The early days of Inner Sanctum gave a generous mix of classics and original stories. Boris Karloff was a regular, appearing in, among others, the Poe classics The Telltale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher. Peter Lorre was heard in The Horla, by Maupassant, and George Coulouris, Paul Lukas, and Claude Rains were also starred performers. But Karloff propelled it: fueled by his film portrayals of Frankenstein's monster, he appeared more than 15 times in 1941-42. While the network was under pressure from parents' groups to curtail graphic violence, Karloff wanted even more gore. His public expected it, he argued.