NPR PLAYHOUSE PRESENTS "NIGHTFALL" --
A REAL SCREAM

       "In the dream you are falling, plummeting through a dark, seemingly bottomless chasm. You scream in terror with the wind - suddenly, you come awake - bathed in cold sweat, chills down your spine, heart pounding. It's NIGHTFALL."

       With that ominous beginning National Public Radio introduces NIGHTFALL, a 13-week adventure into the realm of terror and the supernatural. Each week, the gravelly, menacing voice of series host Luther Kranst invites listeners to a half hour devoted to the bizarre, the unexplained and the unspeakable. As part of the new season of the daily drama strip NPR PLAYHOUSE, NIGHTFALL will be broadcast on NPR station   (name)   every   (day)   at   (time)   beginning   (date)  .

       A production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, NIGHTFALL consists of a series of plays especially commissioned for radio. While this new thriller is not necessarily intended to induce nightmares, CBC producer Bill Howell suggests listeners lock their doors before each broadcast, and "if you're on the road," he warns, "keep your hands firmly on the wheel. NIGHTFALL is not for the timid!"

       The series begins with "Love and the Lonely One," a tale of terror and irony written by the young Montreal writer, John Graham. In the story, a pair of medical students on a lark steal a corpse from an anatomy lab. They soon discover, however, that the joke is on them.

       The chills continue during the month of October, with NIGHTFALL's adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Body Snatchers." The story, set in Edinburgh in 1828, tells of two men who regularly provide a local medical school with suspiciously fresh corpses. Other programs include "The Willoughby Obsession," a new play by George R. Robertson, and "No Admittance/No Exit," by Don Bailey and Milor Ringham. The month concludes with Arthur Samuel's "The Repossession," a bizarre tale of a man haunted by the malevolent ghost of his Siamese twin brother - who died when they were separated at birth.

       Other dramas during the season lure listeners into isolated country cabins in the dead of night, onto lonely roads where a mysterious voice reaches out from a CB radio, and on to a chilling holiday treat as a mysterious stranger offers to purchase the appetite of one hapless Mr. Lucraft.

       Robert Malesky, executive producer of NPR PLAYHOUSE, is particularly pleased with the American premiere of NIGHTFALL. "The series makes excellent use of radio technology by carefully combining voice, sound, music and silence into a totally involving experience. It is that intimate audience involvement that makes horror in general, and NIGHTFALL in particular, more powerful on radio than any other medium...Try listening in the dark, and see what happens!"

       NIGHTFALL is a production of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and is produced and directed by Bill Howell. Executive producer for NPR PLAYHOUSE is Robert Malesky.

9/1/1981