Chicken Heart - Lights Out | 02/23/1938

Lights Out was one of the premier American old time radio programs and was devoted primarily to horror and the supernatural. Created by Wyllis Cooper and then eventually taken over by Arch Oboler, versions of Lights Out aired on different networks, at various times, from January 3, 1934 to the summer of 1947 and the series eventually made the transition to television.

Hope you enjoy this episode of Lights Out! Find all our radio stations and podcasts at theaterofthemind-otr.com - Audio Credit: The Old Time Radio Researchers Group. Podcasts @ Apple | Spreaker | YouTube | Spotify | iHeart | Amazon

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Do you remember some time ago in an Eastern
scientific institution they kept a piece of heart alive for

(00:22):
weeks on end. Well, I got to thinking, what if
that heart began to grow and grow and grow?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Grow?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hello operator, give me mister Rican fast, I love mister Rican,
this is us. Listen, get me a rewrite. Man. The
things still grow no cheap. I tell you the truth.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
The corridor's choked with living, crawling flesh.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
No, no, no, I'm not drunk. I'm telling you the truth.
That little piece of place has grown until much jamming
that building, all inside the space of an hour.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
You've got to believe me.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
It's the greatest news story of the generation. And here
you argue with me.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
I tell you it's the truth.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
You've got to believe what you believe me. I tell
you the only hope is to burn the building for
the ground that one. Now, wait a minute, dark way,
take it. I tell you burn it to the ground bad.
I tell you take it easy. I send it a call.
Or don't you understand?

Speaker 3 (01:24):
For some reason, I cannot even imagine. This tissue is
doubling in size every hour, So you know what that means.
In another hour it will be twice beside it is now,
and long before that it will break open the building
with the force of its pressure, and then it will.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Be free in the street. And you hear me free
in the street.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
And then those those tentacles of protoplasms stretching out the
feed on anything they can reach.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
To the walls, faking. I won't why won't you? I'm
excited to warn me. And now it's just too lest

(02:13):
the heart is free.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
M m m. Gentlemen, God come to order, please, gudmen,
please horror.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Please please please now thats mayor no one realized this
more than I do.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
The necessity of immediate action incurring this unspeakable, unbelievable emergency.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
And I as shown high.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Species mac, that blasted thing is spreading like a forest fire.
I'm the governor. Get the night away in spray.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Wait wait, wait, please wait.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Here is doctor Albert and the research instituting stream.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Step up here, doctor dous.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Gentlemen, it was in my institute this horror began, and
if you give me a chance, perhaps I can stop it.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, is it, doctor Collish, person, what that monster really is?

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yes, yes, I will tell you that great, ever growing
mass of flesh it is or it was a chicken
half heart?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Are you fraizy chicken hard? Listen to me, you pull fast.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
I tell you that mass of flesh was a chicken heart,
the tissue of which, for some reason, is undergoing constant,
rapid accelerating growth.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
For every passing hour, its growth is doubling. Do you
know what that means? If it is now one block
in size.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Within thirty hours, that cannibal flesh will have increased in
size to one square block, to the thirtieth power. In
thirty hours, every inch of this whole city will be
crushed under that moving flesh. Within sixty hours, it will
have covered the entire state, within two weeks, the entire
United States. You asked for the national God, I say,

(04:08):
called out the entire army last week.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Being out there already chief covers, already, all hoses coping up.
We'll flood that thing with water from all angles.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
All right here, you spoula.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
See out.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Let's play everything.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
The fools. What good is warm? I told them? The
only hope is artillery bombers. All National Guardsmen report to
your armories.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
All National Guardsmen report to your armories.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
General mobilization that are in physitions, Sir.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
M fighting on the album.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yes, yeah, alright, fine here.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Useless.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
It has grown too large.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
As it grows too quickly, the flesh is already engulfing
the guns.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
They came too late. You are right now, doctor Robinson. Yes, yeah, yes,
I'm all right, asters all right, Well, I sure am glad.
I located you.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
I stole as long as I could another ten minutes,
and we couldn't have taken off That.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Blasted protoplasm or whatever it is was sucking at the
wheels by the time we left the ground.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yes, as I saw five thousand feet.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Well, we'll cruise around up here for a few minutes
and then head west.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
It will do no good.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
You can't mean it.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
It must stop growing sometime.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
It must look at it down. The gray blankets are evil,
covering everything. See how the roads are black with men
and women and their children running for their lives.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
But see how the protoplasmic gray reaches out and engulfs them.
See it.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Stop talking like that. We'll get away.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
The government of bombing plains, poisoned gangs.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Ow we listened to the Lewis you remember only a
handful of days ago. You ask me my prophecy of
the end of the Earth. You remember my answer, Oh,
such a scholarly prophecy, cessation of earth rotation, mighty sounding
astronomical theories. But now this is reality, Lewis. The end

(06:39):
has come for humanity, not in the red of its
homic fusion, not in the glory of interstellar combustion, not
in the peace of white.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Cold silence. But we back that creepy, grasping flesh below us.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
It is a joke, he lewis a great joke, the
joke of my housmos, the end of and boy, because
of the cheeckens. No, no, we won't die.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
I can't die. I'll find a sleep, finding somewhere.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
I'll find a place.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Smaters cut out.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
We're in a spin. I take it out of it.
Doom no, no, hold and kind doom.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
No, we're falling right into it, into the harn