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The golden age of audio dramas arguably ended in the 1950s, when television established itself as the dominant home entertainment leader and many of radio’s top shows and stars jumped ship to the new medium. Just as Norma Desmond’s silent films were undone by the introduction of sound, the great radio shows of the 1940s were largely made obsolete by the introduction of picture. Gone were the days of shows like Inner Sanctum Mysteries (1941-1952), a horror anthology that brought listeners a different tale of terror in each episode. Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten. Some audio drama revivalists have kept the form alive at sites like the fan-supported Chilling Tales For Dark Nights. Drawing on the talents of both professionals and volunteers, the Chilling Tales team is dedicated to creating new, high-quality, audio-only dramas.

One recognizable name attached to Chilling Tales is that of Max Landis, son of...

Next week at Tfh features a trio of trippy films gathered together under the banner "Just Say No". They include Requiem for a Dream, The Trip, and the subject of today's Saturday Matinee, Confessions of an Opium Eater.

Producer Albert Zugsmith was a consummate exploitationist, launching his career in 1952 with the berserk red-scare screed, Invasion USA starring Gerald Mohr and Dan O’Herlihy. He would spend the next twenty years rattling off a memorably lurid series of titles stoked by the hottest of hot-button topics, including teenage sex (High School Confidential), collegiate sex (Sex Kittens go to College) and interracial sex (Night of the Quarter Moon). There’s a pattern here if you look real close.

An amiable self-made millionaire who seemed to thrive on the low-down pleasures found on the other side of the tracks, Zugsmith’s first directorial efforts (College Confidential, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve...

Inner Sanctum

Written by Jerome T. Gollard

Directed by Lew Landers

USA, 1948

Two travellers, strangers to one another, meet on a train. One is a young, attractive, if tempestuous woman named Marie (Eve Miller), the other a much older man, Dr. Valonius (Fritz Leiber). The man has an uncanny ability to read the future with alarming accuracy, demonstrating his skill with simple predictions that impress his new traveling companion. He then shares a story he knows about a woman with the same personality as Marie. The story begins with a man named Henry Dunlop (Charles Russell) getting off a train at a small town only to be hysterically accosted by his current lover. Henry inadvertently kills the woman and, in a state of panic, dumps the cadaver on the balcony of the last cart just as the locomotive departs. Stuck in a tiny town on a rainy night, Henry finds...

If you’ve never listened to horror radio, I wouldn’t blame ya. Most old radio shows are hokey, musty relics of forgotten times, only chilling to housewives in 1942. But there are exceptions, recordings from long ago with strange powers that have only grown over the passing decades. If you can look past the sometimes-dated presentation and put yourself in the right mindset, the best horror radio is like listening to the distant cries of ancient ghosts. Collected below are my ten favorite old-timey radio horror broadcasts. Turn off the lights and listen! [You can hear each episode by clicking on the title.] 1) Suspense: "Ghost Hunt" Forget The Blair Witch Project; this episode of Suspense marks the real beginning of found-footage horror. Recorded way back in 1949, the story is told through audiotapes “discovered” after wacky radio disc jockey Smiley Smith goes mad in a haunted house. Smiley starts off treating his visit like a goofy radio stunt, but before long,...

Heavy breathing, hammering heart and outrageous enthusiasm in the form of tiny little squeals were just some of the things I experienced right after receiving a text from my editor last summer asking me If I was available and wanted to attend a set visit for Xmen. Umm, let’s not kid ourselves. Considering the film has an amazing all-star A-list cast and the prequel, First Class is pretty kick-ass, naturally it was a no-brainer. However, when I discovered Michael Fassbender, Hugh Jackman and James McAvoy would be filming on set that day. I jumped on the chance like a cheetah on its prey.

Soon after that, this over-heated and grateful gal, flew out to Montreal on a very hot August day, to join a select group of equally curious and enthusiastic reporters. The morning after our arrival, we met our sweet Fox rep, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to be driven...

Miscasting in films has always been a problem. A producer hires an actor thinking that he or she is perfect for a movie role only to find the opposite is true. Other times a star is hired for his box office draw but ruins an otherwise good movie because he looks completely out of place.

There have been many humdinger miscastings. You only have to laugh at John Wayne’s Genghis Khan (with Mongol moustache and gun-belt) in The Conqueror (1956), giggle at Marlon Brando’s woeful upper class twang as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and cringe at Dick Van Dyke’s misbegotten cockney accent in Mary Poppins (1964). But as hilarious as these miscastings are, producers at the time didn’t think the same way, until after the event. At least they add a bit of camp value to a mediocre or downright awful movie.

In rare cases,...

We're always game for a new helping of horror metal from Oakland, CA “splatter thrash” unit Ghoul, who recently graced us with an awesome cover of Gwar's classic track “Americanized” on the compilation Intermediate Level Hard-Core. We're still hanging on for a full-length sequel to their awesome record Transmission Zero, but in the meantime they've thrown us another gore-drenched bone, joining forces with satirical stoner-metallers Cannabis Corpse for the tasty 12” split album Splatterhash. Thematically, it's exactly what the title implies: a short, controlled burst of gory horror thrash and weed-metal insanity. What better way to kick off the new year in music? Oddly enough, the Gwar connection continues in Splatterhash, being the first Cannabis Corpse recording to feature lead guitarist Brent Purgason – whom you may already know as Pustulus Maximus, who assumed Gwar's lead axe role from the late, great Cory Smoot (a.k.a. Flattus Maximus) last year, and...

Shock Theater with Joe Dante continues at Trailers from Hell, today with director and Tfh creator Dante introducing Reginald Le Borg's 1944 mystery, "Weird Woman," starring Lon Chaney as a professor who takes a supernatural wife while on a South Seas expedition. Fritz Leiber's pulp novella "Conjure Wife", which originally appeared in the April 1943 issue of Unknown Worlds, has had a surprisingly durable screen history. It was adapted here as the second entry in Universal's Inner Sanctum Mystery series, then redone years later as an episode of the Moment of Fear TV show (1960). A classy feature treatment, Burn Witch Burn, followed in 1961 (see Tfh Guru Sam Hamm's take on it here). A barely released comedy version, Witches' Brew, appeared in 1980.

The freaky fun goes down on February 4th as part of the Inner Sanctum Film Club at London’s Sanctum Soho Hotel (20 Warwick Street). Doors at 6:30 p.m., film at 7:30 p.m.

Wilde, of course, starred as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II and as a punk thug in the late Michael Winner’s cult classic Death Wish 3. She’s well known in the UK as a media personality, however, and in recent years as one of the finest purveyors of erotically charged horror fiction around. Her first full length novel The Venus Complex is featured, along with a new interview with Wilde, in the upcoming Fangoria #321…

In the meantime, have a look at the cool poster for the event and if you are in the area, get there early….the room will no doubt fill up.

The freaky fun goes down on February 4th as part of the Inner Sanctum Film Club at London’s Sanctum Soho Hotel (20 Warwick Street). Doors at 6:30 p.m., film at 7:30 p.m.

Wilde, of course, starred as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II and as a punk thug in the late Michael Winner’s cult classic Death Wish 3. She’s well known in the UK as a media personality, however, and in recent years as one of the finest purveyors of erotically charged horror fiction around. Her first full length novel The Venus Complex is featured, along with a new interview with Wilde, in the upcoming Fangoria #321…

In the meantime, have a look at the cool poster for the event and if you are in the area, get there early….the room will no doubt fill up.

The freaky fun goes down on February 4th as part of the Inner Sanctum Film Club at London’s Sanctum Soho Hotel (20 Warwick Street). Doors at 6:30 p.m., film at 7:30 p.m.

Wilde, of course, starred as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II and as a punk thug in the late Michael Winner’s cult classic Death Wish 3. She’s well known in the UK as a media personality, however, and in recent years as one of the finest purveyors of erotically charged horror fiction around. Her first full length novel The Venus Complex is featured, along with a new interview with Wilde, in the upcoming Fangoria #321…

In the meantime, have a look at the cool poster for the event and if you are in the area, get there early….the room will no doubt fill up.

The following is a list of all comic books, graphic novels and special items that will be available this week and shipped to comic book stores who have placed orders for them.

215 Ink

Fall Gn (not verified by Diamond), $7.99

Price (One Shot), $3.99

Abstract Studios

Rachel Rising #4, $3.99

AC Comics

Crypt Of Horror Volume 13 Tp (not verified by Diamond), $29.95

Adventure House

Lone Ranger Magazine November 1937 Replica Edition, $14.95

Antarctic Press

Gold Digger #134, $3.99

Gold Digger Holidays Special #1, $3.50

Archaia Entertainment

Cyclops #8, $3.95

Black Fire Hc, $24.95

Billy Fog Volume 1 The Gift Of Trouble Sight Hc, $24.95

Dare Detectives The Snow Pea Plot Hc (Collected Edition), $24.95

Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal Volume 1 Creation Myths Hc (not verified by Diamond), $19.95

Archie Comics

Betty & Veronica Double Digest #197, $3.99

Life With Archie #16, $3.99

Ardden Entertainment

Atlas Unified #1 (Cover A Jimbo Salgado ‘Grim Ghost’), $2.99

Atlas Unified #1 (Cover B Jimbo Salgado ‘Phoenix’), $2.99

Atlas Unified #1 (Cover C Jimbo Salgado ‘Wulf’), $2.99

Atlas Unified #1 (Cover D Jimbo Salgado...

With As Darkness Falls... set to premiere in just over a month, John C. Alsadek of Blue Hours Productions dropped us a line to let us know they are hard at work preparing for the horror anthology show’s second season, which includes some guest stars genre fans should be pretty excited about.

Alsadek tells Dread Central, “Now that we’ve got the first batch of episodes ready to go out the door, we’re planning for when we resume production in October. In particular, we have some surprising guest stars in the works - as a lifelong fan of horror, sci-fi and fantasy, I’m very excited about them.”

Already confirmed as guests are a pair of actresses with extensive TV and film resumes: Elizabeth Gracen and Kathleen Kinmont (pictured below, l-r). Ms. Gracen is best known for her role as the Immortal Amanda on the TV show "Highlander...

The first trailer for As Darkness Falls, a 30-minute horror radio anthology series in the tradition of such classic old-time radio fare as Inner Sanctum, Lights Out!, and CBS Radio Mystery Theater, is now available from Blue Hours Productions.

Says John C. Alsedek of Blue Hours, “It’s not easy to do a video trailer for a radio program, but I think it really captures the spirit of the thing. Very stark and stylish, with spot-on acting performances and haunting music.”

The show consists entirely of original scripts written by Alsedek and his Blue Hours partner Dana Hayes, and it features an outstanding cast of voice actors. “We are truly fortunate to have such talent to work with”, notes Hayes. “They never cease to amaze me with their ability to instantly get into character!”

The As Darkness Falls crew is comprised of an eclectic bunch:

Adrienne Wilkinson is best known...