Waging the War of the Worlds (Book Review)

Perhaps no other old-time radio program is more fascinating than the Mercury Theater's production of H.G. Wells' novel, War of the Worlds. Known as the 1938 panic broadcast, the subject fascinates even youngsters to this day. While it is universally agreed among historians that the broadcast sparked public hysteria, it has also been proven that the newspapers were quick to run with any story of people running through the streets with wet towels over their faces to protect themselves from the poison gas that was supposedly in the air. Truth be told, the mass hysteria was so minor that the newspaper journalists found more stories to set to print than there were. The "fog of war" anxieties that were underlying of the times helped boost fears that war overseas would soon approach our homeland.

Numerous magazine articles and books have been written on the subject but none can be truly as extensive or accurate than John Gosling's book titled Waging the War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic. From the facts behind the week's rehearsal and re-writes, smoke and mirrors, the obvious bloopers that can be heard during the broadcast that should have tipped off the listeners, to a reprint of the radio script... it is all here. Gosling even covers similar incidents of panic resulting from similar radio broadcasts in Latin America, Brazil, Portugal and other countries.

The book also includes scans and reprints of historic documents and archival photographs from various libraries. 

If you wanted to read up on the history of the 1938 War of the Worlds panic broadcast, this is the one book you want to grab this Halloween. 

Arch Oboler's THE SKEPTIC'S CLUB (1937)

Just as Arch Oboler was walking away from the NBC weekly half-hour horror program, Lights Out!, to devote time writing brief sketches for The Chase and Sunburn Hour and Rudy Vallee's program, he made multiple attempts to produce, direct and script his own horror anthology, as evident with a number of radio scripts which he recycled from Lights Out!

In this case, in September of 1937, he write a script for The Sceptics Club (that is how it is spelled on the front cover) as a pilot proposal for such a series. He recycled his "Black Zombie" radio script from Lights Out! for use on this new series. Since even the Lights Out! rendition does not exist in recorded form, and because Oboler would have used what he felt was his best script from the horror program for use in this proposal, it seemed prudent to san a copy into PDF and provide this on my blog in time for Halloween.

Enjoy!

Link for download:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kkrllrfth5vurcd/THE%20SCEPTICS%20CLUB%20%28Black%20Zombie%29%20%231%20Arch%20Oboler%20%281937%29.pdf?dl=0 

Dying of Fright from The Creeping Unknown (1956)

One of the ten best horror movies I ever saw was The Creeping Unknown (1956), also known to many as The Quatermass Experiment. The film concerns three astronauts who have been launched into space aboard a single stage to orbit in a rocket designed by Professor Quatermass. It crash lands with only one of its original crew, Victor Carroon, still aboard. No one knows whatever became of the rest of the crew, so Professor Quatermass begins investigating. The survivor, however, has a strange fungus under his fingernails, which slowly spreads on his hand, then his arm. It does not take long for the good professor to figure out the survivor is mutating into an alien organism, which, if it spawns, will engulf the Earth and destroy humanity. The survivor, driven mad from the ordeal, escapes the hospital and flees the British countryside where the manhunt involved Inspector Lomax of Scotland Yard. The finale, obviously, involves a fully-developed creature of true horror and an ending that ranks up there in popularity as the destruction of the Washington Monument (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) and the destruction of the San Francisco Bridge (It Came From Beneath the Sea).

 

The Quatermass Experiment was originally a six-part TV serial telecast live over the BBC in 1953. Regrettably, preservation was not applied over the years and only the first two chapters of the television serial exist in recorded form. Written by Nigel Kneale, the television serial was an enormous success with critics and audiences alike, later described by film historian Robert Simpson as “event television, emptying the streets and pubs.” Among its viewers was Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds, who was immediately keen to buy the rights for a film version. Incorporated in 1934, Hammer had developed a niche for itself making second features, many of which were adaptations of successful BBC Radio productions. Hammer contacted the BBC on August 24, 1953, two days after the transmission of the final episode, to inquire about the film rights and a motion-picture was produced with American actor Brian Donlevy playing Professor Quatermass.

 

Timed to coincide with the broadcast of the television sequel, Quatermass II, the motion-picture went on general release in movie theaters in the United Kingdom on November 20, 1955. In the United States, Robert L. Lippert attempted to interest Columbia Pictures in distributing the film but they felt it would be competition for their own production, It Came from Beneath the Sea, which was on release at the time. Because The Quatermass Experiment was unknown in the United States, Lippert renamed the motion-picture Shock!  

 

Unable to secure a sale, Lippert retitled it again, this time to The Creeping Unknown. United Artists eventually acquired the distribution rights in March of 1956 for a fee of $125,000, and the movie was packaged in a double bill with another horror movie called The Black Sleep, starring Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. Four minutes, mainly of expository material, were cut from the runtime of the film, which means there are two versions of the movie, each with a different title and four minutes difference in length. Whichever version you watch today, however, does not affect the impact of the film’s emotional pull. 

 

The Creeping Unknown opened in theatres in the United States in June of 1956 and was so successful that United Artists offered to part-fund a sequel based on the second television series. Ultimately the Quartermass series became a franchise with additional sequels (including a big screen movie starring Barbara Shelley titled Quatermass and the Pit). 

 

This film easily ranks as one of my top ten favorite horror/science fiction classics and is a must-see. The film also includes a bit of trivia: The Guinness Book of World Records subsequently recorded this movie as the only known case of an audience member dying of fright while watching a horror film.

 

Variety magazine, November 7, 1956

 

John W. Campbell's Frozen Hell

Few science fiction tales have left as lasting an imprint as the 1938 novella that later inspired the films collectively known as The Thing. Though the original title may not be familiar to everyone, the story’s cinematic legacy has endured through three major adaptations: the 1951 The Thing from Another World directed by Howard Hawks with James Arness, John Carpenter’s 1982 version starring Kurt Russell, and the 2011 prequel directed by Matthijs van Heijningen.

The tale originated from one of early sci-fi’s most influential figures, a writer-turned-editor who, after 1938, shifted from authorship to shaping the future of the genre through his magazine Astounding Stories—later retitled Astounding Science Fiction and finally Analog. Under his guidance, rising talents such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, and Theodore Sturgeon found their voices. They say a magazine is only as good as the editor and Campbell was among the best of the editors for science-fiction magazines.

For decades, readers assumed they knew the complete story—until a longer, forgotten version surfaced in the archives of Harvard University. This expanded manuscript, running nearly forty-five pages beyond the published novella, was finally released in 2019 under its original name, Frozen Hell, by Wildside Press. The edition features a preface by Alec Nevala-Lee, an introduction by Robert Silverberg, illustrations by Bob Eggleton, and editing by John Gregory Betancourt. Nevala-Lee and Silverberg recount the discovery of the manuscript, its relation to an earlier tale titled “The Brain-Stealers of Mars,” and the editorial decisions that streamlined the shorter version for faster pacing.

In Frozen Hell, the isolation and tension unfold more gradually. A team of scientists working in the Antarctic unearths a buried spacecraft composed of an unknown alloy. Within the wreckage lies a grotesque life form locked in ice—an ancient being unlike anything on Earth. When the researchers bring the specimen back to camp, intending to thaw and examine it, the situation spirals into horror. The creature revives—and worse, it possesses the terrifying ability to imitate any living organism it touches.

At its core, Frozen Hell is a cautionary meditation on curiosity and consequence: a stark reminder that some discoveries are better left entombed beneath the ice. If you are a fan of the story, this extended version is worth reading.