Flashback Radio: "Three Skeleton Key"

For the month of October and the Halloween season, I thought it would be fun to revisit some classic Old-Time Radio horrors. My friend and former podcast co-commentator, Jason, was up for it. We started last week with "The Thing on the Fourble Board."

For our second selection, I chose "Three Skeleton Key." This teleplay, based on a 1937 short-story by French author Georges-Gustave Toudouze, was original broadcast on Escape on March 17, 1950. It was a popular story, having previously been adapted for Escape with a different cast in 1949. It would again be adapted for Suspense, with Vincent Price again reprising the role of Jean, in 1956 and 1958.

The story involves a lighthouse on a tiny, rocky isle off the coast of French Guiana. The three keepers receive an unwelcome and terrifying visit from a derelict ship.

Trey: Well, did this make you want to go into lighthouse keeping?

Jason: Well, it wasn't a bad life, as Jean tells us early on, although I reckon the sliding scale of what constitutes a good or bad life has slid substantially since the era depicted here. 

This is another strong entry in our seasonal survey. The tale measures up in terms of mounting suspense, frightful imagery, and compelling performances. 

Like "The Thing on the Fourble Board," this story exchanges plausibility for nightmare fuel, and it is, in my view, a favorable trade off. We are expected to accept this terrible occurrence as a natural event and so must accept that we have entered a heightened version of reality.

Vincent Price delivers as per usual, especially as the simple-but-effective plot unfolds and conveys Jean's descent into (temporary) insanity with only the pitch and tone of his voice. 

The same high marks go to the supporting cast, who also must portray the maddening effects of increasingly weird and dire circumstances on their hapless characters without makeup, mugging, or bugging their eyes. Well, maybe they did all that, but we can't see a damn thing!

If performances are perhaps a bit over the top vocally, it is incumbent upon the listener to recognize the need for this stylized approach in the audial medium and it's easy to forgive what might seem like excesses in other forms of entertainment. 

Now, how about those sound effects and Foley artists, Trey? Bananas or what?

Trey: Ha! I think it's interesting that they used a relatively light touch here for rat sound effects. They could have definitely gone more over the top with that!

It's true events as presented are unlikely and seem inspired by fears of rodents that are perhaps seldom provoked for most 21st century Americans but were probably more common for urban and rural populations in the first half of the 20th century. Or perhaps this is the exaggerated tale our unreliable narrator Jean told later, rather than a documentary? 

In any case, it's effective in making a swarm of rats feel like an elemental force. 

Similarly, while I think you're right that the performances are of the era and medium, fiction often views the sanity of the lighthouse keeper as a precarious thing. Eggers' The Lighthouse (2019) is likely the most recent example.

Anyway, it's a good story. I can see why it was redone so many times, and why Price was brought back for a number of them.