CBS Radio Mystery Theater – OTR Plots

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

Age Cannot Wither Her   C

A man returns alone from a sailing trip without his young bride, claiming she ran off with another man, but a nosy neighbor rats on him. The police elicit the story of how the girl’s father was an alchemist who dosed her with the Elixir of Life and she can neither age nor die. But this husband was a chemist too… and the police have a surprise for him!

Black Room, The B

An average man is seized and forced into “The Black Room,” a sensory deprivation solitary confinement that either kills the people locked into it as they slowly lose hope and stop eating… or drives them mad. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, but they lead him to believe it is some type of police inquest that doesn’t require a warrant and that due process will follow. No one has lasted more than a couple weeks, but this subject makes it further, inspiring Mr. K and even Mr. Z to root for him. His secret? A little mouse that keeps him company. All you need to survive, he posits, is to care about someone.

This one’s a mind-bender as we sit in the dark with this unnamed man and his thoughts, taking stock of his life. I kept trying to second guess the plot, reminded of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Walls of Eryx, where the protagonist dies just yards from the exit to an invisible maze or the Star Trek episode, “The Cage,” where in order to feed the prisoner, the captors opened a trap door. But aside from a mouse hole, no weakness is found in the concrete walls, the door, though not described, being evidently impenetrable.

No explanation of experiment is ever given. The prisoner makes it 28 days and is then given a shower and set free. Why did the torturers need the information provided by the experiment’s only survivor? “For the troubled people.” E.G. Marshall encourages each of us to explore the Black Room of our own minds.

Black Widow   B

A widow seeking revenge for her husband’s murder visits a seer who uses black magic and a black widow spider to help her.

Blizzard of Terror   C

A couple is trapped in a cabin during a blizzard with a murderer on the loose. Bloodstains in the kitchen allow the cabin owner to dominate them with fear.

Burn, Witch, Burn   C

A fiction set in the time of the Salem witch trials. A woman is framed for witchcraft by a jealous Governor, but Witchfinder Cotton Mather believes in her innocence.

Coffin For The Devil, A   B

A mysterious man shows up at a mortuary requesting a custom built coffin… for himself! It is shaped like a bass fiddle. He couldn’t possibly fit in it, could he? When he picks it up, the undertaker follows him to the cemetery. This is a weird crime episode, but the imagery of the devilish stranger carrying an odd coffin on his back through the cemetery earns it a high rating!

Cold Storage   B

A man and his housekeeper are delighted when the man’s mother dies… except it was just a seizure. On the edge of freedom and the family fortune, Beauford decides that the world must continue to believe his mother is dead. He’s not so cruel as to kill her, but he fixes up a secret room below the mansion once used on the Underground Railroad and locks his mother in! Soon after, When Beauford discovers that the gold-digging woman he has married lied to him about being pregnant, guess who becomes Mom’s new companion? Oh, but there’s one hitch. The housekeeper’s son doesn’t like the way pretty Miss Montgomery is treated.

Crack in the Wall   B

A woman hears her dead daughter calling from a crack in the cellar wall. An adaptation of the Monkey’s Paw. Some deus-ex-machina guy shows up to close the crack.

Creature From the Swamp B

Larry Drake, Fish and Game Warden, rescues a woman named Undine from quicksand in The Devil’s Cauldron, but when he takes her home, she tells him she’s on the run from a giant swamp monster. He finds out it’s no joke when the thing attacks his cabin! She looks just like Larry’s dead wife. But his dream woman falls sick. He gives her swamp water to drink like she asks, but in the end… air is no longer her element. Larry follows her into the swamp. Will the swamp man kill him, or is this Undine’s game?

Damned Thing, The   D

Mr. Bentley presides over an inquest into the cause of death of Professor Hugh Morgan while waiting for William Harker, newspaper man and former student, the key witness. After hearing many disjointed versions of a night’s events from different people, the journalist returns with the true story. This is an adaptation of a classic that influenced Lovecraft. The dead man, fed up with his livestock being eaten, tracks a monster into the woods to discover the beast is invisible! (Edited so bad it no longer makes sense.) [Adapted from Ambrose Bierce]

Dark Closet, The   C

(Fred Gwynne) Not Horror. A girl acts out to get her father’s attention… until her boyfriend commits murder! A psychologist talks her widower father into finally showing his love for her in a healthy way, a ’50s-style morality play.

Dig Me Deadly   A

A grisly archaeological whodunnit! A corpse is discovered with fleshy hands wearing the ring of an archaeology student but it is fully attached to a skeleton that dates back thousands of years! After interviewing everyone at a dig site, an off-duty detective tries to determine the motive and method for the missing student’s murder. Is it a case like The Thing on the Fourble Board? No, it’s murder X-treme!

Every Blossom Dies   C

A police detective investigates a murder, discovering a letter in the victim’s trash: a note to a wife telling her to ask where her husband goes when he works late. Hmm. The detective’s wife received a letter just like that. Is he being set up? The killer is not the detective because the murder weapon was a .22 caliber, not his .38 special. There is some fun deduction work, but no real twist at the end.

Ghost Grey Bat, The   B

A couple trades homes with a pair in France. The housekeeper swears there are no bats in the region, but they discover a cave-full… of vampires!

Ghost in the Well   C

The story of a woman represented by lawyers Hamilton and Burr recounts the real life case of the Manhattan Well Murder, where together they defended Levi Weeks in a murder trial after Elma Sands’ body was discovered in a well. Her father curses both men for besmirching her reputation… and they both truly met a sad end.

Girl Who Found Things, The   B

A psychic girl is borrowed from the orphanage to locate a missing woman… that the taxi driver buried in the woods. She covers for the murderer, whom she is in love with… but the body has been moved!

Haunted Mill, The   C

When Charlie goes abroad for years without word, Hannah is betrothed to another man. When he returns, she breaks the engagement… then Charlie disappears. Was it Silas, the jilted man? His suicide implies guilt when Charlie’s ghost appears and points to the old mill! [Adapted from “The Corpse Light” by Dick Donovan, 1899]

Headstrong Corpse, The   A

It is 1874. A woman’s hand in marriage has been granted by her father, Sir Simon to a Doctor Westmore in order to keep his estate solvent. But Margaret is in love with her father’s lawyer, Edward Somerset. Upon his coffin-closing ceremony, they discover her father’s body has been replaced, leaving his head behind! Turns out the doctor is under investigation… for body snatching. But his head shows up in Dad’s coffin next… its lips cut off! The ending is predictable, but the story is delectably gruesome!

Hickory Dickory Doom   A

A young couple buys a grandfather clock at a yard sale and they notice strange symbols on it. Soon a stranger appears at the door asking to see the clock… and disappears inside! The psychic they call in says it s a gate to Hell. Reminiscent of Poltergeist.

Horror of Dead Lake, The   A

Mad Scientist in deserted pirate castle creates giant genetic mutations. He and his giant leech and venus flytrap are just misunderstood.

Horror Story   A

A chef prepares the king a dish no one has tasted before, then starts a new life. He opens a leather shop below his kitchen. The screaming shoes make this one awesome.

House of the Voodoo Queen   C

A man is tricked into selling his home… and his wife’s soul to the Cochon Gris by a female bokor who says she loves him.

House on Chimney Pot Lane, The   C

A couple buys a cheap haunted house, but find nothing supernatural about it. They put up a photo mural of the African jungle, then notice strange faces within it. It seems to change. First a phone repair man goes missing, then the wife and her friend find themselves in the jungle! They are attacked by a lion, ants, and headhunters, but escape because of a camera. The natives believed that a photograph would steal their soul… but what about the ghost of the jungle itself?

Medium Rare   C

A medium calls forth the spirit of Handsome Harry, who was swindled and needs to clear his heart to pass beyond Limbo. He wants to release this anger through revenge, but the medium shows him there is still good in the ex-girlfriend who left him for the swindler.

Never Bet the Devil Your Head   B

A man who swears with abandon gets advice from a friend, but not soon enough to prevent a Faustian wager with a strange little man. [Adapted from Edgar Allan Poe]”

Old Ones Are Hard to Kill, The   C

An old spinster’s tenant dies with a confession that he murdered for money. She chooses the wrong person to tell about it. A ringer is sent in to “discourage” her, but he starts to cough like the first lodger. I was disappointed it wasn’t the old lady poisoning them, but there is a good scene where the ringer tries to throw her down some stairs!

Possessed by the Devil   C

A priest’s son with a crushed skull suddenly revives and makes a pass at his brother’s wife. When the priest realizes his son and his philosophy professor had conspired to raise Astaroth, the family re-kills the occultist with holy water!

Queen of the Cats, The   C

An ancient with settles in a town where she takes in too many stray cats for the liking of the villagers when young women are discovered murdered… mauled by a big cat! Her attorney’s fiancee is a tempting victim when Miss Taylor develops feelings for Tony. (She needs their lives to fuel her 9 times 99 lives!) Too bad Carrie just happens to be toting bullets consecrated at the church dedicated to St. Hubert, the patron saint of hunters. Tammy Grimes sounds like Eartha Kitt in this episode. Well acted, but I’m still unclear on whether Miss Taylor is a were-cat or somehow merges with her familiar, Harrish to create a lightning-highlighted (Crack-Kow!) mirror being. (No relation to the Mysterious Traveler episode of this name.) Were-cat!

Real Printer’s Devil, A   C

A young couple finds a Manhattan apartment for only $200 a month. The landlord is a little quirky, and calls himself HSM Appolyon. They are warned not to open the closet at the end of the hall, it’s filled with his eccentric collection of horror keepsakes, but the cat they have to take care of wants in, and they feel strange after laying eyes on the cursed objects. Jane and Joel hear noises from upstairs, but when they investigate… there is no upstairs!

Return to Shadow Lake   C

A pig-headed man is determined to drive up to his cabin on Shadow Lake during a blizzard. He almost kills himself and his wife doing it. They survive the trip, and that night observe a ghostly reenactment of a murder that happened in the cabin only a few years before. It was the man and the woman he was having an affair with. Will he now leave his wife to die in the cold? It would be so easy. You get to decide!

Sagamore Cottage   B

An old woman rents out a cottage behind her mansion to a young couple whose cat finds a voodoo doll. She keeps a porcelain doll collection of historical figures and refers to her new tenant as her Marie Antoinette… as the couple mysteriously begin losing weight.

Sending, The   C

Professor Lansing is giving his lecture on Witchcraft 102 again this semester. He loans Debbie Ross a speculum– a divination mirror… and out jumps the demon Pylor to devour her soul! It also grants the professor’s wife an extra year of life. When it’s Lansing’s turn, he targets Debbie’s friend Bill Taylor, who’s been asking too many questions, but the sending is reversed when the mirror is placed in his own study! This episode is embarrassingly fraught with mispronounced occult terms.

Shadows From the Grave   A

(Ed Gwynne) Xavier Yardley Zenith is willed his uncle’s house and grounds with the caveat that he check the old man’s mausoleum for tampering each day. He’s afraid of what his old occultist friend “Mr. Tree” might do with his body if it isn’t blessed by a priest, but Father Daly refuses because of his… unnatural death. When Joshua Tree and his familiar come for Uncle George, will Xavier and his suspiciously returned estranged wife be able to find the warlocks body first? [Adapted from Wilkie Collins] Reminds me of The Return of Andrew Bentley (by August Derleth), an episode of Thriller [S2:E12]

Speak of the Devil   B

Aunt Jeanie holds a seance to raise her dead husbandbefore their daughter’s wedding. Something else breaks through. When the newlyweds discover they are pregnant, the husband is trampled to death. A second seance is held, and the husband’s spirit tells his bride the baby isn’t his. Echoes of Rosemary’s Baby, The demon’s growling is unsettling.

Star Sapphire   B

(Fred Gwynne) A 60 year old man adopts a teenage girl to be a companion to his invalid wife. He’s also been reading up on hypnotism, and is able to use his sapphire ring to hypnotize young Edna into a crack shot that brings home rabbits for stew every night! He gets carried away showing off his “power” to the neighbors and if little red flags are going off about her age and her relationship to Dan, perhaps that adds the real underlying tension. When the wife, Bessie, asks if he can try hypnotizing her to walk again, he has other plans.

Stay Out of Dutchman’s Woods B

Ronnie and Peg are warned to stay out of Dutchman’s Woods when they stay at Lou and Sarah’s hex-decorated bed and breakfast. Of course they get hopelessly lost. But then Ronnie disappears. Peg finds her way out… She was allowed to leave because Katrina has no need for women. She is a “siren,” the ghost of a woman who now feeds off the men she lures to the ruins of her castle with the hallucinatory glamour of a warm glass of wine.

Stormbreeder C

(Fred Gwynne) A judge follows a man who was sentenced by his own words to wander forever in search of home, and steals the reigns of his carriage!

Sunset to Sunrise C

A town believes a proud woman will return as a vampire–will this one’s daughter have to kill her, or is the post-mortem appearance a spirit seeking forgiveness?

Tell-Tale Heart, The B

(Fred Gwynne) Charles & Dora get stuck on a farm with an evil old uncle who plans to work them to death. After their daughter dies, Charles kills the uncle but still hears the ticking of his clock. Absurd that the couple would endure such treatment. Disturbing. [A modern adaptation of Poe.]

Thereputic Cat, The A

(Fred Gwynne) A wealthy man becomes stressed in retirement and finds solace in a pet cat… who turns out to be a witch! So is her mom, the housekeeper. They fight over him… and he dumps them both and gets a new cat!

‘Till Death Do We Join B

A young couple are in love but cannot marry– for a man with incredible wealth pays handsomely for a betrothal. He is hideous, but he gets his way. The woman disappears until finally her ghost reveals… she was wed to a corpse! Truly Unsettling! [Adapted from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Schalken, the Painter”]

Triptych for a Witch A

Great grandpa’s wife comes to stay after his death, but is she an imposter? She’s a Sea Witch trying to steal the woman’s body!

Witch’s Almanac, The C

Coven seeks virgin for elixir of life. A girl falls into an old couple’s snare!

Woman Who Wanted To Live, The   A

A woman pulls into a gas station just in time to witness a murder! An escaped thug on the run says he needs to kill her to keep her from singing to the cops, but her fast talking convinces him to take her along as a hostage. She smuggles him through police road stops and seems to relish the thrill of it all. But there is one piece of information the convict lacks.

You’re Going to Like Rodney C

A creepy episode about a Damien: The Omen type boy who will not talk, but seems to have the power to cause people’s deaths. He also has the power of sarcasm in his scribbled post-mortem notes.

Young Die Good, The   B

A new couple develop tension in their relationship when the neighbor of their new house appears to Lisa as an eighty year old woman, but to her husband Ray as “barely 30.” When Lisa calls in a witchcraft professor who wants to search the neighbor’s house for clocks, he has a car accident before he arrives. The old woman Clarice tries to warn them away, even tells Lisa the last two husbands who lived in their house disappeared. The young Clarissa tries to seduce Ray… because she is a witch.