John Stanley had the unenviable task of following the very popular Bob Wilkins after Wilkins retired from Creature Features. Despite what must have been a certain amount of pressure, he managed to make the show his own for another 5 years after taking over. (He would no doubt have been on longer, had the costs of leasing movies to air not skyrocketed with the growth of pay cable channels, forcing local channels to cut back on movie shows in the 80s.)

Stanley was well qualified to host horror movies. He had guest hosted for Wilkins from time to time, and so came to the full-time job well-practiced. He was on the staff of The San Franciso Chronicle's "Datebook" entertainment section, writing reviews and doing movie-related interviews and feature articles. Stanley retained Wilkins' approach of playing it straight; he never added vampire fangs or a cape to the act.

Stanley was also a horror movie fan in real life - quite unlike Wilkins, who was never reluctant to express his lack of interest in the movies themselves. His approach was decidedly more reverent than Wilkins. He clearly loved the better films he was able to screen, and was great at providing background information and appraisals of them from a fan's standpoint. He maintained a scholar's attitude to the films, and his host segments were a bit like a broadcast fanzine in that way - the fanzines being one of the few places at the time where anyone wrote seriously about the genre.

KTVU seems to have promoted Creature Features differently during John Stanley's years as host. The TV Guide ads are fewer and further between, and so far haven't mentioned Stanley by name. This one just turned up, though from 1979: