Wonderland Records put out quite a few audio drama vinyl, but they were mostly records of old stories like The Time Machine, The Lost World, and King Kong. This is one of the few contemporary adaptations they put out, especially one to coincide with the release of the film in 1977.
As you can probably guess, this record does not include the original dialogue, sound effects, or music from the film. But I like how they misdirect us a little bit with that “Complete with Sound Effects and Music” in big letters, followed sheepishly by “Specially created for this record” in a smaller font.
Included with the record is a 42-page behind-the-scenes magazine with plenty of photos and stories from the film production. You could buy this magazine on newsstands at the time, so it wasn’t exclusive to this album, but it’s a nice bonus. Not only are the stories about the production interesting, but they also have reviews of the movie from the likes of Ray Bradbury and Forrest Ackerman, which is kind of cool. It’s definitely worth checking out.
My copy from eBay has another nice bonus – a promotional 45 of the CE3K theme song. This wasn’t normally included with this album, so whoever owned it before must have put it in the sleeve for storage.
If you’d like to hear this album, I made it an episode of When You Hear This Sound, my podcast all about record books and audio dramas on vinyl! Check it out here. And you can download the souvenir booklet from Archive.org.
