Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 31 of 31: "The Corpse Nobody Loved"

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

To conclude my month-long look at hightlights from the series Inner Sanctum, I'm featuring "The Corpse Nobody Loved," an episode originally broadcast on September 21th, 1952. This was among the earliest episodes of the series I heard and it has a strange dream-like quality to it. A young woman catches a taxi, then finds herself seated next to a corpse!

"The Corpse Nobody Loved" was hosted by Paul McGrath.

You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.

Thank you for joining me during this month's theme! I hope you enjoyed it!

Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 30 of 31: "The Meek Die Slowly"

Today I'm looking at the Inner Sanctum episode "The Meek Die Slowly," which was originally broadcast on September 7th, 1952. Many episodes of Inner Sanctum attempt to conceal the show's murderer -- this is not such an episode. Our anti-hero is a gardener who finds himself tortured by what seem to be the ghost of a young woman he murdered.

"The Meek Die Slowly" was hosted by Paul McGrath and starred Arnold Moss. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.

Tomorrow I wrap up this year's Halloween theme!

Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 29 of 31: "Strange Passenger"

Earlier I looked at the Inner Sanctum episode "The Hitch-Hiking Corpse" and disputed it having any connection to Lucille Fletcher's "The Hitchhiker." Today I'm looking at "Strange Passenger" which was first broadcast on August 31, 1952, and it has much more in common with Fletcher's play than the former program! This episode features another lonely driver on the highway at night; he keeps seeing a woman hitchhiker at the side of the road... and his radio doesn't seem to stop playing "Star Dust."

"Strange Passenger" was hosted by Paul McGrath and featured Joan Lorring and Leon Janney. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.

Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 28 of 31: "Murder Off the Record"

Today I'm looking at the Inner Sanctum episode "Murder Off the Record," which was originally broadcast on August 3rd, 1952. At this point, Inner Sanctum had been on the air for 11 years but, as this episode demonstrates, their quality remained consistent. This was one of the first episode I heard of the series. It opens with a man entering a record store and beginning to record a confession of the strange events which had recently transpired in his life. It seems a weighing machine predicted fortune for him -- and very quickly the prediction came through!

"Murder Off the Record" was hosted by Paul McGrath and featured Ken Lynch, Lawson Zerbe, Lesley Woods and Santos Ortega. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.

Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 27 of 31: "Death Pays the Freight"

There are so, so many stories in old-time radio wherein a character meets a random stranger who is their exact double. Such a story is "Death Pays the Freight," an Inner Sanctum episode which was originally broadcast on July 6th, 1952. This story concerns a hobo on a boxcar who kills a man in self-defense. Realizing the dead man is practically his twin he decides to adopt the dead man's identity, then finds out the dead man was a hitman!

"Death Pays the Freight" was hosted by Paul McGrath and featured Everett Sloane, Leon Janney and Ralph Bell. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.

Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 26 of 31: "Terror by Night"

Compared to the likes of Suspense, Inner Sanctum seldom had many big-name talents starring in their programs, but "Terror by Night" is one of the happy exceptions. This episode, first broadcast on June 29th, 1952, stars one of Suspense's top stars, Agnes Moorehead! Like yesterday's episode, we have a plot in which a lone driver travelling at night runs into a dangerous situation. In this instance, Moorehead ends up meeting a man who has a body in the trunk of his car. It has a great pay-off at the climax!

"Terror by Night" was hosted by Paul McGrath and starred Agnes Moorehead. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.

Inner Sanctum Halloween Month, day 25 of 31: "The Hitch-Hiking Corpse"

"The Hitch-Hiking Corpse" is an episode of Inner Sanctum which was originally broadcast on January 23, 1950. Strangely, the RadioGold Index refers to this as an 'adaptation' of Lucille Fletcher's play "The Hitchhiker" (best known as an episode of Suspense). The Index even lists Lucille Fletcher as the author but it's a pretty dubious connection: the two plays have nothing in common other than the presence of a hitchhiker.

In the Fletcher play, a man driving across country keeps seeing the same ghostly hitchhiker everywhere he goes. In this, "The Hitch-Hiking Corpse," a trucker picks up a hitch-hiking woman who claims to have supernatural powers and might be a murderer.

"The Hitch-Hiking Corpse" was hosted by Paul McGrath and featured Ken Lynch, Mercedes McCambridge and Everett Sloane. You can listen to this episode at archive.org by clicking here.