Escape (Radio drama recommendations)

Escape was an American radio drama anthology program which presented thriller, adventure, science-fiction and horror-type stories from the later end of the 1940s to the mid 1950s. A very well regarded series, despite it’s struggle to maintain sponsor interest during production, there were over 200 episodes produced, starring many big radio names . (During one stretch, they could have just called it “the Conrad and Dehner Show.”)

Some episodes of Escape were adaptions of stories initially written for other mediums, and some episodes were scripts written with radio in mind from the beginning. Often they take you to “exotic” locations, and they sometimes do some history-hopping as well.

Over the past several months, I have listened to many of them – likely over a hundred.

(I’ve become very familiar with the opening bars of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” which serves as part of the introduction to the program.)

It’s actually quite hard to go wrong with this series – I find there are far more enjoyable episodes than not-particularly-enjoyable episodes. But, I’ll try to mention a dozen episodes or so to start with, spanning the genre offerings within the anthology series as best I can.

First of all, there are a number of Escape episodes which you will find regularly promoted should you ask about the series, and in many cases, for good reason.

: Likely the most frequently mentioned is “Three Skeleton Key” – favoured by most is the version starring Vincent Price as one of three light-keepers on a remote island off of French Guiana, besieged by rats. There is another version of the same script starring William Conrad, and a third starring Paul Frees. I would be curious to learn which version a “newbie” to classic radio drama prefers. This story is considered a Hallowe’en classic, and was adapted from a French short story.

: An Escape adaptation of an H.G. Well’s story “Pollock and the Porroh Man” was one of the first radio drama episodes I ever heard. This is a psychological horror story about a racist explorer who commits murder and makes off with an item of religious significance, and suffers the consequences as his guilt chases him half way around the world.

: Rudyard Kipling stories also got a couple of adaptions for Escape, including “The Drums of the Fore and Aft.”

: “Typhoon,” an adaption of a Joseph Conrad story, is quite fun.

: And the adaption of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” is also fun, and closer to the original short story than the Hitchcock film.

: “A Shipment of Mute Fate” – the “snake on a ship” story which I’ve mentioned previously, like “Three Skeleton Key” – was adapted several times for Escape.

:“Flood on the Goodwins” surprised me. Initially it seemed like a fairly predictable war-time story, and I suppose it is – but, and of course your mileage may vary, I found the ending rather shocking!

Other second-world-war stories on Escape include “Operation Fleur de Lys” and “Diary of a Madman.”

For more of a “Cold War” flavoured story, try “The Rim of Terror”

: “Carnival in Vienna” has a very noir feel with a career criminal trying to get ahead but making poor choices.

: One episode written for the series, “The Red Forest” – takes us into a wild fire.

: “The Cave” is an interesting Christmas-time tale of a boy and his imagination and what he decides to do when he discovers pirates underground.

: “The Match” brings us a northwest adventure with a very determined redcoat, and “Judgement Day at Crippled Deer” takes us up to a remote trading post in a blizzard-threatened Yukon.

: “The Vanishing Lady” is one of the very few stories in the series with a woman as the main character – “I Saw Myself Running” (and “The Rim of Terror” which I’ve already mentioned here) may be the only ones!

: “Blood Waters” gives us yet another reason not to get into the water.

If you like spy stories, you really should read the original Eric Ambler story, but if you don’t have time, you can try “Journey into Fear” on this radio program. “The Rough Shoot” also deals with an unsuspecting hero stumbling into secret activities.

And while it didn’t spend a lot of time in the genre, for science fiction, Escape made an exception with it’s only two-parter in order to present “Earth Abides,” and it’s also got a Ray Bradbury “Mars is Heaven” adaption.

: “The Most Dangerous Game” is a good stand-by adventure story (I also enjoy the film.)

: And for a final recommendation, as I’ve gone far past a dozen, and could keep going, I’ll suggest “The Boiling Sea” as just plain-old ridiculous, escapist fun.

Have you ever listened to Escape? What is your favourite episode?

We’ve had some power outages locally recently – not a huge problem as it remains relatively mild here. The power outages allowed me to get to some nice fun tasks, such as colouring in the pages that Astra created for my cookbook, Blackmail, Bodies and Baked Noodles: A Guide and Recipe Collection Celebrating Box 13 .

I’ve also decided to start listening through The Adventures of Philip Marlowe with an ear open for mentions of food. If I do put together another cookbook, it will be less ambitious than the first, and I make no guarantees there will be another at all, however, if there is another, it might well include a recipe inspired by Marlowe’s attempts to make a tomato sauce.

I’ve recently received confirmation that three poems of mine will be published in June. I should let you know more about them when we get closer to summer!