great deal of our shared love for John and his work. Many of these people I ran into over at Merchant Of Venus (get the phonebook out and look up the address to this shop... You MUST visit this place... ) and in the course of talking I found that many of them had gone to great lengths to attain CREATURE FEATURE memorabilia. One collector had managed to go through the microfilm file at the library of Omaha World- Herald back issues, searching and finding all the ads, photos and articles dealing with CREATURE FEATURE and Dr. San Guinary! Yet another has a complete episode guide to all of the movies that ran on the show. After finding all this out, I realized one thing... we ALL had found something special, and we were gonna save it for posterity no matter what.

It would be scary, if not for the fact we all have real lives outside of being fans of Dr. San Guinary. Or... maybe that makes it even odder? I was not fortunate enough to ever get to meet John, as Dr. San Guinary or otherwise, in all that time I watched the show. I will never get a chance to thank him for making me laugh and to think. I don't even know how to get in touch with his relatives to tell them of the fondness I had for him, but I think the best thing anyone can do in my position is to make others aware of people like John Jones.

I miss Dr. San Guinary. Now I miss him even more.