Terror Tuesday: The Witch’s Tale

Can zombies be cited for littering if they don’t pick up the parts that drop off while they are shambling about? Equal rights for the deceased, yes? Isn’t that why we have “blue” laws? Or is that something else?

This week’s recommended late summer night viewing in classic horror: The Creature from the Black Lagoon. This 1954 Universal monster movie was originally filmed in 3D and is one of the best of creature features. Basically, a scientific expedition to the Amazon uncovers evidence of a link between fish and man with the discovery of a webbed skeletal hand. Of course, the creature isn’t exactly extinct and apparently has a yen for hot scientist gals. It’s the classic story—fish meets girl, falls head over fins, girl decides caviar isn’t for her and lonely Gillman goes belly up. At least until the two sequels. But make no mistake, this is an excellent film and still eminently viewable today. A remake is scheduled to hit theaters next year, but we know how those usually go. I’m sure somebody will want to turn it into a PC environmental preach fest instead of a genuine scare.

Old Time Radio produced some truly great horror shows: Inner Sanctum, Hermit’s Cave, Lights Out and a plethora of others. One such entry was called The Witch’s Tale. It aired on WOR from 1931 to 1938 and was created, written and directed by Alonzo Deen Cole. An anthology series, it was hosted by Nancy, the spooky old witch of Salem, who began the shows with a nerve-grating cackle. She owned a cat named Satan, of course, and inspired EC comic’s witch in The Haunt of Fear. Nancy was played first by stage actress Adelaide Fitz-Allen, who died in 1935 at the age of 79, then was replaced by thirteen-year-old Miriam Wolfe.

The show much resembled the Hermit’s Cave, and others of its type, which I wrote about in an earlier blog. Each week Nancy would cackle and shriek and introduce a different tale a terror, and indeed the shows were ground-breaking spooky at the time. Many still are. Cole, who also wrote a mystery show called, Casey, Crime Reporter, apparently wasn’t as impressed with his own work, because in the early ‘60s he destroyed the recordings and very few episodes survived, which is a shame. (If you look hard enough, however, you can still find a few. Try http://www.theradiolady.com/ for inexpensive MP3 eps).

So if you are in the mood for some genuine fright, try listening late at night to some of these radio horror shows. Your imagination can conjure up much scarier things with radio than having it laid out explicitly on film.

Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time…
THE CHLOE FILES by Howard Hopkins
In the tradition of Sookie Stackhouse and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer…
In paperback from http://www.bn.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/