John Dunning Quote

Wyllis Cooper, who created, wrote, and produced it, was then a 36–year-old staffer in Chicago’s NBC studios. Cooper, Newsweek continued, created his horror by raiding the larder. For the purposes of Lights Out sound effects, people were what they ate. The sound of a butcher knife rending a piece of uncooked pork was, when accompanied by shrieks and screams, the essence of murder to a listener alone at midnight. Real bones were broken—spareribs snapped with a pipe wrench. Bacon in a frypan gave a vivid impression of a body just electrocuted. And that cannibalism effect was actually a zealous actor, gurgling and smacking his lips as he slurped up a bowl of spaghetti. Cabbages sounded like human heads when chopped open with a cleaver, and carrots had the pleasant resonance of fingers being lopped off. Arch Oboler’s celebrated tale of a man turned insideout by a demonic fog was accomplished by soaking a rubber glove in water and stripping it off at the microphone while a berry basket was crushed at the same instant. The listener saw none of this. The listener saw carnage and death.