CBS Radio Mystery Theater - The Shining Man

You can find episodes of this fantastic horror radio series all over the internet and I recommend listening to as many as you can. The CBS Mystery Theater was the first such show I ever encountered, listening on Saturday nights with my trusty clock/radio when I should have been asleep. An online friend pointed to The Shining Man as a fine example of what the program could accomplish so its time listen in everyone. Turn the lights down and let this haunted house tale give you the chills! 

The Bloody Pit #183 - Inner Sanctum Radio Shows

Since we will be covering four more Inner Sanctum films in 2024 it was suggested that I might want to acquaint podcast listeners with some of the old radio shows. I love these wonderful horror and suspense tales but most folks have never sought them out. They are quite entertaining as examples of ‘Theater of the Mind’ exercises and, as I explain in my introductions, the Inner Sanctum show may have been the starting point for a horror trope that persists to this day.

 

I have picked three interesting episodes that I think will give you a good idea of the tone the program trafficked in and there is even a performance from Boris Karloff to get us started! He is the main character in an adaptation of Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart while Richard Widmark stars in the second grisly story about man’s lust for immortality. The final story I chose because it fits the October season with the title A Corpse for Halloween. Enjoy!

If you have any comments or suggestions thebloodypit@gmail.com is the place to send them. Thanks for listening and Happy Halloween! 

Ray Bradbury's OCTOBER COUNTRY Halloween Radio Program

This Unicef show from October 30th, 1984 was broadcast live from The Directors Guild of America in Hollywood and is a Ray Bradbury anthology, featuring dramatic adaptations of three of his stories: "The Emissary" "There Was an Old Woman" and "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone.” It also features a brief appearance by Bradbury himself at the top of the show.

Directed by John Clark, based on Ray Bradbury’s book The October Country, adapted for radio by Rick Libert, Deborah Hansen, Jack Nierob, Sharon Benoit, and John Clark. It stars Robert Brown, Barrie Ingham, June Lockhart, Lynn Redgrave, Casey Kasem, Jean Kasem, Gary Owens, Danny Cooksey, Frank Welker (Scooby-Doo) and announcer Marvin Miller. 

Horror Radio - Dark Fantasy

For those of you having trouble getting into the Halloween spirit this year might I suggest listening to old Horror Radio shows. If you’ve never indulged in this experience I can highly recommend it as a fun way to get some chills and to make the nights seem pleasantly haunted. A good place to start might be the excellent scary tales presented by Dark Fantasy. The show was broadcast from 1941 to 1942 and only produced 31 episodes. I’ve been able to hear 27 of those shows and each one is a gem! I’ll include a link to the Internet Archive page where you can listen to the show and I recommend my favorite episode ‘The Demon Tree’ as a good starting place. 

1981 Unicef Halloween Radio Program

Broadcast live from The Magic Castle on October 31st, this hour-long show was said to be the first live commercial radio network drama to be broadcast in 25 years. It includes adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat" and George Toudouze's "Three Skeleton Key,” originally made famous on the Suspense and Escape old time radio programs.

Directed by Dick Orkin and written by Richard Proctor, it has an impressive cast, including John Carradine, John Clark, John Houseman, June Lockhart, Lynn Redgrave, Casey Kasem, Jean Kasem and Gary Owens. Hosted by Yaphat Koto, with Marvin Miller serving as announcer, it was heard over the NBC Network. Enjoy! 

Video - Big Dan Frater and "The Night of Presents Tense"

If you've never experienced the supremely silly madness of Larry Blamire's audio adventures of Big Dan Frater this short bit of gift giving nuttiness is a good introduction. 

Blue Beetle Radio Show

I periodically find myself obsessed with the history of the Blue Beetle character. Usually this is triggered by reading one comic book version or another and marveling that old Big Blue has been so malleable over the decades. I got to know the character through his appearances in DC comics in the 1980’s both in his own title and as a laughter-prone member of the Justice League. At the time I was aware that BB was one of several heroes from Charlton’s line of comics but nothing else. 

Years later I discovered that Ted Kord was not the first fictional fellow to use the Blue Beetle name and was able to sample the earlier Fox Comic book versions as well. This original form of BB debuted in 1939 and he appeared in both Mystery Men Comics and his own title semi-regularly until the end of the 1940’s. The character was a police officer named Dan Garret who eventually started wearing a mask to fight crime out of uniform. He later started using a bulletproof blue costume that was made of a strange fiber "as thin and light as silk but stronger than steel"! Useful. He also could temporarily gain superhuman strength and stamina by ingesting the mysterious Vitamin 2X, which sounds like someone trying to incorporate the comic’s ad pages into the story! Like the Green Hornet, the Blue Beetle would use his signature scarab symbol to mark his activities by dangling it down into a room on a string and even projecting its enlarged image onto a wall with a flashlight. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of creeped out criminal types, huh?

But my latest entry (or re-entry) point for this older version of BB was stumbling across some very clear and well-preserved copies of the Blue Beetle radio show on Archive.org. ‘The Blue Beetle’ only ran from May 15, 1940 to September 13, 1940 so few episodes were produced but most (maybe all) are in excellent form and easily accessible to the curious. The show features the Dan Garret form of the character and it’s a pretty great example of this type of masked hero pulp story adapted to audio. It’s not as impressive as The Shadow but it is a pretty entertaining hero vs crime show. Check it out and you might enjoy it!

The Shadow Novels vs Radio Shows

Over the past month I've read a couple of Classic Shadow pulp novels and I’ve been listening almost every night to old Shadow radio shows. This has, of course, caused me to compare and contrast and I have to say they are incredibly different animals. The radio show centers on Lamont Cranston and Margo Lane, his Girl Friday, but the pulps that I've read almost always have the shadow as a peripheral character. In the novels he is constantly stalking bad guys, listening and taking advantage of the weaknesses of various criminals and their gangs. On the page he is ably assisted by his huge network of helpers or undercover operatives. They occasionally make appearances in a way that push the story along or explain to the reader how certain pieces of information are being related back to the Shadow. I have to admit the two different versions of the Shadow that the radio play and the pulps provide are both very entertaining but I prefer the anthology nature of the pulp stories. I find that having the main focus on the bad guy characters who are being hunted down by the relentless Shadow with his blazing .45's to be much more entertaining. The Shadow radio show has a tendency to fall pretty squarely into the standard mystery or adventure radio shows of the 1930s with lots of bantering back and forth between Lamont and Margo. Of course, I guess it would be natural that you would need a couple of reoccurring characters who talked back and forth on a regular basis presenting different pieces of information and pushing things in the direction that a radio play would go. As I said, I've enjoyed them both and I will continue to do so but the pulp novels are grittier and more to my taste overall.

 

The Bloody Pit #144 - Radio Sherlock!

Following on our coverage of SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON (1943) we once again dig into the wealth of radio adaptations of the original stories.

Beth has chosen two excellent audio versions of Arthur Conan Doyle tales with the connecting theme being that they involve an American character stirring up trouble. First we present 'The Noble Bachelor' from the long running BBC Radio series starring Carleton Hobbs as Sherlock Holmes and Norman Shelley as Dr. Watson. This program aired from 1952 to 1969 and became the way an entire generation of British listeners became fans of the character. We talk a little about the two main actors known primarily for their radio and stage work including the somewhat controversial work that Mr. Shelley was rumored to have done for Queen & Country. We then check out the CBS Mystery Theater’s 1977 version of 'A Scandal in Bohemia' with Kevin McCarthy as Holmes and Court Benson as Watson.  It’s another fine adaptation and this time I’ve left in several of the commercials from the original broadcast to give you a sense of what it would have sounded like when it aired. I snipped out the ExLax ads for your mental health!

Thank you for listening and if you have any comments thebloodypit@gmail.com is the show’s address. We’ll be back soon with a new episode!

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The Bloody Pit #138 - Creepy Sherlock Radio!

For your October listening pleasure here are a couple of spooky Sherlock Holmes radio tales!

Beth has chosen these two as representative of the scary end of the classic radio format featuring the great detective. The first is from the 1940’s and is titled The Adventure of the Carpathian Horror so you know it’s going to be fun – with a splash of vampires! It has Nigel Bruce continuing his run as Dr. Watson and Tom Conway taking over from Basil Rathbone as Holmes. The second features Kevin McCarthy in the role for the CBS Mystery Theater and was originally broadcast in 1977. I think it is a solid version of that tale of a spectral hound! You know – the one that haunts the Baskervilles. I’ve edited out most of the commercials from the show but I left in one to give you a taste of what radio sounded like in the late 1970’s. Forgive me!

If you have any comments or suggestions thebloodypit@gmail.com is the address to which you can send them. We’d be glad to hear from you!

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The Bloody Pit #126 - Sherlock Holmes Radio!

After our last episode we thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper into the radio tales of Sherlock Holmes. As Beth is such a fan of both the character and classic radio dramas, I asked her to pick two different audio tales that we could fashion into a short show to introduce listeners unfamiliar with the form to a couple of solid examples. I expected her to stick with the series that starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, but she surprised me by also finding a much later show that unexpectedly did an excellent Holmes adaptation. If you enjoy the two shows we present here you can easily find more online in various places and we highly recommend the search. We might even do some future episodes like this to discuss why they stand out or if they are particularly unusual in some way. Hope you enjoy this first presentation.

 If you have any comments or suggestions about the podcast please write to us at thebloodypit@gmail.com where we’ll be happy to hear from you. Not Petri Wine happy, but happy nevertheless. Thanks for listening! 

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The Shadow - Joey's Christmas Story

Here's a Christmastime episode of The Shadow radio show from 1940! I know this kind of thing isn't everyone's cup of tea but I love listening to these tales from decades ago when audio dramas were the most popular form of entertainment. 

Happy Halloween!

Hope you have a happy and safe Halloween! If you need a creepy story for the night (or day, really) here is the spectacular episode of Escape named "Three Skeleton Key". It stars Vincent Price and is one of the best scary old radio shows of all time. 

Full LP of Vincent Price Reading A Graveyard of Ghost Tales (1974)

You can easily purchase MP3s of this fun collection of spooky tales (see the link below) but, as always, the internet provides an alternate way to enjoy this cool album. Perfect for a dark night lit only by candles!

BBC Radio Adaptation of Philip K. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP

With the long awaited (?) sequel to BLADE RUNNER (1982) now in theaters maybe it's time to revisit the PKD novel it was very (very) loosely adapted from. If you've never read the book it is well worth your time and this is pretty good way yo check out the original story. 

The Bloody Pit #31 - DIARY OF A MADMAN (1963) and other Horla adaptations

For a Halloween treat I present an episode that focuses on Guy de Maupassant's classic short story The Horla and its various adaptations. The most prominent of these is the Vincent Price movie DIARY OF A MADMAN but the story is much twisted out of shape by the film's script The film adds a tragic family history, romantic entanglements, a conniving femme fatal, a cuckolded husband and murderous dark deeds done with knives to a tale that was much more of a treatise on fear and the horrors of the mind. Still, the film is worth seeing and Price is a joy but, while I discuss the story and its cinema incarnation, I also include in the show two of the three known radio adaptations of it as well. I think you'll get a kick out them - listen with the lights out!

If you have any comments you can reach me or the various co-hosts of past episodes at thebloodypit@gmail.com and I'll be glad to include your feedback in a future show. Thank you for downloading and listening! Happy Halloween! 

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Sgt. Preston comic book covers

I can feel the urge to watch episodes of Sgt. Preston of the Yukon welling up within me now that Winter is in full frosty swing. I've already been listening to some of the classic radio shows and this past week's extreme cold snap made me feel much in tune with the blizzard conditions that are often depicted in those slices of audio joy. If you are unaware of the joys of Sgt. Preston and his faithful companion King the Wonder Dog I recommend checking out the Bloody Pit show I did last year. You can listen or download the episode HERE for the cold nights bundled up in your own snow covered mountain cabin!

I wouldn't mind reading some of these Preston comics but I doubt they would be as entertaining as the covers. I wonder if any of these have been collected and re-released in recent years. I wonder who even holds the right to release them. Anyone know?

Six Million Dollar Man Christmas audio shows!

I've never made any secret of my love for the 1970's TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. I am thrilled that the show has finally been released on DVD and I'm slowly working my way through the second season as I can. To add to this geeky joy is the fact that there are several record albums produced during the show's heyday with further adventures for those of us that couldn't get enough of a fix from the boob tube. I clearly remember having at least one of those albums but I know I never had the four Christmas tales presented below. They are all a bit insane- just check them out if you doubt me- but they kick the nostalgia button for me this Holiday Season. Sometimes you just have to love the internet!

And a big thank you to Rich Chamberlain for finding these links!

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Ghost Stories for Young People

Wish I had found this in October! Here is a 1962 album of several Ghost tales introduced by Hitchcock and read by expert voice actor John Allen. This is from a bit before my time but I seem to remember something very like this being in a childhood friend's record collection in my 1970's youth. None of these sounded familiar to me so I bet there were other such LPs out there and now I think I'll have to find some of them for next Halloween season. Enjoy!

The Bloody Pit #10 - Horror Radio!

As Fall weather creeps into Tennessee and October winds begin to blow leaves around the neighborhood my thoughts turn to all things scary and spooky.  Halloween is my favorite holiday and as much as I love watching horror and monster films or reading creepy stories I also enjoy listening to old radio horror shows. I usually listen to several each month during the rest of the year but in October I check out three or four a week on the old iPod!

I love sharing these very well written and well produced pieces of 'Theater of the Mind' and so with this episode of The Bloody Pit I have picked out two of my favorites for you to hear. Both are adaptations of classic horror tales - one from H. P. Lovecraft and the other from M. R. James- and both are fantastic! Casting the Runes was done in 1947 for the Escape program and The Dunwich Horror was recorded for Suspense in 1945 and you won't find finer radio shows no matter how long you search. So, settle in and listen to a couple of creepy tales of terror well calculated to keep you in...... suspense!

Please feel free to write to the podcast at thebloodypit@gmail.com to let me know you thoughts. The show can be downloaded below or gotten from iTunes. Thanks for listening! 

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