Welcome back San Diego Comic-Con fans,
We experienced fabulous fun interviewing the marvelous MeTV Svengoolie team in their Press Room at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 on July 26, 2025. TeamWHR had the privilege of meeting the real Svengoolie aka Rick Koz, Scott Gryder aka the Svengoolie Imp, beautiful Sarah Palmer aka Gwengoolie, and Bill Leff aka Svengoolie Nostalgiaferatoo.The Svengoolie Team who were celebrating series their 30th year on television #SDCC #SDCC25 thanks to Gary Miereanu and Brenda Lowry for approving our request to interview this terrific team!
Svengoolie is an American hosted horror movie television program airing low-budget and classic horror as well as classic science-fiction movies, Often known as “B” films, many of these are superior to so called high budget blockbusters because they tell stories that people enjoy. The host is naturally named “Svengoolie”, a take off the words Svengali and ghoul. As portrayed by Rich Koz, the host sports thick skull makeup around his eyes and cheekbones, a moustache, a goatee, and long black wig under a black top hat with a tuxedo jacket over a bright-red, open-collared, pleated tuxedo shirt making an iconic costume.
One of the shows highlights, the Svengoolie team presents regular hilarious sketches, and corny but hilarious jokes. The team often performs song parody spoofs of the film being broadcast on a specific evening. Some Svengoolie programs are presented in what has been referred to as “Sven-surround”, a pun on a well known term “Sensurround” that features jovial humor as each film is broadcast. This make each show enjoyable featuring humorous sound effects to accentuate the skit being presented.
These enjoyable but silly stunts were discontinued for a period of time, but were brought back due to demands from loyal viewers. “Sven-surround” clip segments are broadcast outside of the film being presented. The recent addition of beautiful “Gwengoolie” to the Svengoolie Team, a personal favorite of mine, who has made the program even more enjoyable!
History of Superb Svengoolie Show:
The Svengoolie character was originally portrayed by Jerry G. Bishop before Rich Koz succeeded him in the hosting role in late 1979. Before and after commercial breaks, Svengoolie presents sketches, tells jokes, and performs parody songs related to the films being aired. The show was a long-running local program in the Chicago area. In recent years, Svengoolie expanded nationwide in the United States Saturday nights on MeTV.
I became interested in Svengoolie after watching a similar program when I was growing up called Creature Features hosted by Bob Wilkens. Broadcast on KTVU, a local channel in the San Francisco Bay Area, the original Creature Features went off the air in 1984. During my formative years, Creature Features was a program of horror and science fiction films broadcast on local television stations throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The movies broadcast on the Creature Features shows were generally classic cult horror movies from the 1930s to 1950s, and critically, science-fiction films of the 1950s, British horror science fiction films of the 1960s, and Japanese kaiju “giant monster” movies of the 1950s to 1970s.
I immediately switched to Svengoolie and have watched their programs as much as possible over the past 45 years except when traveling on business. Svengoolie has featured a huge number of famous guests including Angela Cartwright, Bill Mumy, Bob Newhart, Dawn Wells, Lance Henriksen, Malcom McDowell, Robert Englund, and many more! Always a fun program, I became intrigued by host Rick Koz’s version of the Svengoolie show and the various team members now showcasing Scott Gryder, Sarah Palmer, and Bill Leff.
Svengoolie became even more important to weekly Saturday night viewing audiences when SYFY stopped producing science fiction tongue in cheek films that helped make them famous. The weekly movies were typically broadcast on Saturday evenings. Subsequent to Comcast purchasing many entertainment products that included NBC Universal, the deal began in 2009 and was completed in 2013. Originally owned by NBC, SYFY has now been spun off into a Comcast cable television division, sadly with few original programs. The acquisitions were approved in 2017 resulting in lay offs of virtually the entire SYFY staff that was located in New York City. We knew many of the talented people who created the iconic network in 1992 until it was renamed SYFY in 2009. With few exceptions, such as the Sharknado film franchise, all weekly original movie broadcasts ceased. Now SYFY only broadcasts reruns of various programs and films.
However, at this point, the Svengoolie show became the premiere Saturday night movie program broadcasting cult classic science fiction and horror films that are enjoyed by millions of viewers around the world!
We will be back later this year with an additional awesome Press Room interviews that we covered during our time at San Diego Comic-Con this year. In the meantime, we will switch to covering series analysis and fantastic Frankenstein movie. Please feel free to share this article with your friends, co-workers and or your family!
We look forward to you visiting our dedicated review and analysis web site here in the future and as many of our readers and visitors often do, visit WormholeRiders on X, or visit me on Twitter by clicking the text links or images avatars in this news story. I and TeamWHR look forward to Seeing You on The Other Side!
Thank you. 
Best Regards,
Kenn of #TeamWHR