The Scarifyers: The Curse of the Black Comet [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

The Curse of the Black Comet

MILD SPOILERS

The release of a new Scarifyers Radio Play has now become an object of as much anticipation and excitement for me, as does a new Wallace and Gromit outing - I mean this as the highest possible compliment, by the way!

Both are productions which arose from an original and inspired idea and which never fails to meet, and then surpass the expectations of the loyal following and improve with finesse and polish with every subsequent release. The similarities don't stop there - both share a love of the utterly absurd, invent new characters possessing wonderful eccentricity and whose plot is a concoction of hilarious references to the wonderful genres of adventure, horror and intelligent slapstick.

The Curse of the Black Comet lives up to all the aforementioned criteria... and then some.

This episode features the welcome addition to the usual vocal talent of Nicholas Courtenay, Terry Molloy and David Benson, of our genre favourite, vocally mega phonic, love him or loathe him, Brian Blessed! Here we find him cast as a bumbling, privately schooled, self-taught explorer /archaeologist / anthropologist (and not averse to some weekend transvestism) - in fact, such a perfect ANTI-Indiana Jones you will never find! His adventures take him from the Arctic to Egypt via Africa and Scotland - but apparently we don't talk about Africa! Outcomes of such expeditions usually involve various forms of incarceration, the necessary survival by regular gourmet cannibalism of the bat men and/or colleagues and the utilisation of priceless artefacts as door-stops on return home. Blessed lives up to his character 100%, with volume turned on to 11, as expected, and gives it his all - in fact, most of the comedy in this episode flows naturally from the script for his character.

The Paranormal Investigating, ageing, Detective Duo, Dunning and Lionheart, are faced with Bubonic Plague, Ancient Egyptology and a sci-fi twist with some Nazi artefact acquisition thrown into the broth for a perfect scenario to exploit to the full, comedically speaking - a little like Indy and the Crystal Skull meets Blood From the Mummy's Tomb and Carry On just about Everything! An interesting scene in Scotland is reminiscent of the mechanised Dragon in James Bond's Dr No, only involving the ultimate removal of one's troozers!

The Scarifyers certainly deserves more attention. It has the capability of making this old cynical, depressive, laugh out loud, which is a major feat due to the excellent writing by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris. I felt this episode slightly lagged in pace initially in the first half, but warmed up into a real treat for the laughing gear. Terry Molloy is a joy with such a wonderful intellectual naivety, Nicholas Courtenay's's cynicism and dry wit cuts through the farce like a knife and David Benson's plethora of diverse vocal characters never fails to please.

In-joke genre references are there to be discovered. One of the characters DD Denham will be ringing bells from The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the character Sparrow may be a reference to its 'Curse of the Black...' cousin Curse of the Black Pearl - Pirates of the Caribbean and the Scottish component reminds one of an episode of Hamish and Dougal. The Matron is Hattie Jacques straight out of Carry On. I'm sure there are loads more I have missed but one of the characters is completely' lifted by hand' from Blood From the Mummy's Tomb.

Other points of note: The artwork for the CD covers is something very well conceived - you can clearly see that it is Terry Molloy, Nicholas Courtney and Brian Blessed that are cleverly caricatured - it almost makes one wish that these radio dramas could be translated into something visual - they said it could never be done with Hitch Hikers Guide, but that worked well, so why not Scarifyers too? Also, the musical scoring is wonderfully appropriate punctuation for the narrative.

Go on, give all the Scarifying Stories a listen to - they are a vastly underrated British Horror treasure which I hope will run and run with more new adventures for a long time to come.

Another amusing fantastic tale conjured up in the Scarifyer universe of the 1930s.
Well scripted and acted, thoroughly enjoyable and a ripping good yarn.
This is the fourth outing of Lionheart and Dunning in the Scarifyers series.

this is the third outing for the scarifyers and with Brian blessed as a guest hits most of the spots one would expect.
it does miss the Alistair Crowley character, but high jinks aplenty with mummy's,Scotsmen,Nazi nastys it does entertain,
I only hope we do not have as long await for the next one.