Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers
252 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
23 B-W Images
Paperback
Release Date:13 May 2025
ISBN:9781978836389
Hardcover
Release Date:13 May 2025
ISBN:9781978836396
Film noir is one of the most exciting and most debated products of studio-era Hollywood, but did you know that American radio broadcast many programs in the noir vein through the 1940s and 1950s? These included adaptations of such well-known films as The Maltese Falcon, Murder, My Sweet, and Double Indemnity, detective series devoted to the adventures of private eyes Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and the spine-tingling anthology programs Lights Out and Suspense. Thrillers, Chillers, and Killers is the first book to explore in detail noir storytelling on the two media, arguing that radio’s noir dramas played an important role as a counterpart to, influence on, or a spin-off from the noir films. Besides shedding new light on long-neglected radio dramas, and a medium that was cinema’s major rival, this scrupulously researched yet accessible study also uses these programs to challenge conventional understandings of the much-debated topic of noir.
A fascinating and thoroughly engaging book that successfully explores the neglected field of radio drama and its close relationship with cinema. Krutnik's excellent scholarship widens our knowledge of a thrilling era of popular culture, finding a dynamic correlation between the screen and the airwaves.
In this incredibly detailed book, Krutnik has thrillingly reimagined the ecosystem of noir by resituating it among the key radio programs through which it reached the public. It models a compelling new approach to the historical study of media interplay.
Krutnik elegantly synthesizes his meticulous research on the noir mediascape, offering a new and compelling account of the transmedial currency of the noir mystery story across page, screen, and airwaves in American culture.
FRANK KRUTNIK is an emeritus reader in film studies at the University of Sussex in Brighton. His publications include Popular Film and Television Comedy; In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity; Inventing Jerry Lewis; and he is coeditor of Un-American Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (Rutgers University Press).
Introduction : Radio and Film Noir
Chapter 1: Noir Movies on the Radio
Chapter 2: Strange Romance - Laura, Film Noir, and Radio Drama
Chapter 3: Seriality and the Radio Detective
Chapter 4: The Transmedial Seriality of Michael Shayne, #1 - From Book to Film
Chapter 5: The Transmedial Seriality of Michael Shayne, #2 - Radio Drama
Chapter 6: Not for the Timid Soul - The Weird Mysteries of Lights Out
Chapter 7: Radio’s Outstanding Theatre of Thrills
Chapter 8: Noir Anguish: Cornell Woolrich and Suspense
Coda: Radio/Noir
Appendix: Radio Adaptations of Noir Films
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
Chapter 1: Noir Movies on the Radio
Chapter 2: Strange Romance - Laura, Film Noir, and Radio Drama
Chapter 3: Seriality and the Radio Detective
Chapter 4: The Transmedial Seriality of Michael Shayne, #1 - From Book to Film
Chapter 5: The Transmedial Seriality of Michael Shayne, #2 - Radio Drama
Chapter 6: Not for the Timid Soul - The Weird Mysteries of Lights Out
Chapter 7: Radio’s Outstanding Theatre of Thrills
Chapter 8: Noir Anguish: Cornell Woolrich and Suspense
Coda: Radio/Noir
Appendix: Radio Adaptations of Noir Films
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
