Chilling Effects 'Dr. Gangrene' comes alive in Hendersonville home TV studio

 

By Ken Beck
The Tennessean

He has no bats in his belfry, but you wouldn't want to step into Larry Underwood's backyard shed. You see, he's quite mad - as in mad doctor.

Underwood, 34, married and the father of three children, is normally a mild-mannered fellow. But come late every Friday night, his brainchild bolts to life from his secret hidden lab in New Shackle Island Studios.

Underwood's undertaking as the host of Chiller Cinema gets him into the guise of Dr. Gangrene. The 30-minute show has been airing on public access television for a year in Hendersonville, Nashville, Atlanta and Greenfield, Mass.,
and earlier this month made its debut on commercial television on Nashville's WNAB-Channel 58.

"Our goal is to make it Halloween all year long. Although it is horror-related and horror-themed, I want to make a show that is family-friendly, something that my kids can watch. It may be scary but never gory, and we try to have a lot of fun," says Nashville native Underwood, a Visual Information Specialist with the Veterans Administration Medical Center.

"We've done about 30 episodes. We shoot on Friday nights, and my lab is in my shed in back of my house. I've converted it into a castle with brick walls and filled it with lab equipment. There's a bookcase that swings open, a working trap door, and I just added an electric chair for the doctor to sit in. I'm always building a new prop, to my wife's chagrin."

While Gangrene and his Chiller gang may have been one of
Hendersonville's best kept secrets, his show has recently gotten national attention. Doc Gangrene was on the cover of the October issue of Scary Monsters Magazine, while Gear Magazine placed the show in the No. 11 spot on its list of the nation's best public-access shows saying: "Dr. Gangrene, a wicked version of Roger Ebert, broadcasts from his secret hidden laboratory on Shackle Island as he tries to take over the world every week, inevitably failing. He includes horror movie reviews and a buffoonish assistant who screws up the doctor's experiments."

Before turning his attention to the small screen, Underwood, who has a graphic design degree from Middle Tennessee State University, and friend Chuck Angell were partners in publishing. Their Volunteer Comics produced various horror-related comic books for about five years.

The duo wrote and drew the books, including Tombstone Blues, which got nationwide distribution. But they tired of too much work.

About 18 months ago, Underwood dreamed up his current nightmare.

"Hey, guess what we're doing next? We're gonna have our own cable access show," he told Angell.

"I like to get in front of the camera, and he stays behind it. I usually write a loose script for the episode, and Chuck works the camera and directs," Underwood said.

"My inspiration for Dr. Gangrene is Sir Cecil Creape," a local TV horror host of the early 1970s portrayed by the late Russ McCown.

"As a kid I didn't get to watch his show a lot, but when I could I would sneak in and watch. I saw him live at some point because I have a Boy Scout patch that says Sir Cecil Creape Ghoul Patrol."

So cartoonist Underwood turned madcap decided "if I'm gonna do my own show, I wanna be a ghoul. I wanna give the kids what I had."

The Gangrene character got a lot of support from the friendly folks Underwood works with at the hospital.

"I tossed around ghouls and vampires and this and that. At the time ER was really popular, and I was getting stopped almost every day by somebody who would say, You look just like that guy on ER, but nobody knew his name."

They were referring to Anthony Edwards as Dr. Green.

"I was kicking the idea with friends, and one of them said, Dr. Green, hmm, why don't you make a play off words and make it Dr. Gangrene?"

That sounded kooky enough to Underwood, so he took a stab at creating the character.

"I talked to my buddies and bugged them for lab equipment and a lab coat. Then I got a prosthetics scar kit from a make-up shop, a pair of goggles and some boots and gloves from Ace Hardware, and I was in business."

Dr. Gangrene has a lab assistant in the form of Oogsley, a hunchbacked henchman played by Underwood's hospital co-worker Brandon Lunday.

"Oogsley is the source of Dr. Gangrene's never-ending frustration. Gangrene usually has some mad plot to take over the world and Oogsley will come in and foul things up," Underwood said.

His wife, Karlee, has taken on two roles, one as Madame Fortune, a gypsy fortune teller, and more lately as Nurse Deadbody.

And periodically Underwood shows up as a second character, monster-hunter Major Monterey Jack.

"He goes around searching for creatures like the Abominable Snowman, werewolves, the Lock-4 monster in Gallatin, a killer grizzly, and the Godzilla monster," Underwood says.

Underwood's own children and neighborhood kids often pop up in cameos as juveniles in the monster-hunter skits.

Chiller Cinema features interviews with Middle Tennesseans who are of interest to the horror community and ventures out to spooky sites like the Bell Witch Cave and the Death Valley Haunted Woods (a Halloween Haunted House).

Underwood's success with Chiller Cinema has him concocting a second TV series that he plans to pitch to TV stations in early 2001 - The Chiller Cinema Mad Movie of the Week.

This scenario calls for Dr. Gangrene and Nurse Deadbody to introduce campy public domain horror films, not unlike the campy Mystery Science Theater 3000 series.

Underwood gives community access all the credit for his burgeoning fame.

"Community access was the perfect way for me to gain experience with the character and gain more confidence in my acting and to show the studios that I have a built-in audience already."

And Underwood asks semi-seriously, "Say, if any of your readers know of any scenes of haunted houses, ask them to give me a call."

That could be a real scream.