Atlanta's Master of Horror

Bestoink Dooley was almost single-handedly responsible for acquainting a certain generation of Southerners with the big-screen horror canon in the 1960s. An invention of local actor George Ellis, Dooley wore something like a magician’s uniform, complete with a bowler hat and a flower on his lapel. Big Movie Shocker aired Friday nights at eleven-thirty on WAGA-TV Channel 5; Dooley showed The Mummy and Cat People and The Wolf Man and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. “Some people say he’s the ugliest, most sinister-looking man in Atlanta,” reported the Atlanta Constitution in 1963. Dooley was the face of Georgia’s nightmares. 

From “The Bestoink Dooley Fan Club,” by Will Stephenson for Oxford American

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