John Lund is the sympathetic leading man of "Lunch Kit," broadcast on June 9, 1949. Lund's character is the son of a radical anti-atomic energy extremist. To pacify his father, he must carry a bomb into the plant where he works - concealed within his lunch kit. All that remains is for him to trifle his way through an ordinary day of work, then the bomb will take care of itself. However, knowing what he's agreed to do and how soon the bomb will detonate, his nerves fall apart. You can download the episode from archive.org here.
"Lunch Kit" is one of the few episodes which originated on another radio series (a series other than Escape, I should add). As "Death Carries a Lunch Kit," it was first heard as an episode of the Whistler on October 23, 1944. I prefer the Suspense version but if you'd like to compare flavours, you can find it at archive.org here.
Tomorrow: "I saw the knife. He'd fallen on it! It stuck out of the middle of his chest!"
I recently listened to this; I had heard the Whistler episode some time ago. If I recall, the Suspense version adds the anti-atomic research plot. This makes the beginning more interesting, but I actually found the ironic ending to be far less satisfying than the Whistler episode--Lund's too sympathetic to really enjoy the comeuppance his character receives.
ReplyDeleteThe Whistler definitely has a long history of comeuppance, but Suspense could often be fairly cruel to their sympathetic protagonists - especially when they were criminals, as in this case. I give this one marks because Lund is so effective at drawing sympathy that the listener starts to forget how terrible his goals are, the finale serving him what he deserved for his actions.
ReplyDelete