Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "Murders in the Rue Morgue" 1/2/44

Weird Circle's adaptations of classic stories often take bizarre liberties with those stories. In comparison, this adaptation of Poe's murder mystery is relatively straightforward.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "The Pistol Shot" 3/19/45

An army officer in Czarist Russia employs an unusual method of revenge against a fellow officer who wronged him.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "The Great Plague" (1945)

Three men plan to rob a house and murder the occupants. But they make an unwise choice in deciding on which house to rob.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "Werewolf" 1944

A family has an unfortunate encounter with a strange wolf, then soon after encounter several very odd humans.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

 Weird Circle: "The Knightsbridge Mystery" 10/17/43

A man commits a murder and frames a mentally-handicapped servant for the crime. But the situation soon takes a bizarre twist.

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Friday's Favorite OTR

Weird Circle: "The Executioner"  1952?

During the Napoleonic Wars, the eldest son of a Spanish nobleman is forced to make a horrible choice in order to save innocent lives.

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THE WEIRD CIRCLE

It's interesting to consider sometimes what sort of information gets lost as years go by. In 1947, an excellent radio anthology series titled The Weird Circle was produced for syndication. But today, nobody knows who the heck the producers, writers, directors, etc. were. No credits were read during the show and apparently no production records of any sort still exist.

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It's a pity, because it was a really cool show and it'd be nice to give those responsible the credit they are due.

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The Weird Circle adapted public domain stories, choosing mostly tales of gothic horror. It had a great opening: With the sound of pounding surf in the background, the narrator would intone "In this cave by the restless sea, we are met to call from out of past, stories strange and weird. Bell keeper, toll the bell, so that all may know that we are gathered again in the Weird Circle!"

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They did seven or eight Poe stories, Hawthorne, Charlotte Bronte, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson and so on. Some adaptations were very faithful and some took liberties with the source materials, but all are well-told and entertaining.

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They even did a poem, adapting Samuel Coleridge's narrative poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" into a superb half-hour, with an intelligent script and really eerie sound effects.

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Fortunately, a large number of Weird Circle episodes survive today. If you have any interest at all in old-time radio (and if you don't, then by golly you should), you should definitely give this one a listen.