Appointment with Fear was a horror drama series originally broadcast on BBC Radio in the 1940s and 1950s, and revived on a number of occasions since. The format comprised a dramatised horror story of approximately half an hour in length, introduced by a character known as the Man in Black. The plays themselves were a mixture of classic horror stories by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James and W. W. Jacobs, and commissioned stories by new or established writers. Many of the stories in the early series were written or adapted by John Dickson Carr. [1]
Appointment with Fear ran for nine series between 1943 and 1955, initially on the BBC Home Service and from September 1945 on the Light Programme. The Man in Black was played by the British character actor Valentine Dyall, except in the second series where the character was portrayed by Dyall's father Franklin Dyall. Only four episodes are known to survive. [1] [2] A tenth series was broadcast on the BBC World Service in 1976.
There was no tenth series in 1957, it was merely a repeat broadcast of Series Nine.
The Man in Black was broadcast for one series of eight episodes in 1949, also on the Light Programme, and again presented by Valentine Dyall in the title role. No episodes are known to have survived. [1] [2]
Fear on Four ran for five series on BBC Radio 4 between 1988 and 1992, the part of the Man in Black being played by Edward de Souza. [2] [3] A fifth series was broadcast in 1997, this time without a narrator. [4] An anthology of stories from the first two series was published by BBC Books in 1990. [5]
The series was revived again in 2009, on BBC Radio 4 Extra, this time as The Man in Black, with Mark Gatiss in the title role. It ran for four series, each with five episodes, between 2009 and 2011. [6]
Reruns of the 2009 version started to air on BBC Radio 4 Extra on April 24, 2020.
In 1950, Hammer and Exclusive Films released a feature film based on the series entitled The Man in Black . The stars were Betty Ann Davies, Sheila Burrell, and Sid James, with Valentine Dyall reprising his role as the Man in Black.
"The Black Cat" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. In the story, an unnamed narrator has a strong affection for pets until he perversely turns to abusing them. His favorite, a pet black cat, bites him one night and the narrator punishes it by cutting its eye out and then hanging it from a tree. The home burns down but one remaining wall shows a burned outline of a cat hanging from a noose. He soon finds another black cat, similar to the first except for a white mark on its chest, but he develops a hatred for it as well. He attempts to kill the cat with an axe but his wife stops him; instead, the narrator murders his wife. He conceals the body behind a brick wall in his basement. The police soon come and, after the narrator's tapping on the wall is met with a shrieking sound, they find not only the wife's corpse but also the black cat that had been accidentally walled in with the body and alerted them with its cry.
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn.
The "locked-room" or "impossible crime" mystery is a type of crime seen in crime and detective fiction. The crime in question, typically murder, is committed in circumstances under which it appeared impossible for the perpetrator to enter the crime scene, commit the crime, and leave undetected. The crime in question typically involves a situation whereby an intruder could not have left; for example the original literal "locked room": a murder victim found in a windowless room locked from the inside at the time of discovery. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
Sir Cedric Webster Hardwicke was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly 50 years. His theatre work included notable performances in productions of the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw, and his film work included leading roles in several adapted literary classics.
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.
Dr. Gideon Fell is a fictional character created by John Dickson Carr. He is the protagonist of 23 mystery novels from 1933 through 1967, as well as a few short stories. Carr was an American who lived most of his adult life in England; Dr. Fell is an Englishman who lives in the London suburbs.
The Black Mass was a horror-fantasy radio drama produced by Erik Bauersfeld, a leading American radio dramatist of the post-television era. The series aired on KPFA (Berkeley) and KPFK from 1963 to 1967, on an irregular schedule. Bauersfeld was the Director of Drama and Literature at KPFA from 1966 to 1991.
Valentine Dyall was an English character actor. He worked regularly as a voice actor, and was known for many years as "The Man in Black", the narrator of the BBC Radio horror series Appointment with Fear.
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, an English crime writer and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson. She also wrote fiction and a 1940 autobiography, Three-a-Penny, as Anne Meredith.
John Creasey was an English author known mostly for detective and crime novels but who also wrote science fiction, romance and westerns. He wrote more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms.
Tom Drake was an American actor. Drake made films starting in 1940 and continuing until the mid-1970s, and also made TV acting appearances.
Arthur Shields was an Irish actor on television, stage and film.
Cyril John Mockridge was an English film and television composer. He received professional training at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In the early 1930s, Mockridge went to Hollywood where he scored and arranged the music for more than a hundred films including Cheaper by the Dozen, River of No Return and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Morris Ankrum was an American radio, television, and film character actor.
Philip Van Doren Stern was an American writer, editor, and Civil War historian whose story "The Greatest Gift", published in 1943, inspired the classic Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
Edgar Allan Poe has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, comics, film, and other media. Besides his works, the legend of Poe himself has fascinated people for generations. His appearances in popular culture often envision him as a sort of "mad genius" or "tormented artist", exploiting his personal struggles. Many depictions of Poe interweave elements of his life with his works, in part due to Poe's frequent use of first-person narrators, suggesting an erroneous assumption that Poe and his characters are identical.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature", and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.
Graphic Classics is a comic book anthology series published by Eureka Productions of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. Graphic Classics features adaptations of literary classics by authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allan Poe, with art by top professionals, many of whom hail from the underground or alternative comics world. Created and edited by Tom Pomplun, the series began publication in 2002.
William E. Roos was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He authored works using both his own name and the pseudonym William Rand. He also co-authored several works with his wife, the writer Audrey Roos, under the pen name Kelley Roos. These included more than twenty mystery novels; nine of which featured the married sleuths Jeff and Haila Troy. In 1961 the couple won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. As a solo writer he authored several plays which were staged on Broadway and multiple teleplays for American television.