From E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts: "Reed Farrell's long and colorful career has spanned decades and media. As a top-rated deejay, Farrell provided the intro at an Elvis concert and shook hands with John F. Kennedy. But to horror hungry fans in Flint, MI, he will always be remembered as Christopher Coffin, the "Guardian of the Ghouls" on WJRT's Theater of Thrills. The show ran between early 1963 and late 1966 on the local channel 12. At the height of the program's popularity, Christopher Coffin was presenting two double bills a week; one horror, the other sci-fi themed.
As citizen of a world between the living and the dead, Coffin would fade into his namesake storage unit to share letters and art work from the viewers. At other times, he would use a wheelchair .... to tour his crypt and conduct various strange experiments - his deep, commanding voice adding genuine weight and menace to the darkly humorous proceedings.
In later years, Farrell served as president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He continues to do commercial voice work, while indulging in his passion for golf".
From E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts: "Christopher Coffin lived in a very large endless old, Dracula-type, haunted castle. He would be located in various parts of it at each movie break describing what it was and doing some sort of running story that tied into the movie that was showing. This was accomplished by a very inventive production department at the station. At first the backgrounds were large rear screen projections of old castles photographed from books at the Flint Public Library, along with scenery & stage props that production crew members searched for around the city and borrowed for the show. Different slides were used in each segment. Later we created a large castle crypt set in our station garage by using paper mache stones to cover the wall, columns, and overhead archways..
One of best props, I found for use in the skits. It was an old horse drawn hearse. I borrowed it and towed it to the station and kept it for a couple of weeks. A grave yard was built outdoors in the back of the TV station and the hearse was parked in it. Chris sat up on the drivers seat pretending there were horses. In the segments he dropped off a corpse or picked one up then drove off. Crew members pulled the hearse out of the TV picture at the end of each segment".
From E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts: "While there we videotaped 20-30 segments on a reel of videotape after using hearse for the first show. Segments included Chris on the hearse with mummies and zombies walking around in the background of the cemetery during segment: played by camera crew members. One segment included a (buried crewman) corpse breaking through the ground rising up out of the grave. We could save these and add them to other shows when needed. This was also true for Frankenstein. A local man came over to show us his costume and makeup. These segments were put on another "keeper tape" so Chris could periodically visit with "Frankie." Several reels were developed like this to include randomly in the regular taping sessions.
The ultimate special effect was making Christopher Coffin appear and disappear. We created this special effect before Videotape synchronization to live video was possible. We created this illusion by doing it in reverse. We synchronized the station's live video to the video tape machine. It was extremely hard to do, but possible. First you lock a live camera in on a static camera shot and record 30-40 minutes of that picture. This can only be done while you are in network video. When done you start playing back that recorded picture and try locking all the live camera picture to the VTRs signal. This breaks up all the 20-30 video monitors in the entire control room. This electrically may take up to 10-20 seconds. If it is longer you had to stop and start over so you don't damage the electronics in to other video equipment.
Once this is accomplished it is possible to match dissolve from the live cameras to the vtr recorder. Then anyone in the live static camera will disappear when you dissolve to recorded camera that has an empty picture. Using the effect we bought an actual coffin so Chris could lay in it for the show. Each show we pretaped a static shot of the tilted up coffin with the lid closed for the show opening and opened the lid with a thin wire. Once the lid was open we would very slowly dissolve to Chris lying in the coffin on the live camera. The picture was always perfect and Chris would then sit up to do the segment. When done he laid back and we dissolved back to the empty casket. I used this technique in several different ways over the years such as Chris accidentally disintegrating a corpse on his laboratory table when he tried to duplicate Dr. Frankenstein's experiment of bringing it to life.
Fortunately I still have many of those TOT segments on VHS tape which I had provided to the WJRT Anniversary show".
From E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts: "As the years went by the show became so popular we received tons of fan mail with scary poems, stories & pictures which Chris used on the air. In the last year of the show we cut out that feature, because we were so convincing we realized some viewers thought we were for real. We actually received real mail from some satanic groups and witches. We had to cut back on content of the skits and only use brief wrap-arounds to the commercials. Thus this led to dropping Theater of Thrills when we switched over to live color in the fall of 1967".
From E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts: "The title Theater of Thrills was superimposed over the out-of-focus live shot of the coffin. It oscillated back and forth. This was done by shooting the white title on a black card on the other live camera which had an audio oscillator clipped on its video wire that caused its video to vibrate. This wire was removed after the opening so the camera could be used as a 2nd camera on the set".