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!

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.

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.

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.

Radio Recap: Top Secret

Top Secret was a short-lived program on NBC in 1950. It was produced by Harry W. Junkin (who earlier produced Radio City Playhouse and later produced The Chase). The series starred Ilona Massey as Baroness Karen Geza, an Austrian noblewoman who worked as an undercover operative for the Allies during World War II.

Although Massey portrayed the Baroness as a femme fatale in the style of Marlene Dietrich, it's interesting to note she wasn't a 'Mata Hari' character - that is, she didn't (usually) obtain her intelligence by sleeping with the enemy. She usually took on menial jobs which placed her close to people of significance. Frequently there were friendly agents who swooned over her and a few villains as well, but she didn't really find romance on the program. A rare exception to the rule is the epsode "The Unknown Mission" in which she and an enemy male spy are pit against each other.

Top Secret does not hold up against the likes of Cloak and Dagger. It didn't adapt its heroine's adventures from real-life assignments. And yet, it is interesting to hear a World War II espionage series with a recurring lead and a little bit of continuity from week-to-week, which sets it apart from Cloak and Dagger.

But I guess Top Secret struggled in the ratings because late in its run, it suddenly got a revamp; it stopped being set in the European theater of World War II and became a post-war series which pit the Baroness against communists. Basically, the series transformed into The Man Called X but with a female lead and those later episodes are not very interesting to listen to.

The most bizarre discovery I made is that one of their scripts was performed twice - first as a World War II drama against Nazi agents in London, then as a Cold War drama against communists in the USA! The original version, "Disaster in London" is easily my favourite episode as the Baroness is pit against a British agent who has betrayed his country for the Axis. But the remake, titled merely "Disaster" is a bit odd - it isn't a full episode, it lacks all of the announcer's parts and musical bridges. Perhaps it was never broadcast and was only ever an experiment by the creators to see if they could refashion World War II spy dramas into Cold war spy dramas.

The Old Time Radio Researchers group have collected the show's episodes and you can hear them on this playlist at Youtube. Top Secret is not a phenomenal series but there aren't many decent old-time radio spy dramas and this is, to my knowledge, the only such series with a female lead. I think it's worth trying out.

Angola in the Comics #18: Marauders #20

Welcome back to Angola in the comics!

Usually there are two flavours of stories I feature in this occasional series - European comics and rather racist books from the Golden Age. But today I have a rarity - an appearance by Angola in a contemporary mainstream super hero comic from Marvel Comics!

The comic in question is Marauders #20, published last year by writer Gerry Duggan and artist Stefano Caselli. Marauders is one of the many new X-Men books which have been published over the last few years since Jonathan Hickman redefined the franchise so as to render all the mutant characters basically immune to death (Hickman knows that the key to drama is to lower the stakes). The X-Men, who had previously felt somewhat like a cult instead leaned hard into that concept as now they all basically talk like a bunch of Scientologists. They like to think that on their island Krakoa they're a veritable nation, but Krakoa seems to be little more than a hotel resort.

Anyway, it's not as though the current set-up will last forever - fact is, Hickman himself foresaw an endgame for his story. But Marvel, in their wisdom, decided to keep the status quo running beyond its expiration date, as that has historically never been a problem with comics.

So then: the Marauders are pirates. But not the Captain Phillips-type contemporary pirates, they're... quasi-super hero pirates. Strangely, Nightcrawler is not among their ranks, despite being the lone X-Man renowned for his love of swashbuckling. But the one-eyed Callisto is there, which is a pretty good joke.

In this issue the Marauders sit around on their boat swapping stories about Storm and wagering on how many knives they think she owns. The Angolan connection comes up when Bishop states that Storm once helped him out in Angola. This comes as a surprise to Storm, since she doesn't recall ever being in Angola with Bishop. And so begins the flashback:

Based on the dialogue, it seems there were some Angolan mutants (not depicted on-panel) and Bishop and Pyro of the Marauders were exchanging some of Krakoa's super-medicine for their release. But as the flashback begins, Bishop and Pyro are facing four armed Angolan soldiers who want to change the terms of their deal. Oh no! How will Bishop (able to absorb any form of energy, basically unkillable even without Krakoa) and Pyro (walking flamethrower) ever overcome four men with guns?

Actually, this doesn't come down to a fight - it's a bit more clever than that. There's a storm forming in the sky above and Bishop claims that Storm herself is responsible for it. It's a bluff, but a loud thunderclap convinces the lead officer to relent and agree to the original terms of their deal.

And that's it - just one page of the comic given over to Angola, but that's still the biggest role Angola has ever featured in a Marvel comic.

Strange that all the Angolan soldiers spoke English... it's not exactly common over here, speaking as an ESL teacher in Angola. It could just as easily have been set in the Congo or Nigeria - the story references Angola, but doesn't actually depict Angola. But I give Duggan credit for making a token effort.

New Appendix profiles

It has been a little while but I'm contributing a few profiles to the Appendix now and then. Here's three new entries I created: 3-21 (a Captain America foe); Viking (a Hulk foe); and Mark 12 Sonic Depressor (a Hulk device). I'm always happy to continue my involvement with the Appendix and hope I'll have more to share in the future!