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MOVIES FOR YOUR MIND
by Jim French Productions
Jim French Productions, October 2006
Audiobook pages
$15.95

Click here to buy

MOVIES FOR YOUR MIND is well named. This audio anthology is told with full casts, sound effects, and background music, leading to a rich sensory experience that will make you look forward to your morning commute or other listening time. Six different stories are contained on two CDs, averaging 20 minutes apiece. All of the stories are horror/suspense with occasional touches of supernatural, so the inability to see what’s going on adds deliciously to the creep factor.

In Clockwork, every night just past 9pm, someone is being brutally murdered in war-ravaged London. Every night, just like clockwork. We follow a Scotland Yard investigator as he tries to find the killer or killers between air raids. I could really visualize this one as it was playing – in film noir style, of course!

Alliance in Blood, one of the weaker stories, deals with a Colorado reporter tracking down a murderer in a small town. There isn’t much of a mystery here; just a setup and a relatively obvious payoff.

Contrastingly, Dark in the Street, is a very effective episode – and one so particularly in keeping with the old half-hour horror anthologies that I was a bit surprised the narrator wasn’t Rod Serling. A German immigrant is begging the police to come fix the street light outside his house, because “it’s too dark out there. They’ll find me!” It’s a particularly chilling trip through a paranoid mind.

Fear Itself is a nice premise with a weak set-up but a good pay-off. A collection of horror authors are at a party on a yacht that is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of its gangster owner.

Vally Cab’s Last Fare is classic suspense; we listen in as driver after driver disappears while the nervous dispatcher tries to keep in contact with them.

The Passenger is the other weak story, a heavy-handed allegory presented as horror that might have worked if there was a little more time to shift from laying the scene to the climax. As it is, the story feels rushed and stilted.

But despite the weaker stories, this is a great collection; very atmospheric and evocative of the better 1950s-style horror genre. If you loved the Twilight Zone or the old-time radio thriller serials, you’re really going to like this one.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, October 2006

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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