Richard Curtis Presents The Creepery
A Podcast Series from a Horror Dramatist
By: Susan Hall - Oct 04, 2020
Richard Curtis, playwright and master of mystery, has produced a new creepy podcast series in time for Horror Season. Episode 1, You Have a Guest, is available now.
A demon’s dozen of disturbing audio dramas are conjured out of the dark imagination of this horror dramatist. Everyday places and situations are the backdrops for tense and unpredictable confrontations. A chance encounter between neighbors in their building’s trash room; a routine visit to a yoga class; a friendly chat in the cardiac recovery ward of a hospital – twelve commonplace moments escalate into tension, violence - and even death. Patterned after such classic horror radio programs as Inner Sanctum and The Shadow, every tale from The Creepery promises to wrack your nerves to the breaking point.
Curtis may be our own Himan Brown, who made his first radio almost a hundred years ago in a high school class in Brooklyn. "I never dreamed when I was winding a wire around a Quaker Oats box to create my first crystal set" Brown later explained, "that I would eventually spend seventy wonderful years as a radio producer."
By the age of 18, in 1928, Brown was reading Yiddish Newspapers over the air on WEAF NY. Gertrude Berg gave him his first job in drama, playing her husband on the classic radio show, The Goldbergs. While continuing to act, Brown began to pitch shows using scripts written by college classmate Irwin Shaw.
Over the years, Brown produced the famed Inner Sanctum and along the way, directed Orson Welles, Helen Hayes, Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.
As he returns to this classic form, Curtis has put together a terrific contemporary acting team. In Episode 1, the devil's Representative is Steve Mecca, also attributed with mixing, editing, sound design, original music, and marketing.
In the Inner Sanctum of the victim’s office, the Rep emits the hellish smell of rotten eggs, and knows more about Mr. Stryker (Constantine Pappas) than the man himself. Down to his blue underpants with dolphins on them, Stryker is clearly having a practice run for a hotel tryst planned to consummate his fantasies. What price will he pay? We tremble for him.
Among the benefits of the strange isolation of a pandemic are hours stretching before us from which new and old entertainments beckon. Sometimes I am sad that I don’t have an appointment on air at 8 pm, but the luxury of listening when you choose is also inviting.
Like Himan Brown, Curtis takes advantage of the podcast form to be frightening without taking itself too seriously.
The Creepery podcasts are available on The Creepery. Next up is a man who makes the mistake of being a Republican. I can’t wait to hear what will happen to him.
Pleasant dreams, Hmmmmm?