Saturday, April 30, 2022

Radio Recap: Appointment with Fear

Appointment with Fear was a radio drama series on the BBC which originally ran from 1943-1955. I don't normally look at BBC radio when I delve into old-time radio, but I made an exception for this series.

You see, Appointment with Fear is essentially the BBC's version of Suspense. Just as Suspense began largely as a series driven by scripts written by author John Dickson Carr, Carr was also the driving force behind the start of Appointment with Fear. The first several years were made up entirely of scripts by John Dickson Carr and the majority of them were originally written for Suspense.

I can't draw a fair picture of what Appointment with Fear was like because there's very little surviving from the series. I found only four episodes online - three by John Dickson Carr ("The Clock Strikes Eight," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Speaking Clock") plus a non-Carr, "And the Deep Shuddered." All three Carr episodes were originally done on Suspense.

As a Suspense, Appointment with Fear is certainly of interest - the quality of the BBC versions are more-or-less equal to that of CBS. As well, Appointment with Fear was hosted by "the Man in Black," who likewise hosted the first few years of Suspense. Suspense seemed to evolve past the character, but now I wonder if Carr had some ownership of the character which required CBS to phase him out after Carr stopped working on their show.

If you've read this blog before, you might have read one of my gripes against Carr. To put it briefly, I don't think he was a very good radio writer (I can't judge him as a prose author); his stories were very talky, didn't make good use of audio effects and have (to me) an unpleasant odour of smugness.

But I'm a Suspense fan, so Carr is an important part of that show's history (and he did write some episodes I quite like). So, I'm happy to have heard what little there is of Appointment with Fear and if more episodes emerge I'll certainly check them out!

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Blogging about the Pandemic at CEML

One can never have too many blogs, hm?

One of the other blogs I am currently responsible for is the one belonging to CEML hospital here in Angola. I just added a new post, Perspectives on the Pandemic which I researched by speaking to the doctors at CEML, asking them what the hospital endured over the last 2 years of the pandemic. I'm a little proud of it, mostly because it took a fair bit of work to research. Hopefully it does some good by highlighting the efforts of medical personnel at CEML through these difficult times.

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Radio Recap: The Sealed Book

The Sealed Book is a series I encountered very early on when I started listening to old-time radio but I never made a real effort to listen to every episode. For this series of posts I've been doing, I thought it would be interesting to finally give the entire series a fair shake.

The Sealed Book was a transcribed radio mystery program which aired on Mutual in 1945. It was written by Robert A. Arthur and David Kogan and seems to have been entirely recreations of scripts they wrote for the Mysterious Traveler. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since we have so few surviving episodes of the Mysterious Traveler.

Comparing the Mysterious Traveler version of the story "Out of the Past" to the later version on the Sealed Book helps highlight a problem with the series. "Out of the Past" concerns a woman being blackmailed; in the conclusion, we learn the blackmailer was her own husband, trying to drive her insane. But in the original he succeeds too well and is murdered by his wife. In the later version the husband gets away with his crime. It seems clear that the difference exists because The Sealed Book had a shorter runtime than the Mysterious Traveler and in more than one case you can tell they tried to save time by removing pages from the back of the script.

Still, the episodes I've heard all have very good audio - one of the rare times when transcribed radio dramas have an advantage over live broadcasts.

Another useful comparison is to Inner Sanctum Mysteries. The obvious difference would be that while Inner Sanctum would suggest the supernatural they never committed to genuine supernatural horror in their stories, while the Mysterious Traveler/Sealed Book had no problem using the supernatural. But it's more than that - Inner Sanctum constantly tried to maintain tension with sudden twists and surprises which often didn't make sense when the story was finally told. So I admire the Sealed Book for having strong narrative structure - when they have twist ending, the twist is always set up.

Of course, that means The Sealed Book can be a little predictable. "Murder Must Be Paid for," for instance, has a very obvious twist and beyond that, not much of interest going for it.

Still, their commitment to the supernatural - and science fiction - resulted in a few strong episodes. "Beware of Tomorrow" is a decent robot story; "the King of the World" is a great cursed-with-immortality story; and "My Beloved Must Die" wheeled out a figure who seldom appeared in radio horror programs.

I should also speak about the program's host(s). Initially the series had two hosts - the announcer, and "the Keeper of the Book," an elderly man who narrated the stories. It was a bit bizarre having two hosts talking to each other and begged the question why the stories had to be presented in that fashion; I guess someone really did ask, because after only a few episodes the Keeper became a silent figure as the announcer took over all the narration duties. It was for the best, frankly - the Keeper was just a rip-off of the Hermit from the Hermit's Cave.

You can listen or download the Sealed Book from the Internet Archive.

Monday, April 4, 2022

Radio Recap: Whitehall 1212

Whitehall 1212 was an NBC radio program which aired from the fall of 1951 until the fall of 1952. It was a crime series which dramatized cases from the files of Scotland Yard.

Whitehall 1212 was produced by Wyllis Cooper, best-remembered for creating the horror programs Lights Out and Quiet Please. However, you'd hardly know it was he based on this program. The first-person style of his horror plays isn't present here, nor is his idiosyncratic dialogue or purpley prose. A few early episodes feature transitions with the same gong sound heard in his Lights Out plays, but that's the only time I really felt his presence as producer.

Whitehall 1212 invites obvious comparisons to the Black Museum, Harry Alan Towers' syndicated program with Orson Welles which also dramatized Scotland Yard cases. But I must say, Whitehall 1212 looks pretty anemic next to the Black Museum. I'd never call the Black Museum one of radio's best, but it featured strong narration by Orson Welles, crisp dialogue and some decent audio effects. Whitehall 1212 is very dry; audio effects are minimal and unlike the dramatic recreations of crimes heard on the Black Museum, Whitehall 1212 is concerned strictly with the criminal investigation. I never thought I'd rank a Wyllis Cooper production beneath Harry Alan Towers, but here we are.

Whitehall 1212 came out at a time when there was strong interest in police procedurals due to the success of Dragnet. But Dragnet, again, featured very strong audio effects and crisp dialogue. People in Whitehall 1212 drone on and on.

Much is made by the series' claim that it features "an all British cast," which is an achievement for a program made in the USA. The show features almost the same cast every episode, but in different roles. So a man might be a detective one week, the killer the next. It sounds to me like Ramsay Hall was in a number of episodes but I don't see him credited in the program. There's also a recurring character called John Davidson who describes objects from the Black Museum, but he has an unfortunate lisp that makes listening to him an irritation.

If I had to pick a favourite, I found the show from January 6, 1952 was pretty good - it actually dramatized the crime being investigated, making it an oddity. But for that reason it held my interest.

You can hear Whitehall 1212 at the Internet Archive.