Monster-of-the-Week: …in the oil-drilling industry’s “honor” this week let’s go to the wonderful world of old-time radio theater, & give the nod to the title character of The Thing on the Fourble Board, a 1948 chiller from the acclaimed series Quiet, Please, created by pioneering airwave dramatist Wyllis Cooper:
Probably the show’s most famous episode, The Thing on the Fourble Board was narrated by a character called Porky (series star Ernest Chappell), a roughneck who worked a remote oil derrick. Porky’s account is full of very convincing, authentic-sounding jargon—a “fourble board,” for instance, is a platform on the derrick at the height of four attached lengths of drill pipe. So we believe him when he tells us that his drill once dredged up…well, something from the bowels of the Earth…something Antediluvian…& hungry. Alas, the horror wreaked by The Thing can’t compare to that unleashed by BP’s drilling.
For obvious reasons there are no portraits of The Thing, but you can listen to, or read the script of, the whole show (& other Quiet, Please episodes), here.
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