It’s time to take another walk down the Hall of Fantasy! This time we’re listening to an episode entitled “The Perfect Script”! An eccentric radio producer has brought a young writer to his seaside home to create the perfect tale of horror. How does this producer motivate such vivid tales of terror? Why have none of the previous authors ever written a second script for this show? Is milk really that dangerous? Listen for yourself and find out! Then vote and let us know what you think!
The question of whether it stands the test of time doesn’t really seem to be applicable for this one, as it probably works just as well now as it ever did (which is another way of saying that it probably didn’t work any better at the time than it does now). Still, I found myself enjoying it, despite having to think “What the–?” every couple of minutes. And I was even caught up in the suspense at the end, wondering if the drug would wear off in the nick of time, or if George was going to kill him. And… Read more »
So. Many. Questions. But I will limit myself to just one: At what point was “drug-fueled orgy of death” thought to be the correct answer to the question: “What do the people of 1940s Utah really want to hear over the airwaves?” This episode is OTR’s version of “The Room”. If I hadn’t heard this with my own ears, I’d never have believed that anyone would have had the audacity to broadcast it. Like Joshua, I am agape… and yet I can’t not listen. Finally, for a script that is replete with obvious problems with the writing, there are a… Read more »
I did assume from near the beginning of the episode that the poor writer wasn’t long for the world (let alone the episode), but then when the grisly action began, I thought the same as commenter Dave Potts – how did this work so many times, supposedly, previously?? Then I thought I figured it all out: of course all this insanity is simply actors in a play (within a radio show, about writing a script..??) that the producer is putting on for the benefit of this writer, so that the writer is under the Exact Conditions to be able to… Read more »
I’m not sold on the idea that he actually died – I think all this was written while he was in a drug induced hallucination, which would be why it would work on many writers over time. Milk was also used in quite a few movies as a way to poison people (the two Mrs Carrolls comes to mind), and I think that it was used by writers to use something innocent as a vehicle of death, which is always off putting. Like children were used in horror movies during the early 2000s, milk post prohibition was considered “safe” or… Read more »
121 episodes of this podcast so far. 121. And I’d say only a few have them have so absorbed me while I was driving in my car. From the opening fakeout (I had to start over; I thought I’d missed something) I was completely engrossed. Everything faded from my mind but the sounds of the radio, the music, the voices. Roger Ebert was adamant that when he reviewed a movie, he changed his criteria based on what the movie was trying to do. A horror movie? “Did it scare me?” A comedy? “Did it make me laugh.” This show was… Read more »
Maybe it’s because I had just listened to “The Haunted Trailer,” but this felt to me like another early attempt at meta spoofery. It’s a radio script called “The Perfect Script” about a horror radio series (inexplicably) called “The Perfect Script” for which every script is perfect. (Despite, presumably, every episode being about a radio writer killed by someone named George.) I assumed that the nonsensical plot and dodgy performances were deliberate. A couple of questions: When did Trudy say that John was her brother? I combed over the episode and couldn’t find it. Is this perhaps a deliberate imperfection… Read more »