The Screaming Meat on the Dinner Plate

I have seen one step beyond. I try to watch all of these things.
Another Hitchcock I love involves a man driving his wife home from an institution, where she had stayed for a long time after getting beaten and raped. The perpetrator was not caught or identified even.
They rode quietly, until a man appeared near the road. The woman became agitated.
"It's him! It's him," she cried.
The husband left her in the car and accosted the man. The man tried to escape, but the husband attacked him and killed him.
Back in the car and quiet again, until another man appeared near the road.
"It's him. It's him."
Across the way, another man was walking.
"It's him. It's him."
Fade as camera portrays horror stricken face of husband.

The author's last name is MATHESON. (Sorry about my error.)

RICHARD MATHESON wrote all those great stories.

I have read some of Matheson's books. He is a wonderful writer. I was just trying to recall the author of The Incredible Shrinking Man.

edit
It was Matheson.

Similar to these TV programs was a line of comics from the 1950s. In fact, those comics spawned a few movies and TV shows. The Vault of Horror was one. Tales from the Crypt. Many of these tales grossed me out when I was a boy, but I read them anyway. The same people had a line of SF, including Wierd Science/Fantasy, featuring short stories of Ray Bradbury and the like. Oh, yes. They also published Mad Comics.
I recall a few stories from the pages, such as the one in which a man emerged from suspended animation, the first human to walk about for centuries. He met up with the robot keeper of the garden, which had cultivated the land this whole time. It no longer recalled that the food was for the returning humans. When the human poo-pooed the robot's concerns, and then bit into an apple, the utraged robot killed him. Then it destroyed the ones in suspended animation. It went on, then, with its task of caring for the crops it so loved.

There was also the story (Bradbury?) of the time machine expedition, in which hunters go after a dinosaur. They select one that is doomed to die anyway. After, they extract the bullets and leave everything just as they found it. In this manner, they do not alter history. Unfortunately, one of the men went off the path, briefly, and stepped on a butterfly. They return to find that their world is insufferably worse, all due to that dead butterfly.

Oooh, she and I could have a discussion about that. I don't remember when I first saw films and tv what was in color and what wasn't, except that I think I'm sure our early tv was black and white. But I was, later on, primed for loving black and white films by a lot of film noir stuff at our local Fox Venice (two movies each day, changing each day, $1.50 to get in.. they weren't all black and white, but I saw a lot of classic films over a few years, and some of the b & w were very engaging.)

Anyone remember The Inner Sanctum? I don't really remember it.. only remember the creaking door.. (and was that Vincent Price?)

Yeah. Inner Sanctum. But, I never saw the TV show. Just caught it on radio.

Inner Sanctum Mysteries
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Inner Sanctum)

Inner Sanctum Mysteries was a popular old-time radio program that aired from January 7, 1941 to October 5, 1952. Created by Himan Brown, the anthology series featured stories of mystery, terror and suspense. The tongue-in-cheek introductions were in sharp contrast to shows like Suspense and The Whistler. A total of 526 episodes are known to have been produced.

The early 1940s programs opened with Raymond Edward Johnson introducing himself as, "Your host, Raymond," in a mocking sardonic voice. A spooky melodramatic organ score punctuated Raymond's many morbid jokes and playful puns. Raymond's closing was an elongated "Pleasant dreaaaams, hmmmmmmm?" His tongue-in-cheek style and ghoulish relish of his own tales became the standard for many such horror narrators to follow, from fellow radio hosts like Ernest Chappell (on Wyllis Cooper's later series, Quiet, Please) and Maurice Tarplin (on The Mysterious Traveler) to EC Comics' Crypt-Keeper in various incarnations of Tales from the Crypt. In interviews, EC publisher Bill Gaines stated that he based EC's three horror hosts not on Raymond but on Old Nancy, host of radio's earlier The Witch's Tale (1931-38).

When Johnson left the series in 1946, he was replaced by Paul McGrath, who did not keep the "Raymond" name and was known only as "your host" or "Mr. Host". Beginning in 1945, Lipton Tea sponsored the series, pairing first Raymond and then McGrath with cheery commercial spokeswoman Mary Bennett (aka the "Tea Lady"), whose blithesome pitches for Lipton Tea contrasted sharply with the macabre themes of the stories, and who primly chided the host for his trademark dark humor and creepy manner.





The creaking door
Apart from the ghoulish host, another show trademark: the eerie creaking door, which opened and closed the broadcasts.

Commonly unknown is the fact that the door sound was actually made by a rusty desk chair. The program did originally intend to use a door, but on first use the door did not creak. Undaunted, Brown grabbed a nearby chair, sat in it and turned, causing a hair raising squeak. The chair was used from then on as the sound prop. On at least one memorable occasion, a staffer innocently repaired and oiled the chair, thus forcing the sound man to mimic the squeak orally.


[edit] Plots and guest stars
Its campy comedy notwithstanding, the stories were usually effective little chillers, mixing horror and humor in equal doses. Memorable episodes included "Terror by Night" (September 18, 1945) and an adaptation of "The Tell-Tale Heart" (August 3, 1941). The latter starred Boris Karloff, who was heard regularly in the first season, starring in more than 15 episodes and returning sporadically thereafter. Other established stars in the early years included Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, Helen Hayes, Claude Rains, Paul Lukas, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles. Most of the lead and supporting players were stalwarts of New York radio, including Larry Haines, Stefan Schnabel, Berry Kroeger and a few who would go on to greater fame in film or television, such as Richard Widmark, Everett Sloane and Burgess Meredith.


[edit] Legacy
Of more than 500 programs broadcast, only about 200 remain in circulation, sometimes minus dates or titles. The 1954 syndicated television series featured Paul McGrath as the off-camera host/narrator. In the 1970s, with his CBS Radio Mystery Theater series, Himan Brown recycled both the creaking door opening, and to a lesser extent, the manner of Raymond, as that show's hosts (including E. G. Marshall and Tammy Grimes. In later repeats during the 1990s, Brown himself mimicked Raymond's "Pleasant dreaaaams, hmmmmmmm?" for the familiar closing.


[edit] Other media
Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder satirized the series in Mad's fifth issue (June-July 1953) with "Outer Sanctum!" In the opening panels, host Ramon greets the reader: "Come in, I've been waiting for you! I've been waiting for you to fix my squeaking door!... What?... You say you're not the carpenter?... You have come to hear a story?... Very well!"

In the Three Stooges short The Ghost Talks, a creaking door prompts Shemp to parody the opening narration of the program, naming it "The Outer Sanctorum."

I probably heard it on radio.. but what I remember on radio was... The Shadow..

I was home from school for two weeks, quarantined with scarlet fever, and listened to a lot of radio. Mercedes McCambridge's (sp?) character was going down an elevator and something terrible was about to happen, when the program was over for the day, and as far as I know, forever. That might have been the last program, sometime in 1954.

An episode of The Shadow, that I have on a record, was made when department stores first began using automatic doors. The killer figured he could shoot the invisible Shadow when the Shadow broke the beam and caused the door to open. Didn't happen, of course.

Hmmm, wonder if that was the same thing. Probably not.

(I meant to say I think I saw Inner Sanctum on tv and heard it on the radio.

My article did mention there was a 1954 TV series.

Quote Edgar

There was also the story (Bradbury?) of the time machine expedition, in which hunters go after a dinosaur.

Yeah it was one of Bradburys stories....they made that one into a full length film a few years back, was kinda cheezy...B movie ish...but I still liked it. It was called "A Sound of Thunder" with Edward Burns as the hero....I have seen a few incarnations of that basic story line over the years....the Simpsons used it in one of their Halloween specials.

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And Yep, there were three Hitchcock series....I had forgot about the middle one....I tried to watch a few of those, but I think they tried to fill the full hour with too much chatty dialog....this type of story is best served short and sweet. I watched a few of the newer ones, with Hitch rehashed, but don't remember any specific story line.

The Hitchcock theme has been stuck in my head for a few days now.....Good Evening....

Of radio shows, The Whistler and Suspense had some good story lines. Suspense was the first, I believe, to do Sorry, Wrong Number, with Agness Moorehead. Whistler always followed a character through criminal acts (usually murder) to the surprise (hopefully) twist ending.

Stephen King gave a seminar a number of years ago at some book festival in DC. He was there with a number of his buds that play in a RnR band called "The Rock Bottom Remainders"
Anyway, King gave us hintes of how his stories derive from (usually) a single idea or a question. You can try posing a really weird question and then bgin winding a story about it. Not saying that were gonna be Stephen Kings but at least we can better our own efforts.


Sample question--Is it possible to stay alive while adrift in a lifeboat by eating oneself?

King occasionally surprises me with his stories. I have written him off as a hack a few times, then he presents something I enjoy, such as The Green Mile, and I back off again.