Movie Madness w/Dr. Praxis

About Dr. Praxis

As a child, I grew up in Chicago. I remember watching Creature Features on WGN-TV every Saturday Night. But on Friday nights, we would watch Svengoolie on WFLD-TV. Rich Koz, who has portrayed Svengoolie from 1979 till 1986 and from 1994 onward, has done a great job with the character and the show. But I grew up watching Jerry G. Bishop as Svengoolie as the host of Screaming Yellow Theater. Right up to the time Kaiser Broadcasting canceled Svengoolie in favor of their already owned The Ghoul. Funny, the Ghoul never really caught on in the Chicago area.

In 1972, the FCC issued its Third Report and Order, which required all cable systems in the top 100 US television markets to offer three access-channels, one each for public, entertainment and local government use. The rule was amended in 1976 to require that cable systems in communities with 3,500 or more subscribers set aside up to 4 cable TV channels and provide access to equipment and studios for use by the public. Yes, cable companies saw these rules as an unwelcome intrusion into their business practices and immanently challenged the rules in court. In a series of Supreme Court decisions, the rules governing the public-access stations were stricken from the FCC rules. This led, in turn, to Congress enacting the Communications Act of 1984, which restored the public-access rules.

Around 2011, I was living in Owensboro, Ky., had seen that there was a public access channel and resolved to create a hosted horror show of my own. Of course, my inspiration was Jerry G. Bishop as Svengoolie. But I didn't want to perform as a copy of Svengoolie. So after much thought, I created a character named Dr. Praxis. All of my horror hosts friends told me I needed a complete background for my character. Look, people, I'm like Jerry Seinfeld. As much as I like his old TV show, even Jerry Seinfeld has admitted he can only portray Jerry Seinfeld. I can only portray Dr. Praxis. The closest to a background I came was saying I was from one of those imaginary far eastern European country.

The first season was an attempt to do an animated show, but it was a rough animation show, something along the lines of South Park, at least in the early seasons. They had two advantages over me. They were graphic artists. I'm not. They could at least turn their characters to the side, I couldn't. After struggling through a season of a new show every two weeks, I decided this animation wasn't working, so I did the show as a live show for 3 more seasons. Personal reasons prompted me to stop production on the show. After a roughly 4 year hiatus, I tried to resurrect Dr. Praxis as an online show. But, health reasons intervened and I was forced to stop production on the show. I have tried various methods to start another version of the show. I bought one of the lessor known animation software packages known as Cartoon Animator, which was designed for doing introduction videos and "how to" videos. I worked on an animation film, I'm working on a second film. But, to help hone my "abilities" with Cartoon Animator, I tried to create some new shows, including one that was based on "Matinee at the Bijou," which was a program on PBS many, many years ago. Alas, I kept trying to write for Dr. Praxis, so I finally decided to bring back Dr. Praxis. Fortunately, there is a character that works with Cartoon Animator who wears a pair of the old style 3D glasses. I bought the character and I use the character as the basis of Dr. Praxis today. Plus, I had created a short sketch program called "Space 4 Rent," which I see no reason why I can't make a short, one joke, set 'em up, knock 'em down sketch. Use it to open one of the film segments. I do the voice for Dr. Praxis myself. AI generated voices work well enough, but they just can't match the inflections of a real person.

So, here we are. The third "resurrection" of Dr. Mel Praxis. You guys think, next time, someone can drive a stake through his heart?

Matinees were special programs our parents, grandparents or great grandparents went to see at the cinema during the 1930's, '40's & '50's. They consisted of a newsreel, a cartoon, a short subject, usually a chapter of a serial and a main feature film, which might not have been "feature length."