Month: January 2019

EP2724: Boston Blackie: Three ‘The Wind Blows West Murders’

Richard Kollmar

Three men are murdered while reading copies of the newest best-selling novel.

Original Air Date: February 11, 1948
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EP2723: Rocky Jordan: Adventures with Andrea

Jack Moyles

A friend of Rocky’s asks to stay with him, but a black-haired woman from Brazil has a score to settle.

Original Air Date: September 11, 1949

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EP2722: Stand by For Crime: The Lonely Hearts Club of Doom

Glenn Langan

A wealthy man with a poor physical appearance asks Chuck’s help, alleging that the wealthy man’s new bride and her brother tried to kill him.

Original Air Date: 1952

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Video Theater 147: Boston Blackie: False Face

A friend of Blackie has an exact double who robs the bank he’s president of and frames Blackie’s friend for the crime.

Season 2, Episode 27

Original Air Date: April 27, 1953

EP2721: Mister Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: The Abandoned Well Murder Case

So lost, I'm fading

photo credit: Greyframe So lost, I’m fading viaphotopin (license)

Mister Keen investigates when a wealthy man is found murdered in an abandoned well.

Original Air Date: August 10, 1951

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Audio Drama Review: Night of the Triffids

In Night of the Triffids from Big Finish productions, the survivors’ great advantage against the Triffids appears to be thrown in jeopardy by the coming of a worldwide darkness. David Masen, the son of the protagonist in Day of the Triffids leaves the Isle of Wight by airplane to investigate.

The Production has some commendable elements. The cast is strong, particularly Sam Troughton and Nicola Bryant. The effects do a good job of bringing the Triffids to life. The sound design helps create tense scenes, particularly the part with David and Marmi swimming and battling Triffids who have evolved to survive underwater.

The writing is the challenge.  Night of the Triffids is a good adaptation of a so-so book. The story has some interesting ideas such as finding out how the United States fared in the catastrophic blindness, the encroachment of the Triffids, and the aftermath. Yet, the story’s inciting incident fades from importance and resolves itself in the last two minutes. At the same time, the story asks us to follow a lot of wild and improbable plot twists. Most notably is the attempt to take a character from the original book and turn him into the prime villain of this story when this story is set mostly in America. They have to explain how the character survived probable death, got across the ocean in a post-apocalyptic future, and rose to be a major leader.

This is not horrible, but it isn’t a worthy successor for the original.

Rating: 3 out of 5

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EP2720: Dragnet: The Big Mustache

Jack Webb

Friday and Smith investigate a store robbery.

Original Air Date: March 23, 1954
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EP2719: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Zipp Matter

Mandel Kramer

Someone in Las Vegas asks Johnny to help straighten out a tense situation over an inheritance where murder is possible.

Original Air Date: May 27, 1962

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EP2718: Boston Blackie: The Song Request Thefts

Richard Kollmar

A disk jockey is suspicious that a man calling in song requests is tied to a series of robberies.

Original Air Date: January 28, 1948

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EP2717: Rocky Jordan: A Stranger to the Desert

Jack Moyles
An Eskimo stumbles into the window of the Tambourine and collapses dead.

Original Air Date: January 28, 1948

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EP2716: Stand by for Crime: Displaced Into Danger

Glenn LanganChuck investigates a vicious blackmail ring against displaced persons in Los Angeles.

Original Air Date: 1952

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EP2715: Mister Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons: The Case of The Strange Murder of Carrie Ellis

So lost, I'm fading

photo credit: Greyframe So lost, I’m fading viaphotopin (license)

A woman comes to Mister Keen’s office, asking for help because she killed a woman but doesn’t know why.

Original Air Date: August 3, 1951

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EP2714: Dragnet: The Big Rod

Jack Webb

Friday and Smith search for the driver of a souped up car who hit a woman and left her for dead.

Original Air Date: March 16, 1954

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Audio Drama Review: Day of The Triffids


Day of the Triffids is a 1968 Radio Dramatization of John Wyndham’s classic British Sci-Fi novel by the same name.

The programs begins as believably as possible in explaining of how Earth came to have giant, walking, aggressive plants. It begins with the Soviets developing the Triffids to gain a competitive advantage in food production over the West. Due to a bit of espionage and misadventure, the Triffid seeds being spread across the globe.

The good news is the Triffids can be controlled and managed. Humanity has one advantage over them: Humans can see. Unfortunately, an astronomical event is seen across the Earth and the media urges every person to stare up at it. This stupidity leads to almost the entire human race going blind.

The hero of the story Bill Masen (Gary Watson)  worked in Triffid management and knows their dangers. Due to an accident, he’d ended up in the hospital with bandages over his eyes,making him one of the few people who still have eyesight. He’s left to navigate the perils of a post-apocalyptic world.

While the inciting event is a bit silly, the action that takes place after that makes for a compelling drama of what might happen if society in England collapsed due to a sudden cataclysm. Some interesting ideas are explored as plague and disease grips the country. Society crumbles and is unable to cope. Some loot existing stores and try to live off them while others try to figure out how to rediscover old ways of doing things that don’t require technology. Others sees the collapse as a reason to change social mores to suit various goals. Some folks band together to start a fascist state.

The soundscape is about average for the era, with enough sound effects used to aide the listener’s imagination. The cast turns in believable performances with the main cast being pretty likale.

Perhaps, the most remarkable thing about Day of the Triffids is that the titular creatures are far from the greatest peril that Bill Masen and friends face. Though certainly the Triffids are menacing when they appear.

However, after disease, bandits, well-intentioned people who do things that make things worse, and the self-appointed military, the Triffids barely make the top five of the most perilous challenges that the survivors face.

Terry Nation did this story practically beat for beat in his 1970s TV series Survivors which was essentially Day of the Triffids without the Triffids. In Survivors, humanity was decimated by a plague and it worked as well if not better. So how much the Triffids contribute to the story is open to debate.

Overall, though, this is a sold 1960s adaptation of a Science Fiction classic that holds up fairly well for the most part.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

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EP2713: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Two Steps to Murder Matter

Mandel Kramer

Johnny is called in by an insurance agent who wants him to prove one of his employees didn’t commit suicide.

Original Air Date: May 20, 1962

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