Like the radio show Inner Sanctum (1941 – 52), Nightfall featured memorable introductions and memorable
hosts—Henry Ramer during the first two seasons and Bill Reiter during the last.
Ramer possessed a deep, gravelly voice, and he opened each show with these
lines (I’ve added commas where Ramer pauses): “In the dream, you are a falling,
lost, in the listening distance, as dark locks in.” This was followed by a
scream and then Ramer’s voice: “Nightfall!” For Reiter’s intro, the “In a dream
you’re falling…” bit was gone; Reiter’s intro was individualized to fit each
story. For example, “Private Collection” led with, “When your suspicions turn
to terrible truths—it’s Nightfall”;
“The Tie that Binds” led with, “For people who believe they have a grip on
themselves—a strong grip—this is Nightfall.”
Reiter also introduced himself: “Good evening, Frederick Hende here.” Reiter’s
voice wasn’t like Ramer’s either: it was muted. Nigel Bruce’s Watson—without
the bluster—comes to mind.
“Ringing the Changes,” was the eighteenth episode
of the first season. The Nightfall
series produced a good number of other exceptional plays based on short
stories. “The Monkey’s Paw” is especially successful. So too are “The Stone
Ship” (William Hope Hodgson), “They Bite” (Anthony Boucher), “The Screaming
Skull” (F. Marion Crawford) and “The Signalman” (Charles Dickens). This is but
a small selection of strong adaptations. The wide range of stories chosen for
adaptation reflects the process by which they were chosen. Nightfall writers approached the
producers with stories they wanted to adapt, rather than the other way around.
Ultimately, it’s the plays written especially for
the Nightfall series that make Nightfall a success. Out of a hundred episodes, only a few are duds (“Mind Drift,” for
instance, a tedious and predictable Manchurian Candidate story). Episodes I
consider to be mediocre—the plays that rely wholly on gruesomeness and
nastiness—are still highly entertaining: will he rip out his own heart? will the vengeful
spirit cut off his legs? Seated
by one’s radio, in the dark, these simple stories work the same way any
good campfire tale works—with a bump in the night. Terrific heart-rending and
leg-tearing sound-effects abound.
The best episodes are those that demand another
listen. Some, I listen to again and again because the story remains mysterious
from start to finish. Tim Wynne-Jones, a well-known Canadian author of young
adult books, wrote a few such mysterious Nightfall
episodes. “The Road Ends at the Sea” is set at a lighthouse by the Bay of
Fundi, where the tides rise and fall twenty-five feet within an hour. The young
couple who maintain the lighthouse are visited by an old friend—of sorts—a
fellow writer who sold-out and now wants to steal the woman he felt he should
have had in college, the woman who instead married the lighthouse keeper. The
young couple are living at the lighthouse in pursuit of real isolation—at first
under the guise of wanting peace and quiet for their writing, but now for a
more profound and intangible reason. During the old friend’s visit, a great
black ship appears in the bay. This ship is the lighthouse keepers’ ticket to
isolation, so they believe; the old friend resists. And there isn’t much else
to the story—a struggle and a little anti-climax with the police who come to
check on the couple who live in the lighthouse. This episode is marred by
maudlin incidental music, but otherwise it’s perfect, perfectly mysterious.
“The Strange Odyssey of Lennis Freed,” also by Wynne-Jones, is similarly rich,
though not so much because of the story—a fairly basic ghost story—but because
of the atmosphere. A husband and wife are making an annual holiday trip—they
follow the same route each year, stay in the same hotels and eat at the same
restaurants, but this year there’s a terrific snowstorm, which—with the
occasional accompaniment of the chronically coughing Lennis Freed—has totally
transformed their trip. Janet Bonnellie’s “In the Name of the Father,” John
Douglas’s “Lazarus Rising,” and Tony Bell’s “The Jogger” are other stories I
admire for their strangeness.
The episode that still unnerves me, no matter how
many times I hear it, is “The Porch Light,” by Randy Brown. Another basic ghost
story carried off entirely by atmosphere: the light that won’t stay off, the
new house, the snow, the figure seen from the bedroom window but not when the
front door to the house is opened—and oh! what a mistake opening the front door
is, and yet, a mistake you and I would make, in spite of all the ghost stories
we’ve read. The acting, too—just two people in a studio—carries “The Porch
Light” to its peak, to a moment when I almost can’t stand to listen anymore.
For years, Nightfall
was still under copyright, so most of the episodes sold were bootlegs, and
often the sound quality of these recordings is very poor—a few, in fact, are
nearly impossible to listen to. (Some include unexpected pleasures: a weather
report, a promo for an upcoming show, a little bit of local news.) Several Nightfall episodes were sold, on
cassette and in stereo, by Durkin-Hayes Publishing and by CBC Enterprise. Those
cassettes crop up in abebooks.com, at the CBC’s shop-online and elsewhere.
There is also a CD, a volume one that never went beyond volume one, which
includes four episodes—all very different episodes, all good (even my least
favorite of the four, “Future Fear,” is good). Recently, the show (presumably) came
into public domain, and all the episodes can be streamed here. The sound
quality is generally good.
As I listened through my Nightfall collection again and again, I began to wonder about
the biography of the show. I began to pay attention to the credits and to
contemplate the research that would be involved in writing a long essay or even
a short book about Nightfall.
The Web, for all its gathering of the obscure, yielded very little information.
Then, something new cropped up online: Neil Marsh’s www.nightfall-25.com. I
began to read Neil’s LiveJournal, and was delighted by what and by who Neil had
located. Somewhat relieved that someone else was doing all the hard work, I
contacted Neil and he’s proven to be a generous fellow. Only marginally
interested in the horror genre, but fascinated by this particular show and by
radio drama in general. I am currently surrounded by pages of research Neil
kindly sent. Though www.nightfall-25.com isn’t yet complete (and may never be),
there’s an enormous amount of material there. If you have any interest in the show,
visit Neil’s site. It’s also worth noting that Neil produces his own audio
dramas (to call the shows “radio drama” is anachronistic) with the Post
Meridian Players. [Recently, Neil has surrendered his research materials “to a
couple of fellow long-time fans.” He writes “there's a Facebook group for
Nightfall (as Nightfall CBC)…. Not a lot of traffic, but there's usually
something new once a week.”]
I asked Neil about a little bit of promo copy that
is often included in blurbs about Nightfall
that reads, “The show ignited complaints from many listeners that it was too
frightening, prompting some stations to drop the series from their
programming.” Neil has found no evidence that the show was ever dropped from a
station’s line-up because of angry listeners, though he believes such calls
were likely to have been made. True or no, Nightfall being too scary for radio is a nice legend.
Why the series was finally cancelled isn’t
really clear. Susan Rubes said, “[the producers] simply felt they had done
enough episodes for any future release or syndication….” That answer’s a little
too neat. Perhaps the producers wanted to evolve—after Nightfall, there is CBC’s The
Vanishing Point, a similar anthology series, featuring many of the same
actors and writers (A favorite of mine is “The Testing of Stanley Teagarden,” by none other than Tim Wynne-Jones). Some episodes of The Vanishing Point are horror stories, but most are just
strange. Of course, I’d’ve kept Nightfall
on the air. The series produced some of the best horror radio shows ever, as
good as the best of Lights Out,
The Hall of Fantasy, Inner Sanctum, etc.—as good as the
greats.
