Behind The Screams

Hey there weirdos! This is ScareHouse Creative Director and co-owner Scott Simmons and I just wanted to say THANK YOU for all the enthusiasm and support for the new episodes of “Chiller Theater!”

Many years before ScareHouse I worked as a writer/producer for WPXI-TV (1990) which means I not only worked within the same studios where Chiller Theater was produced but frequently worked personally with “Chilly Billy” Cardille on promos and commercials. (Unfortunately never on anything fun involving monsters or mutants, mostly it was a lot of weather promos and appliance commercials – but Bill was a true prince about everything and everyone around him.)

So it was a surreal thrill for all of us at ScareHouse to work directly with Scott Harbaugh and Jake Klingensmith on the resurrection of “Chiller Theater” for September 2023 — 60 years after the show first premiered on WIIC. The new episodes were all shot inside the “ScareHouse Studios” featuring our sets and a fun mix of new characters and tributes.

Of course, this new version of the show never could have happened without the support of the Cardille family. Lori Cardille, daughter of late longtime “Chiller Theater” host Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille Sand star of George Romero’s 1985 zombie threequel Day of the Dead has said that “I think it’s part of Pittsburgh history anew… “Horror is so explosive now. The fact that dad was one of the first horror hosts in the country, I think that a new generation of people seeing the new one who don’t know my dad … will be able to see Scott doing the ‘Chiller’ and therefore look back and see the history of horror and my father.”

Scott Harbaugh knows “there is only one ‘Chilly Billy’” and that “we’d be doing ourselves a huge disservice” by trying to replicate his iconic persona. He also said that Lori Cardille “has been incredibly encouraging” of the new “Chiller Theater.”

“I think it’s wonderful, my whole family does,” she said of the entire enterprise. “We’re all really happy.”

Check out new episodes of Chiller Theater, produced in partnership with ScareHouse, every Saturday night from now through Halloween! Visit wpxi.com for more details. And thanks to Joshua Axelrod for highlighting this project in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette! (click here to read the story.)