Duration: 0:59

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By: fuzzymemories

Description: Question: When did WGN's Creature Features program end? If you said 1976, then here's another FuzzyMemories discovery that will rewrite history! (read more about it in the latest edition of Fuzzy's News & Views)

Two years after its supposed end, here's the opening and bumper excerpts from the Creature Features presentation of the 1935 Boris Karloff / Bela Lugosi version of "The Raven" on WGN Channel 9.

The Chicago Tribune schedule for the date this movie aired can be found here, and we can cross-reference that with a schedule from, of all places, Chariton, Iowa, which listed in the Chariton Herald-Patriot its cable TV listings, including WGN-TV - and identifies the airing correctly as a Creature Features!

This clip includes:

Opening bumper slide for Creature Features, with voiceover (by Jerry Golden) followed by the slide introducing "The Raven" (notice the show title slide has some "texture" added to the Creature's coat, while the movie title slide does not - was the effect on the show title slide intentional?)

Includes Henry Mancini and his Orchestra's "Experiment in Terror" theme as the famous CF theme music)

(Unfortunately, the laugh is cut off)

The film's opening credits

Brief Creature Features bumper

Brief lower-third station ID ("WGN-TV CHICAGO - TELEVISION 9"), set in Helvetica Medium and News Gothic Bold uppercase fonts that made up original Chyron II character generator system used by Channel 9 through about 1979)

"The Raven" Creature Features bumper

Brief, incomplete commercial for World of Recreation [RV Sales, they were located at 280 West North Avenue in Addison, IL] - "See the World..." (cut out midway through ad)

"The Raven" Creature Features bumper (seen two more times in-between film excerpts)

Ending moments of film, which sees the recording cut out just as the ending bumper starts to show "A Universal Picture"

And now...dim the lights...bolt the door..."

Rest in Peace: WGN-TV Creature Features (1970-1980)

This aired on local Chicago TV early Friday, September 15th 1978 during the 1:23am to 2:46am timeframe.