Original title
Lights Out
Released
7/19/1949
Origin country
US
Genre
Crime, Drama, Reality, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Production companies
NBC, Admiral Corporation, Erwin, Wasey & Co. Inc.
Status
Ended
Number of seasons
3
Number of episodes
161
Lights Out was an extremely popular American old-time radio program, an early example of a network series devoted mostly to horror and the supernatural, predating Suspense and Inner Sanctum. Versions of Lights Out aired on different networks, at various times, from January 1934 to the summer of 1947 and the series eventually made the transition to television. In 1946, NBC Television brought Lights Out to TV in a series of four specials, broadcast live and produced by Fred Coe, who also contributed three of the scripts. NBC asked Cooper to write the script for the premiere, "First Person Singular", which is told entirely from the point of view of an unseen murderer who kills his obnoxious wife and winds up being executed. Variety gave this first episode a rave review ("undoubtedly one of the best dramatic shows yet seen on a television screen"), but Lights Out did not become a regular NBC-TV series until 1949.
A man, driven crazy by his wife's constant nagging and the oppressive summer heat, decides to strangle the woman. The murderers dream of a nice, cool place ends with a date with the hangman.
Has the doctor murdered his flighty wife? And if he hasn't, will he, sometime soon?
After defeating Morales, Lights hires trainer Ed Romeo (Eamonn Walker), who once trained Death Row Reynolds. Romeo is part boxing guru and part psychologist, and his approach is very different from Pops'. Meanwhile, Theresa worries about Ava's attitude about life.
The training regimen Ed Romeo (Eamonn Walker) is imposing on Lights splits the Leary family: Theresa and the girls don't like its late-night hours, but they do like Ed. Johnny doesn't, and he's upset that Ed won't let Lights promote the Reynolds fight. For his part, Ed thinks that Lights' brother is "bleeding him dry."
A man stands trial for murdering another man by throwing him out a window.
An odd professor claims he can spot Martians, who masquerade as humans, using a pair of infrared glasses he wears. Only then can you see the third eyeball in the middle of their forehead. He relates his wild theory to a photographer sitting by him in a bar--and the man believes him. While playing around with infrared film, the photographer says he's snapped a shot of a man with three eyes. The two team up to convince authorities of their find.
A woman experiencing poltergeist activity in her home secures the services of a reluctant, non-believer in the supernatural, scientist to resolve her problem.
Songwriter Charlie has suffered with writer's block" since he and his wife moved to the country. Betty wants them to sell the house to pay the bills, but Charlie doesn't want to part with the family estate. His late ancestor, Jasper, isn't thrilled with the idea either.
Maggie, the press agent for actor Henry Crawford, is horrified by his lifeless performances during dress rehearsals for his new play. She comments that he seems dead, to which his wife, Elaine, declares that he is. A year earlier, Elaine's ex-fiancé Balsamo had cursed Henry when he stole her away, promising Henry that he'd be through in one year.
Off-his-rocker Kruger, a famous actor coming out of retirement for a new play with his daughter (Randel), suddenly is tormented by the ghost of his late, thought-to-be-a-suicide wife. His daughter is a triumph in her first big stage role, but ... can Kruger take the adulation she receives ...
After suffering a concussion in a car accident on the Oregon coast, Stephen Elliott is carried to the home of an old man and his beautiful daughter-in-law to recover. The young woman tells Stephen that her husband, a World War II pilot, had died the year before and left an uncompleted musical composition, a model airplane and a piece of sculpture, as well as a strange will.
A man finds his missing fiancé in a mental hospital. She believes she's possessed a Dullaghan, a spirit of Irish folklore that jumped to her from her late father when she kissed him farewell at his funeral. The finance investigates and learns that her parent had been a famous ventriloquist and his dummy was named Mr. Dullagham.
The heir of the old aristocratic Fonceville family takes his bride to the ancestral castle, where a hereditary madness takes over his dreams, one that tries to induce the murder of his new wife.
Charlotte is distressed by the letters addressed tor her new husband that mysteriously appear at their door. Kenneth refuses to discuss their contents, but they clearly disturb him. Fearing he's seeing another woman, Charlotte demands to know who's writing them. She's shocked to find they're from his domineering first wife who seems intent on controlling him even in death.
A Boston librarian is drawn into a ghostly web of deceit as he helps a beautiful heiress recover her stolen fortune by finding a missing will written in a rare version of the Talmud.
By opening the grave of a recently deceased man and putting on his coat, a person will supposedly be granted invisibility. A bitter man with scores to settle decides to put the superstition to the test. He forces his reluctant butler to join him in his scheme of grave-robbing and murder.
Former hometown football star George Logan pays an unexpected late night visit on Phyllis and Bob at their country home. Down on his luck, he's obsessed with having never fit in, and holds a grudge against the world. His one talent is weaving a string into a cat's cradle and, he claims, using it to cast spells and murder people who get in his way. A skeptical Bob call it nonsense so an irate George is determined to prove him wrong.
Al March is tortured by his failure to have stopped the bombing of an Army barracks in 1945 Germany. Awaiting surgery, he tells his sister that the two men and a woman he killed the night before were the same ones who had planted the explosives. Even though they had died in the blast, they had been chasing him for the past six years because he lived and they didn't.
The ghost of Lady Anne continues to walk down the stairs, knife in hand, and into the secret passage where she murdered her domineering husband. She vividly demonstrates her disapproval of Rodney's attempt to conduct an affair with a visiting friend of his wife.
The car carrying cultured Geoffrey, brutish Claude and eligible Kay swerves off a cliff and into a mysterious valley. Surprised by the weird vegetation and climate, they come to believe they've traveled back in time 50,000 years. An encounter with an unfriendly caveman results in all three being held captive in the wild man's cave.
Cecil Crofton shows up at the backwoods, hillbilly shack of Purdy with a wild proposition on how the two can split a million dollars. Crofton as figured out that a ton gold that once belonged to the Confederacy is buried locally, in the cellar of a house that had burned down and was rebuilt. Purdy figures rightly that it's the old Larro place, but the abandoned house is cursed by the ghosts of Larro ancestors from the Civil War.
Steenie, the best piper in all of Scotland, is about to be evicted if he doesn't pay his owed rent. After selling his pipes to raise the money, a mysterious stranger appears, ready with a deal: it involves Steenie's money, bagpipes--and his immortal soul.
Francis Carvel visits a plastic surgeon to erase a lifetime of ugliness from his face. Now handsome, he returns to the French inn where, a year earlier, an lovely woman had spurned his affection. Complicating Carvel's plans is a new traveling companion, a disfigured man in bandages who knows everything about him.
A New York City detective is investigating the disappearance of over 200 people. Before vanishing into thin air, each person has reported a dream involving a fat man with a bizarre watch who convinces them to join him on his planet of Aleria.
In 1890s London, Mrs. Manifold runs a boarding house for sailors on the waterfront. New hire John hears from a customer that her wine-guzzling husband, Ambrose, long ago disappeared and that some say she killed him. The old lady gets jumpy when a strange man reeking of wine signs the register "Ambrose Manifold.
On their honeymoon, a new husband brings his bride to the ranch he grew up on. The wife is soon traumatized by the antique bedroom mirror once owned by the husband's deceased former love. The dead girlfriend appears in the reflection, wanting to trade places with the newly-married woman.
A survey taker makes a startling discovery when she visits the home of two very paranoid, eccentric, elderly collectors of odds and ends.
A man makes a deal with a mysterious businessman in order to get rid of his high spending wife.
Ambitious defense attorney David Stevenson has high political aspirations and believes his romance with a nobody like Sylvia Willis will only hold him back. Calling in a favor from a murderer he once saved from conviction, he has his bride-to-be shot. Sylvia, however, is not so easily silenced. She demands justice and forces the great attorney to defend himself before a jury of the dead.
Dede attends the silent supper, a ritual the single Bayou women conduct to foresee their future husbands. Old voodoo woman Miss Watkins had told Dede that she'd meet her husband at the supper that night. Miss Watkins has the misfortune of meeting up with troublemaker Jean Duval, who stabs her and steals her silver. Then, uninvited, he crashes the silent supper.
Bird lover Waldo Bryan leaves behind his big city art career to live in the country. His wife, Adele, has turned hateful, angry that he made her give up the city life. To get even, she lets Waldo's beloved parakeet out of it's cage to be killed by her cat. The birds outside seem to know of Adele's evil deed and turn on her, turning her into the caged one.
Jeff Morgan reads a story in a pulp fiction magazine exactly like one he'd written and filed away years earlier. His meeting with the author, Frank Joyce, is eerie; he already knows everything about the man without having met him before. Convinced Frank is his doppelganger, Jeff panics when he dreams Frank steps onto an elevator that malfunctions and plunges fifteen stories. Frank just scoffs at his frantic warning.
A husband rents the same upstairs apartment where he and his late wife once lived. Despite his claims of being married, the elderly landlady feels that something is not quite right. After weeks, she's yet to meet the woman. In fact, she's never heard so much as a sound coming from upstairs floor.
A mysterious stranger enters a home uninvited, drawn from the street by the haunting music of Beethoven's "Geister (Ghost) Trio" that three musicians are performing. The pianist is immediately smitten with the woman of obvious wealth and status, soon proposing they marry. She says it is impossible, as the man would be forced to choose between her or his music.
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