Hallowe’en Eve, how the hell did that happen already! Yeesh, time flies like an arrow (but fruit flies like a banana). Anyway, I’ve got one last tranche of halloween audio for you today, and they’re some good uns! Years and years ago, the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast (now renamed the Strange Studies of Strange Stories podcast) did some truly excellent readings of some classic Lovecraft stories. Professional sound, with great effects and music, and with some really phenomenal readers, I think these are some of the best audio versions of lil’ Howie Lovecraft’s spook-em-ups. Plus they’re all FREE! You’ll have to follow the links for each to the website, but you can download ’em there. I highly recommend them all, but their “From Beyond,” “Cool Air,” and “The Picture in the House” are particular treats, in my opinion! Enjoy!
We’re on the cusp of Halloween itself, a scant handful of days before The Big Day itself, and goddamn if I’m not still struggling manfully against the catastrophic summer warmth and general horribleness of the World to get Into the Mood for the Season. It’ ain’t easy, but the good things in life rarely are, so BY GOD I’m going to continue on with sharing some extremely excellent Halloween audio content that I absolutely adore. We’ve had some good ones already, I think; last time we had some fun old time radio adaptations of classic H.P. Lovecraft stories, while the time prior was devoted to some of the best old time radio ever made, in case you missed em.
This time around is more of the same – three classic old time radio shows that I enjoy, and one much more recent reading of the greatest Shirley Jackson story (and possibly the greatest weirdfiction) of all time! Good spooky season listening, if that’s your thing! So let’s get to ’em!
1 –Ghost Hunt (Suspense, 1949) – this is a fun one that wrings some real chills out of the medium of radio. The actor manages to convey a real mounting sense of dread and slipping sanity as the story proceeds. Good use of silences too, and by god I’m a sucker for “War of the Worlds” style meta-radio! It’s good! Enjoy!
2 – The Signalman (Suspense, 1953) – I love Dickens’ ghostly short stories, and the Signalman is an all time great of his of course, but the real treat with this one is that it’s got Agnes Moorehead in it, one of the best actors in history.
3 – Ancient Sorceries (Escape, 1948) – A classic Algernon Blackwood story adapted by the masterful players of Escape? Of course it’s good!
4 – The Summer People (Selected Shorts, 2011?) – Shirley Jackson was a genius and this is not only my favorite thing she ever wrote, but it is also possibly the pinnacle of weird fiction, a story laced with dread and menace that builds and builds and builds. PLUS it was read by René Auberjonois. Basically perfect!
While we’re waiting on poor ol’ archive.org to get back up and running, I thought I’d do a follow up to the previous post about classic old time radio horror shows. Hope ya’ll had a chance to listen to ’em, they’re some of my favorites, but this week’s audient void holds a special place in my heart, because they’re largely the reason why I got into H.P. Lovecraft and Weird Fiction in the first place.
Growin’ up, I was a pretty voracious reader, but my preference was always sci-fi and fantasy. This was due, mostly, to a extremely nice collection of vintage paperbacks that had been my dad’s back when he was a kid in 60s…Heinlein, PKD, Harlan Ellison, Le Guin, really a phenomenal collection that was very important to little Eric’s reading development. With a solid underpinning in the classics, I’d often make a bee-line for the SF and Fantasy section of the bookstore where, more often then not, I’d have a glance at the generally smaller HORROR section that neighbored them.
NOW, I liked spooky shit as a kid – in elementary school I’d been a big fan of John Bellairs, for instance, and I loved a collection of ghost stories or werewolf “histories,” stuff like that, but I’d never been a big reader of horror fiction – I remember trying King and deciding it wasn’t really my cup o’ tea. This opinion was further bolstered by the horror section in the bookstore, and IN PARTICULAR those very gruesome Del Ray Lovecraft paperback covers. You know the one’s I mean, with like flayed torsos hanging on hooks, shit like that? For me, they were simply too disgusting. You gotta remember, at that time, my favorite monster movies were absolutely classic Universal movies, right? Yer Mummies and yer Draculas, nothing to intense and certainly nothing gory, and those Del Ray covers made it seem like this Lovecraft clown’s stories must’ve been nonstop chop-em-ups!
Anyway, skip forward to college, I’m in Gainesville FL listening to the UF public radio station while I’m doing fossil prep work (I was assembling an Aphelops jaw bone). It’s late Oct, they’re doing special Halloween programming, and one night they put on a special Old Time Radio horror block that STARTS with some Lovecraft adaptations, including “The Dunwich Horror” from the 40s, the “Rats in the Walls” and “The Outsider” from the 60s. And I’ll be damned if they’re not an absolute blast, fun and interesting and spooky, nothing at all like what I imagined what they were like based on those ol’ Del Ray covers! After that I spent a lot of time in the library’s Special Collections, reading a bunch of old original Weird Tales that they had.
So, anyway, these three Lovecraft adaptations hold a special place in my heart, and I hope you’ll give ’em a chance!
The Dunwich Horror – Suspense, 1945 – a true classic that takes a fairly long Lovecraft tale and somehow smoothly gets it down to under 30 minutes. Great voice acting in this one, particularly in the case of Wilbur Whatley’s strange horrible voice. Well done, and it’s fun to think about people in the 40s hearing someone shouting “Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth!” on their radios!
The Rats in the Walls – Black Mass, 1964 – this is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories of all time (terrible racist name of the cat notwithstanding), and this is a great radio adaptation, extremely faithful and with a real sense of building dread. The final descent into madness is really well done, too; not too surprising, but the secret to good audio horror is good voice work, and I feel like this show has some talent in that regard!
The Outsider – Black Mass, 1964 – one of Lovecraft’s lesser stories, but this is still a good, atmospheric adaptation that is a lot of fun. Ganked this one off an old time radio website years ago, so it’s got a modern intro, just fyi.
Anyway, it’s fun stuff, and if you, like me, enjoy Lovecraft, these are some real treats. Enough for now, happy listening!
Given my love of classic, early-to-mid 20th Century pulp magazines, it probably comes as no surprise that I ALSO love early-to-mid 20th Century Old Time Radio! And, while I’ll always have a deep fondness for Our Miss Brooks, Burns and Allen, Gunsmoke, The Adventures of Sam Spade, X minus 1, and all them, the HORROR radio from that period holds a special place in my heart. So, since it’s Halloween Time, I thought I’d post up the VERY BEST of the OTR Spook-em-ups I’ve collected over the years. I’ll do a few at a time, so stay tuned, but they’re fun so give ’em a listen!
1 – The House in Cypress Canyon(Suspense, Dec 5 1946) – Let’s start with the absolute weirdest one on the list. Suspense was a great show and their whole catalog is worth listening to (when archive.org isn’t under attack) – they specialized in thrillers that, fairly often, would grade into weirdness, and they’re consistently well-acted and well-produced. This one is probably one of their scariest, strangest episodes; the set-up and the execution are top-notch, and there’s some great, spooky soundwork in here too. Listen to it!
2–The Thing on the Fourable Board (Quiet, Please, 1948) – This might be the scariest old time radio show ever produced, due to the A) super-cool monster and B) the SOUND of the super-cool monster. Seriously weird choice for the “voice” of the critter in this one. It’s also a great story with a fun and surprising twist at the end. Really worth turning down your lights and listening to this one in the dark.
3 –Specialty of the House (The Price of Fear, 1973) – In ’73 and ’74 the great Vincent Price did an absolutely amazing radio horror series where he played a fictionalized version of himself, and buddy, lemme tell you, there’s some good stuff in there. I mean, Price is fantastic of course; his voice, his affect, everything, and the writing on these is just phenomenal. This episode in particular is really great, everything is played very subtly and calmly, right up to the very end. A phenomenal one, truly!
4 – Three Skeleton Key (Escape, 1956) – Speaking of Vincent Price, here he is again in a great adaptation of the short story (by Georges-Gustave Toudouze) “Three Skeleton Key.” This one revolves around the crew of a remote lighthouse, a derelict ship, and what’s on board…really fun, really scary.
That’s enough for now – two hours of audio spook-em-ups for you, a pretty good block. But there’s more to come!
Eric Williams 