THE PROFESSOR'S SF & HORROR HOST TOME

THEATRE OF THRILLS

REED PASTERNAK - "CHRISTOPHER COFFIN"

"Theatre of Thrills" was a host horror movie show with Reed Pasternak (credited as Reed Farrell) as "Christopher Coffin" presenting movies on Friday nights at 11:30 pm on WJRT Channel 12 Flint, Michigan between 1961 until 1967. "Christopher Coffin" sat in a wheelchair, with a lap robe, and wore a black hat and sunglasses with a mustache/goatee beard. The segments included scary little skits that carried a plot that went on throughout the movie. Most times these themes tied into the movie's plot.

REED PASTERNAK
From IMDB:
Farrell, who was born in 1930, was born Farrell Reed Pasternak and grew up in Flint, Michigan. He studied fine arts at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and later majored in drama, radio and television at Los Angeles City College. His early career was in radio, and he worked as a disc jockey for radio stations in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Missouri and Illinois.

In the 1960s, Farrell returned to his hometown of Flint, and became a local celebrity as horror film program host Christopher Coffin, the "Guardian of the Ghouls" for WJRT-TV. From 1972-74, he hosted the St. Louis TV program "Reed Farrell Morning After," featuring guests like Milton Berle, Robert Goulet, Cloris Leachman and Minnie Pearl.

Farrell joined AFTRA in 1955 and the Screen Actors Guild in 1956. The joint AFTRA and SAG commercials strike in 1979 inspired him to run for office.

After being elected AFTRA national president, he explained: "Back in 1979 when we went on strike with the commercials contract, I decided to get active and vowed that I would never walk a picket line again without having had something to say about it. I've been active ever since." Upon his election as AFTRA national president in 1989, at the union's 52nd annual convention in Boston, he stated to delegates: "We must bring the efforts of the Merger Committee to a logical conclusion and we must make sure that the membership understands what they are voting for ... I'm [also] anxious to join our Executive Director John Hall as we sit down with our sister union SAG in an effort to better define jurisdiction. We can no longer allow producers to shop our contracts. No union truly benefits from anything that is detrimental to another."

Farrell was re-elected as president in 1991, and succeeded by Shelby Scott. While Farrell championed a merger between the two unions, the organizations formally merged in 2012.

After completing his four-year AFTRA term in 1993, Farrell was presented with George Heller Memorial Gold Card No. 37 at the AFTRA National Convention in Chicago in recognition of his presidency.

Reed passed away on 6 July 2019.

Portrait of "Christopher Coffin" by Bradley Beard.
"Christopher Coffin" - biography (taken from Bradley Beard's Facebook page)"
He was known as the Guardian of the Ghouls. Tonight I present Christopher Coffin, host of Theatre of Thrills on WJRT-TV Channel 12 in Flint, MI. The actual air dates for the show are in question, however, most sources cite them as 1963 to 1967. The character was created and portrayed by Reed Pasternak AKA Reed Farrell so that viewers would not recognize him as one of the commercial performers during the movie; the show was sponsored World Wide Home Furniture for whom Farrell did a large amount of commercial work. Christopher Coffin sat in a wheelchair wearing a black fedora and sunglasses and would speak in an echo-chambered voice. The show featured scary skits that played along with the plot of the movie. An actual graveyard set was produced behind the studio for the show as well.

The following are some clips from the show:

Theatre of Thrills hosted by Christopher Coffin from The Professor on Vimeo.