Suspense Television

Suspense - The Second Collection of "Lost Episodes"

Hello!

The second collection of Suspense: The Lost Episodes became available today. If you pre-ordered this item, then you may already be watching it right now.  If you haven't purchased it yet, well, there is no time like the present. You can purchase it through the handy-dandy purple widget on our sister site Escape and Suspense!

You can probably tell already that this collection of episodes is going to be interesting. How many episodes star Conrad Janis? What kind of cartoon stories does Rex Marshall tell us? Who are the big name stars? Which episodes are the best?

We'll be exploring those questions, and many more, soon.

Happy Halloween!

Christine

The Hunted

"The Hunted" is the only episode of Suspense accessible on the Internet.  It is available through the Museum of Broadcast Communication's website.

To view this episode, go to http://www.museum.tv/, then click on the heading Collections, and then Search the Archives. When you get to the Search the Archives page, click on Click Here to Search the Archives Catalog. You will have to register with an e-mail addess and password. When you have done that, you will be asked if you want to search radio or TV, click on TV and then enter Suspense where it asks for a Series Title in the Search box. This will produce a 3 page list of episodes, mostly for Kraft Suspense Theatre. Skip those and scroll to the end of the list. At the end, there are two copies of the same episode of Suspense in their collection. One is slightly longer than the other. Click on either copy of Suspense: "The Hunted."

"The Hunted" is the story of a young man named Derek Howard who has made his way in life by being the son of someone important. The setting of this story is a hunting lodge, where Derek is staying with his friends John and Sylvia. Derek and John have an ongoing bet over who can bring back the bigger animal from their daily hunting trips. Derek easily wins the bet everyday because he appears to have no troubles finding game. As we can see, sometimes Derek is so lucky at hunting that when he retrieves his kill, it has already been stuffed and mounted.

Back at the lodge, John and Sylvia await Derek. They haven't been lucky at the hunt and they know they are going to lose the bet. Sylvia asks John why he makes the bet everyday if he knows he is going to lose. In this crucial scene, John explains to Sylvia that when the boss' son says he wants to make a bet, you have to make a bet --even if you lose 50 bucks a day. Got that Syvia?

What Derek's friends don't know is that he has been winning their bets by poaching from the local game preserve. This hasn't gone unnoticed by the game warden, Mr. Meeker. He catches Derek in the act and decides to teach him a lesson.

Mr. Meeker spells it out for Derek: "... you're gonna learn just what it means to be hunted. Hunted like an animal."

"The Hunted" was an original television play by Ben Radin. Although the idea here may seem similar to the famous short story, "The Most Dangerous Game" don't expect a retelling of that story. "The Hunted" is a critter-friendly tale that teaches us all a lesson about hunting. Mr. Meeker was played by Ward Bond and John Kerr played Derek Howard. Sylvia Mason was played by Jane DuFrayne and Steve Parker played John Mason.

"The Hunted" aired on June 29, 1954.

Reviews of Suspense:The Lost Episodes

Fanfare about the long awaited release of the Suspense television show is limited, but the few reviews that have drifted out on the internet are entertainment enough:

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Leonard Maltin's review of Suspense: The Lost Episodes can be found on the Leonard's Picks page. (Scroll down the page to find it.) His review is flattering and enthusiastic overall:

"...early episodes reveal all of the quaintness of live television: flimsy, obvious sets, shadows of microphone booms, and in at least one instance an actor ducking in front of the camera at the beginning of a scene he's not in."

"There is a marked change by the 1952-1953 season. Director Robert Mulligan shows what a creative person could do within the limitations of low-budget live TV; his shows are ingneniously staged and orchestrated, even if some of the scripts still fail to deliver on their promise."

Visit Leonard Maltin's website  and read his entire review for more information.

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The Baltimore Sun's reviewer Chris Kaltenbach states: "Though marred by dime-store sets (mostly made of cardboard, they tend to move in ways they shouldn't) and the occasional actor who doesn't realize the camera's on him, this collection is an invaluable relic from television's earliest days, when almost everything about the medium was new and untried."  (Kaltenbach, Chris. "Writer Cocteau's 'Enfants Terribles" Play a Fascinating Gam; Critic's Picks: New DVDs" The Sun. Baltimore, Md.: Jul. 22, 2007. pg. 8E)

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Chris Hicks of the Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City, summarizes the new DVD with these words: "These are creaky kinescopes of this half-hour anthology series from the earliest days of television, etc...The show was broadcast live, and there are occasional bloopers, such as the guy in the Leslie Nielsen-George Reeves episode who makes an accidental on-camera appearance and quickly ducks out of sight."  ("TV's Benson and Woody Woodpecker Among Releases." Deseret News. Salt Lake City, Utah: Jul 23, 2007. pg. C 07)

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The reviewer at the site Monsters from the ID makes some good points in his review of Suspense when he says:  "...Television of this vintage is a very different animal from film or even from the television that comes along in the mid-1950's. It's a weird conflation of radio drama and stage play, performed live, with an accompanying organ track (the kind of organ track that persisted with soap operas longer than with any other genre)."

He also states, "The first thing you will notice about the picture is the murk."

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After reading these reviews, one can't help but want to see the actor who made that noteworthy, accidental, on-camera appearance. His quick blunder, (pictured left) was not so bad. Here we can see the blurry outline of our unfortunate friend as he darts in and out of this scene. Leslie Nielsen is the actor coming through the door.

After reading the reviews you may ask, "is there more to Suspense than just the cheap sets, "creaky kinescopes" and mistakes on live television?" Yes, there is some good stuff hidden in all of that murk.