Arch Oboler was a prolific radio playwright from the mid-1930s, starting with NBC’s Lights Out radio show. One of the stories in the 1939 Arch Oboler’s Plays series was “And Adam Begot,” which told the story of two men and a woman thrown back into prehistoric times. The story appear in print in a 1944 anthology, was reprised for the 1951 Lights Out TV show, and formed the basis for a 1953 Steve Ditko story in the Black Magic comic book.

I haven’t yet read this story, which came from Oboler’s 1939 radio play of the same name. It was later turned into a TV episode of Lights Out and was the basis of a Steve Ditko story in the Black Magic comic book (1953).

Unlike in the original short story of “The Twonky,” the movie’s mad machine is a TV rather than a radio. Also, we never explicitly see the machine’s construction by a time traveler, but the professor’s discussions with the coach make it clear that they believe the machine is from the future, and that’s good enough for us. And finally, when you watch the wacky film, you’ll see that Arch Oboler devised a different fate for the Twonky than that of Kuttner and Moore’s original story.