This is a rare example of an old time radio show which I already know very well, because I had it on a cassette when I was a kid. Come to think of it, the tape was certainly bootlegged. Some guy in Illinois or somewhere was selling them by mail, probably out of his basement, around 1977. The thing is, where I lived on the central coast of California, reception for RMT was usually poor and often unlistenable. So I did, in fact, buy about 10 or 12 tapes at some point when I was about 14, paid for out of my wages as a busboy at the Valley Steak House in Buellton (this restaurant, now known as the Hitching Post II, can be seen in the recent movie SIDEWAYS---how\'s that for trivia?). This is at the same time I was discovering the earlier, original OTR of DIMENSION X, LIGHTS OUT, SUSPENSE and so on through tapes sold via classified ads in the back of pulp science fiction magazines like GALAXY.

Anyway, \"The Slave\" was one of the episodes I had on tape, and I probably listened to it, as kids will, at least twenty times. Hearing it again recently, I was struck by what a real pro Henry Slesar was. It\'s a wonderful conceit, this sadomasochistic bet that spirals out of control. And I don\'t know if people will see the twist ending coming today, but I certainly didn\'t when I was 14 and listening to the tape on my Sears Portable Cassette Recorder with Omnidirectional Microphone, and it proved to be a payoff as good as any TWILIGHT ZONE (a show which I was equally, or even more, in love with, watching reruns on KTLA Channel 5 at midnight Friday, the only day of the week I was allowed to stay up that late).

I must say, though I think this is a marvelous tale, it does have a couple of problems. First, Fred Gwynne\'s voice is hardly that of the young man he\'s supposed to be. Second, Corey\'s long-suffering girlfriend seems to have stepped out of another era---she seems to have no interest in anything except getting married (her friend even advises her, \"Men like Corey Jensen don\'t grow on trees!\"). This is clearly a pre-feminist world we\'re in here. Indeed, the whole story seems set more in a land of roadsters and raccoon coats than anything recognizable as the 1970s. But this is obviously a show for which I have a sentimental attachment, so it doesn\'t really make any difference to me.

Henry Slesar was by far the best-established of the regular RMT writers in this type of fiction, having written hundreds of short stories he could draw on for his RMT plays (just as he did for his ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS scripts). His books can be found online---MURDERS MOST MACABRE is a particularly good collection which features a couple of stories later adapted for RMTs. The books are mostly out of print.

My only disappointment with this choice, is the fact that there ain\'t no nekkid ladies in it. Other than that, a terrific show.<br>