The Birds

As you will have noticed Joy and I have been adding some thrilling shows to RUSC throughout the month of October, leading up to Halloween on the 31st, as well as adding lots more shows to the updated Halloween Radio Station.

I hope you've been enjoying everything we've shared with you so far, and so continuing the theme this week, for your Halloween entertainment, you will find even more shows posted including a thriller from the Hall of Fantasy titled The Beast With The Red Eyes.

In past years on RUSC for Halloween we have featured the more well-known shows such as On A Country Road, from Suspense, Mercury Theater's War of the Worlds, and The Thing on the Fourbleboard from Quiet Please, so this year following a request from a friend of RUSC we are presenting to you an old time radio rendition of Daphne Du Maurier's famous story The Birds.

It was first broadcast as an hour-long version on the 20th July 1953 by Lux Radio Theater and starred Herbert Marshall in the lead role as John Waite.

Set in a farmhouse on the southern coast of England, the autumn countryside around is desolate and bleak. The birds on the coast are unusually restless and intense hunger is driving them to attack human beings. This is the story John Waite wrote as a record of what happened when his family were attacked by normally peace loving birds.

The brilliant sound effects and music manage to build up the tension and extreme feeling of claustrophobia with great effect, and I know that I have never really been 100% comfortable with flocks of birds ever since!

Of course Halloween is not all about scary things though, so Joy and I have also added a lighthearted show from My Friend Irma.

Happy listening my friends,