Tie-Ins: CBS Radio Mystery Theater

CBS Radio Mystery Theater was a bit of an oddity - a revival of 40s old time radio style suspense stories, that aired nightly for 1,399 episodes between 1974 to 1982.  There were a handful of novelizations and expansions into novels.  All were published by Popular Library, who advertised on the show.

Three episodes were novelized in 1976's Strange Tales From CBS Radio Mystery Theater, edited by Himan Brown.  They include:
The Black Room by Elspeth Eric
The Only Blood by Sam Dann
Time And Again (or The Vampire Clock) by Ian Martin

Sam Dann expanded two of his radio plays to novel length:
1979 The Third Body (based on Children of Death)
1985 Goodbye Carl Erich

Ian Martin reportedly recycled three radio scripts (one already recycled from the Canadian soap opera Strange Paradise) into gothic romances under his wife's name Joen Arliss.  There were two others in the Zebra Mystery Puzzler series that I don't believe are related.

1979 Nightmare's Nest
1980 Beloved Victim
1980 Shadow Over Seventh Heaven

Old Time Radio - CBSRMT - Sign of the Beast

Lois Smith has acted as much as pretty much everyone else put together, usually as someone's Mom.  I looked her up to make sure the female role in this episode wasn't played by the fume-huffing narrator of Adventures in Balloonland, her line-reading was so bizarre.  Never heard so much over and underacting at once, and with such weird intonations.  It doesn't help that her character is supposed to be stupid and annoying.

Old Time Radio - CBSRMT - A Ghostly Game of Death

I admit I didn't really pay too much attention to this one, but caught enough to realize it stole a lot from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Haunter and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain.

The Chinaman Button

The Chinaman Button is a moral quandry from 1802's The Genius of Christianity which has been used in four suspense stories in four different ways.  The basic set up - someone is given an offer to gain a large sum of money, and in exchange a complete stranger will lose their life.

To be fair, the last three are derivative of the first, the 1970 short story "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson.  I haven't read it, but from the spoliers the twist in the tale is a cheat and a lie.

Next is 1974's "The Chinaman Button", a radio drama for CBS Radio Mystery Theater.  This one is my favorite - the twist surprised me, and it managed not to drag.



Next is 1986's "Button, Button" from the 80's Twilight Zone.  Matheson took his name off it because he didn't like the different, vastly superior ending.  I remember the end chilling me as a kid, but there's only enough material here for maybe 10 minutes.




Not enough material for half of an hour-long show?  Let's drag it out to a feature length film.  2009's The Box has car chases and government conspiracies and aliens or something - if you can stomach Cameron Diaz then you watch it.

Old Time Radio - CBS Radio Mystery Theater - Cold Storage

Every few years I make an attempt to get through all 1399 episodes of this incredibly uneven series.  Here's one of the better ones - a nasty little slice of Southern Gothic, complete with an antebellum trap queen, secret rooms, and horrible accents.

Belabored Explanation Theater - CBSRMT 98 The Phantom Lullaby

A girl, fresh from a broken romance and abortion from an older widower, moves into a haunted apartment.  She begins to speak French and talks about a phantom toddler.  What's the connection to her estranged lover, the one with a dead wife and child?  I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just let them explain it to you for a solid ten minutes.