Vintage BBC Radio Horror: The Slide, Night of the Wolf & Dark: Three full-cast supernatural thrillers

Victor Pemberton

Aug 2021 · BBC Digital Audio · Narrated by Full Cast, Vincent Price, Roger Delgado, Maurice Denham, Honor Blackman, Nigel Anthony, Coral Browne, and Bessie Love

About this audiobook

A trio of terrifying radio tales starring Roger Delgado, Vincent Price and Honor Blackman

Author, playwright and TV producer Victor Pemberton was probably best known as a script editor and writer for Doctor Who, and as the inventor of the Doctor's trademark sonic screwdriver. But he also created numerous dramas for radio, among them the three cult classics included here.

The Slide - In the Kent new town of Redlow, the residents are shocked by a sudden earthquake. But a worse subterranean threat is still to emerge. When a torrent of mud oozes from the fissure and the local wildlife begins to die, expert seismologist Professor Gomez is called in. His analysis reveals the awful truth: the mud is sentient, intelligent - and lethal... Roger Delgado and Maurice Denham star in this thrilling seven-part sci-fi serial.

Night of the Wolf - March, 1883, and a monster is on the loose in the East Anglian Fens... Concerned about his missing son, Robert, Judge Mathew Deacon travels from Pennysylvania to Cambridge to find out what has become of him. His inquiries lead him to the remote Northcott Manor, deep in the marsh country, where he finds a family hiding dark secrets - and comes face to face with a werewolf... This Gothic horror play stars Vincent Price and Coral Browne.

Dark- Virginia's lover was murdered and her husband hanged. Then, years later, inexplicable events occur in the room where the murder took place. Summoned to investigate, medium Simon Elliott becomes possessed by people from the past. Can the dead really return to exert control over the living? Honor Blackman, Bessie Love and Nigel Anthony star in this suspenseful paranormal thriller.


Produced by John Tydeman

The Slide
Professor Josef Gomez - Roger Delgado
Hugh Deverill MP - Maurice Denham
Janet Marshall - Elisabeth Proud
Dr Ken Richards - David Spenser
Anna Deverill - Marion Mathie
'Tug' Wilson - Stephen Jack
Mrs Wilson - Miriam Margolyes
Sergeant Johnson - Wilfred Babbage
Inspector Baxter - Geoffrey Matthews
Constable/First Journalist/Pilot - Anthony Jackson
Professor Landers - Rolf Lefebvre
Professor Lippert - Allan McClelland
Newscaster/AC2 Gibbons - Nigel Graham
Mrs Luke - Noel Hood
Nursing Sister - Eva Haddon
Sorensen - Fraser Kerr
RAF Corporal - Anthony Hall
Barry - Glyn Dearman
Nurse - Patricia Leventon
Dr Robeson - Michael Kilgarriff
Second Journalist - Hector Ross
Third Journalist/Policeman/Ground Control - Brian Hewlett
American Journalist - Peter Marinker
Vicar - Noel Howlett
Margaret Griffiths MP - Joan Matheson
TV Interviewer - Henry Stamper
Special effects: The BBC Radiophonic Workshop
First broadcast BBC Radio Light Programme, 13 February-27 March 1966

Night of the Wolf
Judge Mathew Deacon - Vincent Price
Robert Deacon, his son - Peter Whitman
Mrs Northcott - Coral Browne
Sybil, her daughter - Sheila Grant
Dorothy, Sybil's daughter - Elizabeth Proud
Nicholas, Sybil's son - John Rye
Griffin, an undergraduate - Michael Cochrane
Professor Forrester - Hugh Manning
Sir Richard Burnett - Haydn Jones
Morris - Paul Gaymon
Jessie - Norma Ronald
Technical assistants Jock Parrell, Marsail MacCuish, David Bitchinson and Alister Wilson
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 9 August 1975

Dark
Virginia Preston - Honor Blackman
Mother - Bessie Love
Simon Elliott - Nigel Anthony
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 27 February 1978

(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Ratings and reviews

It's Vincent Price. of course it's a 5 star!

About the author

Victor Pemberton's career started in radio when his flatmates challenged him to write a play because he was criticising another. The result was The Gold Watch in 1961, the first of many radio scripts. His first television script was for Associated Rediffusion’s Send Foster (1965), concerning the exploits of a junior reporter on a local newspaper. He also worked as an actor to supplement his writing income and this led to director Morris Barry casting him in Doctor Who (The Moonbase). After a brief stint writing and script-editing Doctor Who in the mid-Sixties, Victor contributed to Timeslip and Ace of Wands and wrote numerous other scripts for radio and television. He produced Fraggle Rock in the 1980s, as well as setting up a Writers’ Television Workshop in Lagos, Nigeria, and working in Kuwait on a drama series about the daily life of a Gulf Arab family (Bait Abu Khaled). In 1990, Headline books invited Pemberton to write a novelisation of a BBC Drama series he had penned called Our Family. This was published in 1991 and led to a successful career as a novelist, and to date he has published fifteen ‘family saga’ novels, including Where the Swallows Come Again (2008).