Blog-o-ween 2022: The Classics, Pt. 2

Well, Blog-o-weeners (I'm really gonna have to think of a better name), we made it! It is 31 October; it is Halloween! I hope everyone has a great time today...what with the chill in the air...and the trick-or-treating...and the spooky movies...and the bobbing for apples...and the carving of pumpkins...ooohhhh, laaadyyy!

Here at LARPing Real Life HQ, I'm gonna throw on Zacherley's Horrible Horror, an old VHS tape I bought at Hill's Department Store in the 1980s. After that, I'm putting myself in the hand of Commander USA and his 1985 USA Network Halloween Special. I say "hand," because we all know that the Commander has his other hand full with his right-hand man, Lefty. Sure.

So, now we come to it. The final three old time radio show of Blog-o-ween 2022. And boy, oh boy, are they scary. I mean, I honestly hope you all are wearing a belt or a pair of suspenders at the very least, because these shows are going to scare the pants right off of you! Oh, yeah! I mean, double-knot your shoelaces, because the three thrilling and chilling stories we have today are going to knock your socks off! You bet!

Our first entry for Halloween is a 1948 episode Wyllis Cooper's Quiet Please. It is a terrifying tale called “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I don’t want to give too much away on this one. All I will say is that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. Everything about this episode - the writing, the acting, the sound design - is sheer horrific perfection. And the story’s ending is absolutely unforgettable.

Next, let's you and I take a trip into the canyons of Los Angeles -- Cypress Canyon to be precise. There, we will find a house belonging to James and Ellen Woods. It's a nice little place, perfect for a married couple. There's lots of closet space. In fact, one closet in particular seems to house enough blood to give Dracula a tummyache. Written by Robert L. Richards, directed by William Spier, and starring Robert Taylor and Cathy Lewis, “The House in Cypress Canyon” from the series Suspense is considered by many people to be the scariest radio program of all time. Do you dare listen to see if they are right?

Last, we have what I think is the scariest radio show of them all. The above shows are doozies, no mistake about it, but this next just has that certain je ne sais quoi, that little bit extra, whether it's the acting, the mood, the ending, that nudges it above everything else in my opinion. It is an adaptation of W.W. Jacobs's classic tale "The Monkey's Paw" as performed on the Canadian radio show Nightfall. 

The story is simply told: at the turn of the 20th century, an English family is visited by a friend just back from serving in India. The visitor has in his possession a souvenir from his time there: a shriveled, mummified monkey’s paw. He tells the family that it allegedly grants three wishes, but those who tempt fate through the paw’s powers are forever sorry they do so. The visitor tries to toss it onto the fire and burn it, but the paw is saved and kept by the family.

What does the family wish for? Do they get what they want?

What follows is a tale of terror and bitter irony that still sends a shiver up my spine. “The Monkey’s Paw” is a marvel of construction, simple, but with powerful moments leading up to its heartbreaking climax.

I hope you enjoyed our trip through old time radio this month. If you want to hear more, you are in luck! There are many more shows available for streaming at the Internet Archive, as well as your favorite podcast platform.

Be well, my fiends, stay scared...

31 October: A Trio of Old Time Radio Thrills

 

Well, we done did it, good people. We made it through another October, and now it’s Halloween. We’ve spent the last month together sharing movie, book, and audio suggestions thanks to Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween. It’s been a blast talking up my spooky selections, and I loved seeing what other people were up to, too. Thanks to folks using #cinematicvoid and #voidoween on Twitter, I’ve got a list the length of my arm filled with movies I can’t wait to check out.

Cinematic Void is ending Voidoween with a wild card. It’s up to each of us to choose a personal Halloween favorite. I’ve decided to end things with a bang - three of ‘em to be exact! Follow the links below, turn your lights down low, and enjoy some good ol’ fashioned radio drama.

First up is a trip in the wayback machine to 1948 where we’ll listen to a classic episode of Wyllis Cooper’s Quiet Please: “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I don’t want to give too much away on this one. All I will say is that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. Everything about this episode - the writing, the acting, the sound design - is sheer horrific perfection. And the story’s ending is absolutely unforgettable.

Let’s go back a couple of years to 1946 and listen to an episode of one of the premier radio programs of radio’s Golden Age, Suspense. “The House in Cypress Canyon” is considered by many people to be the scariest radio program of all time. Written by Robert L. Richards, directed by William Spier, and starring Robert Taylor and Cathy Lewis, it’s the story of a young couple – James and Ellen Woods – who move into a small house in the titular canyon. From their first night in their new home, the Woodses are haunted by inhuman cries in the night. There is no explanation for what happens next. What befalls James and Ellen could happen to anyone at any time. Why, it could happen to you...

Last up is an episode of Beyond Midnight, a radio program from South Africa that ran from 1968 to 1970. The episode is an adaptation of a classic Christmas ghost story by A.M. Burrage. It is called “Smee,” and it is my very favorite ghost story. It’s has a simple story-within-a-story construction. The outer story concerns a group of friends who are preparing to play a post-dinner game of hide-and-seek on Christmas Eve. One of the party refuses to play. Jackson had a bad experience some years before at another friend’s house playing a similar game:

‘I wonder if any of you have played a game called “Smee”. It’s a great improvement on the ordinary game of hide-and-seek. The name derives from the ungrammatical colloquialism, “It’s me.” You might care to play if you’re going to play a game of that sort. Let me tell you the rules.

‘Every player is presented with a sheet of paper. All the sheets are blank except one, on which is written “Smee”. Nobody knows who is “Smee” except “Smee” himself—or herself, as the case may be. The lights are then turned out and “Smee” slips from the room and goes off to hide, and after an interval the other players go off in search, without knowing whom they are actually in search of. One player meeting another challenges with the word “Smee” and the other player, if not the one concerned, answers “Smee”.

‘The real “Smee” makes no answer when challenged, and the second player remains quietly by him. Presently they will be discovered by a third player, who, having challenged and received no answer, will link up with the first two. This goes on until all the players have formed a chain, and the last to join is marked down for a forfeit.’

The group encourages Jackson to tell the whole story, and we move into the inner tale, which is where Beyond Midnight begins its episode. The radio program uses the rules of the game – the large house, the silence, the solitude – to chilling effect. “Smee” has a wonderful ending that, although you may see it coming, is still powerful enough to elicit a shudder. Along the way, there are many moments where Jackson and his fellow players rub up against the uncanny and outré. One moment, in fact, on a staircase, involving the accidental (?) miscount of the number of players in the game made the bottom fall out of my stomach.

I hope you’ve had a good time this month following along with me. I’ve had a blast talking up my favorite Halloween tricks and treats. Stay tuned to this blog for more talk about the TV shows Wings and Tucker’s Witch. Come tomorrow, I’ll be taking part in National Novel Writing Month, and I’ll keep you up to date with how that is going. I am continuing my work on a giallo-esque thriller. I'm about 10 chapters into it, and it's been a blast so far.

So...until next time...enjoy the Horrorthon and...Happy Halloween... 

It is 11 October. There are 20 days until Halloween.

Sometimes I think I was born too late. For instance, I love listening to old time radio shows. I can only imagine what it was like to have so many wonderful stories to choose from, to hear the voices of so many terrific actors in their prime acting in well-written dramas of every genre. Could you imagine looking forward to the new episodes of The Whistler or The Abbott & Costello Show? The radio dramatization of Star Wars in 1981 was the closest I ever got to “Must Hear Radio.”

By the time the 1970s rolled around, radio drama as a viable source of entertainment was D.O.A. There were a few programs that tried to carry on the tradition, the CBS Mystery Theater and Nightfall to name a few. Though they tried to reanimate the corpse of radio theater, all these “modern” shows managed to do was to kick the last few clumps of dirt onto the casket. They sounded flabby, as if they could have used a few more rewrites. They also displayed the paucity of imagination at work in the field at the time. The producers, writers, and actors who really understood the strengths of the medium, who knew the power of the listener’s imagination when given the right “poke” with an audio cue, were in radio’s past.

To hear radio drama at the height of its power, you need to go back to the 1940s, and to hear the best of the best, you need to listen to Quiet, Please.

Wyllis Cooper (who was also responsible for the radio show Lights Out), and announcer/actor Ernest Chappell created one of the most potent, imaginative, and just plain creepy radio programs in Quiet, Please. Every show is a veritable “how-to” course for creating dread, terror, and suspense by the perfect combination of writing, acting, and sound design.

The cream of this dark crop is 1948’s “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” I’ll say nothing more about this episode for fear of ruining the surprise for those of you who have never listened to it before, save that a “fourble board” is the working platform on an oil derrick. (It is not, as I believed before I listened to the show, a large piece of furniture like a sideboard. Don’t ask me why I thought that.)

Cooper’s story is perfection. The characterization is clear and concise. We know who these people are and what they look like by how they sound. The sound design – especially the work of actress Cecil Roy – sends chills up the spine. And the ending – the ending! – is unexpected and unforgettable.

You can listen to “The Thing on the Fourble Board” here. You can follow along with the script here.

Enjoy!