TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED VOL. 1 & 2 - Boris Karloff

YEAR: 1963

LABEL: Mercury

TRACK LISTING: Call At Midnight, Just Inside the Cemetery, The Fortune Teller, The Man In the Raincoat, The Deadly Dress, The Hand of Fate, Don't Lose Your Head, The Vampire Sleeps, Horror of Death, Never Kick a Black Cat, The Ladder, Nightmare, Voice From the Grave

IMPRESSIONS: Are you one of the frightened? What could be better than Uncle Boris reading us dead-time stories??? That's right - nothing! One of these tales -- "The Hand of Fate" -- was recited by Karloff almost verbatim in Peter Bogdanovich's film TARGETS; the old master did it in one take and the entire cast and crew broke out into applause.

MY FAVOURTE TRACKS: Call at Midnight, Just Inside the Cemetery, The Fortune Teller, The Man in the Raincoat, The Hand of Fate, Don't Lose Your Head, The Vampire Sleeps, Never Kick a Black Cat, Voice From the Grave

FACT SHEET: TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED is a two-record set of recordings of short horror tales written by Michael Avallone (author of childhood favourites "THE GHOST THAT CAME ALIVE" and some of the Partridge Family mystery novels I devoured as a boy) and read by Boris Karloff. In 1956, Avallone edited a pulp magazine called "TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED" which was supposed to be a launching pad for a radio programme of the same name hosted by Boris Karloff. The show never came to be so the stories were turned into a paperback book of 26 tales. The albums featured strange electronic music taken from a 1957 album called "ELECTRONIC MUSIC" by "The Electrosoniks". In 2010, Avallone's son David came out with a new "tribute" album of TALES OF THE FRIGHTENED with his father's stories read by actor Vernon Wells and music by Eban Schletter.