Twilight Zone radio plays
Earlier this week, Blackstone Audio sent me a box containing all three volumes of collected Twilight Zone radio plays, produced in 2004 for CBS radio using Rod Serling's original scripts, with Stacey Keach narrating and hosting. Each volume contains ten episodes, and each episode has a celebrity actor in the lead role, from Lou Diamond Phillips to Ed Begley Jr to Adam West to Kim Fields.
I'm an enormous fan of the original Twilight Zone series (even moreso since I heard the excellent Tank Riot podcast on Rod Serling) and I really enjoyed the 30 episodes in these collections, though a few were weaker in the adaptation and acting than others. Keach does a surprisingly good job standing in for Serling, and the scripts -- lightly updated for contemporary performance -- are really well-suited to audio. There's a good mix of comic and spooky, dark and light in the stories adapted, too.
This strikes me as really top-notch cross-country driving audio, the kind of thing you could listen to in 40-minute chunks with your kids, each episode sparking a discussion about social issues, technological speculation, or moral questions. A few of the episodes are spooky enough to qualify as campfire stories, too. At about $30/box, it works out to $3 per episode, which seems about right -- a little expensive for a couple of the weaker ones and a real steal for the great ones.
Link to Volume 1,
Link to Volume 2,
Link to Volume 3
the latest
latest episodes
Rod Serling is my hero. I now have a reason to buy myself a birthday present this year. Thanks for pointing these out.
I've heard some of these on Sirius Radio Classics in the overnight hours. (perfect)
I would say your assessment is accurate.
Some episodes are better than others, but the whole thing is bound to be excellent listening.
I'm more of an amazing stories and tales frome the dark side fan. Sorry but I don't feel like working today.
I'll try to make the time to listen to it 'strider m2k" Even though , thanks for the sight directive.
PC
I'll check it out when I get the chance Cory. (Lake Wobegon Cory Style) Sounds cool.
I gotta jet and get some breakfast at the airport but, did Wiliam Shatner do 2 0r 3 episodes of the Twilight Zone?
Shatner did two episodes, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Nick of Time." Both are worth a watch.
All three volumes? Amazon has thirteen volumes of these discs listed, with volumes 12 and 13 just out recently. 30 episodes just barely scratches the surface...
Cool! I'll have to check them out. Lately I've been listening to Dimension X, an early 50's sci-fi radio program. They're available for download for free on archive.org
http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Dimension_X_Singles
nice link Engwar. There was something called "Mindwebs"...
http://www.archive.org/details/MindWebs-SciFi
As an appetizer for this Twilight Zone collection, here is a track to jog the very first episode: "Where is everybody"
Enjoy...
http://www.jogtheweb.com/reader/index.php?trackId=135
Thanks for the Mindwebs tip. Although it's not sci-fi I'm totally hooked on the Johnny Dollar and Dragnet episodes on archive.org too.
http://www.archive.org/details/YTJD_A
http://www.archive.org/details/Dragnet_OTR
My commute is about a half-hour and it's a great change from just music or the radio. I've listened to some audio books but radio broadcasts are great in that they're just the right length. It might take a week or more to complete an audio book.
It looks like there were 13 volumes of 1 or 2 discs. The new 3 volume packages (Talked about in the post) are 10 discs each. Looks like they are just repackaged?
Yeah, I showed up late to recommend the archive.org repository of old network radio shows, my iPod and my home server are packed with OTR. Science fiction was unfortunately always one of the neglected forms of storytelling on radio until Dimension X showed up.
Also if you want to see where an odd show like "Seinfeld" got its basic form, consult "Jack Benny" over there.
From All of us at Cerny American Creative with the great help of Carl Amari and Falcon Picture Group thanks for the enthusiasm about this series. Our Lead Engineer Bob Benson does an amazing job breathing new life into these retro tales and everyone here at the studio has great respect for the nostalgic art of Radio Drama. Please don't hesitate to check these out!
I'm 23 years old and there are still few things that stimulate my imagination like creative and powerful story telling in context with great audio. Thanks Again, and See you next time.......
...You know what I'd *almost* give my remaining leg for copies of? The last 4 or 5 seasons of CBS Radio Mystery Theater from the early 70's. Narrated by the late great E.G. Marshall, I used to stay up late and listen to some of the last, but best radio dramas made during the last gasps of network programming specifically made for radio. Two in particular stand out as the best remembered:
1) A group of neo-Nazis are in South America, where they find an old man they've been searching for since he disappeared in 1945. He's near death, but they manage to not only nurse him back to health, they manage to reverse his aging process enough to where he's almost livig. They're convinced he's Hitler, in hiding since the fall of Nazi Germany, and over the course of the radioplay he goes from senile denial to vague hints to outright acceptance. He's ready to now come out of hiding and lead a reborn Third Reich, but before he starts his new crusade, he has to reward a member of the team who's been his biggest supporter and the one who helped him get his moustache squared again. As he presents him with his own medal, Hitler notices that the young man is wearing a Torah around his neck. Yep, they're not neo-Nazis, but a special JDL team whose mission wasn't just to locate Hitler, but to bring him back sane, relatively healthy, and fit to stand trial. After all, what justice is there in sentencing and executing someone who's mentally gone and about to follow physically?
* The other one involves a playwright who starts geting mysterious help from a stranger on plots and script ideas. The stories sell and he begins to get rich, but the events of his scripts start happening in real life. They eventually start happening to his own family - his sister married a guy who lost his job and they're now flat broke, but he gets killed really messily and it turns out there's a BIG insurance policy, so despite the tragedy they're now all set. As the tragedies get closer and closer to home, the stranger - who basically puts the writer in a trance and "writes" his stories for him - starts getting him to write not plays, but technical reports and patent diagrams for weapons of mass destruction, and wants him to mail them not just to the Pentagon, but to the Soviets and the Chinese. It turns out that the stranger is an alien who wants Earth destroyed by using the inverse of the Prime Directive - give all sides lots of really BAD weapons, knowing full well they'll use them to off each other and everyone else on Earth. The writer figures out what's going on, and refuses to do anything more. Just then, a burglar breaks into his house, there's a scuffle, and the writer is killed. The stranger, who'd used the writer's desire for fame to get him to do his bidding now turns to the burglar and uses greed - if the burglar will simply mail a few letters, he'll get $20,000 for each letter mailed.
...Those were classics, and I wish they were available either on CD, or even an aircheck bootleg.
Blackstone Audio is great.
I personally have a set of episodes of Inner Sanctum Mysteries on CD. Those are fun; they're kind of like a really old, audio version of the "Tales From the Crypt" comix. :)
As was said above, Sirius also has a channel dedicated to old radio shows. Some of them are impossible to turn off, once you start listening.
Dimension X is great. X Minus One is arguably even better:
http://www.archive.org/details/OTRR_Certified_X_Minus_One
It came out a few years later (1955) and the first fifteen episodes were actually Dimension X scripts. But the better episodes come later, when they start to move away from the Men from Mars, Red Menace shows and into more speculative fiction. Some of the episodes are very worthy of Twilight Zone status, and many of the authors are classics of the Golden Age: Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Dick. I've been working my way through the entire series. Some of the episodes are disappointing canned alien invasion episodes, but in all, X Minus One does not disappoint.
Suspense is also an excellent series for mystery/suspense/noir fans:
http://www.archive.org/details/SUSPENSE
I'm pretty much obsessed with Serling. I grew up in Binghamton, NY and recognized the names and places he referenced. I got to introduce him at a high school assembly, more or less. http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2005/12/twilight-tone.html
His junior high drama teacher, Helen Foley, was my HS public speaking teacher thirty years later. Definitely something to add to my Amazon wish list.
Many years ago my kid brother put his finger on the lure of radio when an adventure series he liked was adapted to television. 'It's not as good,' he said. 'How so?' I asked/ 'It doesn't look as good,' he said.
Is a torrent of this going to pop up miraculously anywhere?
Just sayin'.
Buddy, I say the same thing about almost* every movie I watch that started its life as a book.
*The Last Mimsy being the most recent exception I've seen
that was a very short story
yes, and a very good movie. I love that Bradbury called him a forgotten master.
by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore)
Yep, though mostly Kuttner. I've only found the collection that includes Mimsy were the Borogoves , though I've read Padgett stories in other anthologies.