Tag Archives: Tales of the Unexpected

Tales of the Unexpected — Taste (04/12/80)

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Blindfolded Richard Pratt swirls the salty liquid around in his mouth and spits it out.  “Oh, this is a very good-humored fellow!” he exclaims.  “A benevolent cheerful little chap!  A bit naughty!”  Well, I’m glad he got to know the guy before blowing — oh wait, he is one of those pretentious wine snobs assigning human characteristics to a cocktail of decaying vegetation.

He further identifies the wine as a 1959 German [1].  The TV host says he has gone four for four.  The show is watched by Sybil Schofield and teenage daughter Louise, who are expecting him to join them for dinner.  Louise complains that Pratt is boring, and always stares at her without looking like George Clooney. [5]

Louise goes to the study to ask her father what sort of glasses they should use because Pratt is just the kind of humorless dilettante [3] that would not see the whimsy in my vintage Flintstone jelly glasses.  Schofield is preparing for Pratt’s challenge by masking the bottles like [insert COVID reference here]. [4]  

While the Schofields wait for Pratt to join them and American writer Peter Bligh for dinner, Pa Schofield explains that at every gathering he challenges Pratt to identify the vintage of a mystery wine.  So far Pratt has beaten him every time.

Louise answers the door.  While Pratt has her alone, he gives her a gift, his new book about — surprise! — wine . . . to a girl too young to drink (well, in our backward country that looks down on giving alcohol to minors and windowless vans, anyway).  The repulsive old man has inscribed it “from an admirer.”

Before dinner, they prepare for the wine-tasting.  Schofield knows to give Pratt a bottle of soda water so that he may “sponge out the palate and scour out unwanted tastes” . . . such as famously decaying British choppers, presumably.  Being a refined English gentleman, Pratt takes the bottle to another room to gargle and spit in the shitter. [2]    

Inexplicably, however, he then has some appetizers and a Mosel Riesling before the big event.  Schofield retrieves the wine from the study where it has been assuming room temperature.  To be fair, they did explain why it had to be that room. 

Schofield is confident he will stump Pratt this time.  He does not even think it would be sporting to have their usual wager.  However, Pratt is so cocky that he insists on raising the stakes.  Rather than the usual ante of one case of wine, he proposes fifty cases and a box of Slim Jims!  Then Pratt proposes £10,000!  However, his real proposal is that the stakes be “the hand of your daughter in marriage” as he is tired of his own hand.

Schofield protests that Pratt has no hot underage daughter of his own to wager against Louise . . . no, seriously, he does.  Pratt counters that he will put up his house to match the bet.  Obviously Louise is not on board.  Her father explains to her why this is a sure thing.  

The claret is poured for each person.  Pratt does his usual tasting, savoring, swirling.  He pronounces it a “very interesting little wine, gentle, gracious, almost feminine in its aftertaste”.  He deduces it is from Bordeaux, then slowly and methodically deduces the exact year, location, rue, and the pronouns of the vintner.  He nails it!

Louise quite reasonably bolts out at the prospect of marrying this disgusting old fool.  The housekeeper then enters and hands Pratt his reading glasses . . . which she found in the study!

Schofield picks up the other bottle and raises it over Pratt’s head.  He perfectly sells that he is going to bash Pratt’s head in, but at the last moment, merely dumps the contents on him.  Again, the jaunty closing theme is the perfect punctuation.  Strangely, this amusing cop-out makes me more appreciate the ending of a different TOTU episode.  Surely, the cut-away in Neck is confirmation that a head is about to roll.  Cut-away indeed!

Another perfectly fine episode that I will never watch again or recommend to others.  This is what Ray Bradbury Theatre could have been with a bit more edge.

Of course, the final word in human trafficking comes from the Odd Couple, linked below.  Well, you know, except for slavery and stuff.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  If there was a famous German born in 1959, I couldn’t find ihm / ihr / sie.  [UPDATE:  Found one — that’s what took seven months.] 
  • This episode is labeled as “TOP RATED” in the always-suspect IMDb episode list.
  • [2]  OK. the loo.  The fact that, in 10 seconds of research, I could not find a clip of Ted Baxter saying Looouuuu makes me question this whole internet thing.
  • [3]  Mea Culpa:  Dilettante does not mean precisely what I thought.
  • [4]  That’s not a Bidenesque literalism, I just couldn’t think of anything I liked in seven months.
  • [5]  George Clooney was my instinctive reference.  That seemed ridiculous, so I changed it to David Cassidy (1970’s teen idol).  Then I saw that Clooney is now actually a little older than Pratt, so it makes perfect sense (but a far finer specimen).  So I changed it back.
  • Ron Moody (Pratt) starred in Mel Brooks early forgotten film, The Twelve Chairs.

Tales of the Unexpected — Fat Chance (04/05/80)

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The episode opens oddly with several people leaving work.  Mavis leaves Burge Chemist, Dr. Applegate leaves his practice,  an unnamed woman leaves the Slimming Clinic, and Frances leaves Boyles & Sanders Solicitors.

Dr. Applegate goes to Burge Chemist.  John Burge has been skimming pills off other prescriptions to sell to Applegate.  This extra cash helps Burge finance his adulterous affair.  To be fair, he complains that his wife Mary has ballooned up to “11 Stone, 12 Pounds” (163 pounds).  So I guess that woman leaving the Slimming Clinic was not an employee.

Uh-oh, this just in from the CDC:

So this 1980 behemoth is still smaller than the average US woman today?  Yikes!  But who believes anything the CDC says anymore?

Burge meets up with his wife’s attractive best friend Frances.  She refers to Mary as a pig and Burge rebukes her.  He says, “Women are awful — men have some kind of loyalty” . . . before they start smooching in an alley.   Then Burge admits he does think of his wife as “a fat, fat, fat pig.”  They laugh when he describes her being weighed by hanging her from a crane like a sow.

While Mary is watching TV and eating bonbons at home, Frances suggests that Burge get a divorce.  They agree that Frances will later see if Mary had ever thought about it.  Mary says that her husband would not divorce her because she would take him for every penny pence.

The next night when Burge comes home, Mary is shaving her legs, propped up on the kitchen table, with his electric razor.  So weight isn’t the only problem.

This really is the simplest of stories.  It is loaded with details and characters that are unnecessary, yet everything works.  I could take a few paragraphs to go through the mechanics, or write one spoilerific sentence and be done for the month.  Hmmm, I know which I would choose.

Burge gives his wife a box of chocolates that he has poisoned, and she regifts them to Frances to eat on her plane trip to America.

I might sound dismissive, but this really is a great episode and a classic ending.  Yes, Burge has killed Frances but she might not even be dead yet; and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it because she is over the Atlantic.

Not only that, but Mary gave Frances the chocolates because she was committed to slimming down to save her marriage.  So he accidentally killed Frances and won’t even have the newly svelte Mary because the poison will be easily traceable to him.

But he will know nothing for sure until the plane lands in 6 hours . . . 5 with a tailwind.

Other Stuff:

After all the recent stories of Roald Dahl’s work being rewritten by censorious fascist do-gooders, here Dahl is cancelled completely.  In this case, he was replaced by an apparently woke writer who is best known for his novel about a transvestite.

OK, OK, the writer is the great Robert Bloch, and this was 43 years ago.  I had assumed that this series was based 100% on Dahl’s work as, up until now, it had been.  Maybe this is a good thing.  God knows Ray Bradbury Theatre could have used a little fresh DNA in the gene pool.

Tales of the Unexpected – Poison (03/29/80)

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Roald Dahl’s intros don’t usually do much for me or the story.  However, this time it casts a spell over the whole episode.  He tells of the time as a young man that he looked out the window and saw a 6-foot black mamba snake behind the gardener — or as we call them today, the Mexican. er, landscaper.  He shouted to the man to turn around, but the hombre is bitten and DIES!  Hitchcock can deliver his droll intros about murder 1,000 times, but this short first-person anecdote stays with you throughout the episode.  Kudos!

And if that intro did not sufficiently make your skin crawl, the sitar music should do the trick.  I think that’s why George Harrison was perpetually haggard [1] — nausea at all that sitar music.

Harry Pope is a little haggard himself as he has been on the wagon for three weeks.  He is also feeling pressure from his boss.  Harry works in India training citizens there to speak English.  His boss in London orders him to hand over the training classes to Bengali teachers because of reports that some Indian immigrant’s kid in Podunk, KY came in 2nd in the Spelling Bee.

Harry sees this as an opportunity to get back to England so he can enjoy that delicious English cuisine.  And if you’re living in a place where the cuisine makes English food seem tasty by comparison, by God, I doff my chapeau to you sir.

He climbs into his bed which is enclosed in mosquito netting.  Sadly, it does nothing to keep out snakes.  As he is reading [3], we see a krait [2] slither into his bedroom.  He feels a warmth down below and sees the sheets begin to rise, and it’s not because his bedtime reading material is like mine.  He lifts the sheet and sees the snake sitting on his chest.  He is immobile and sweating profusely.  Harry, not the snake.

Hours later, for some reason, his British pal Timber brings a blonde dame back to Harry’s house.  In a low voice, Harry calls him into the bedroom.  He tells Timber and the girl that there is a krait on his stomach, under the sheet.  He implores his friend to call for help, and maybe another girl.  Timber calls Doctor Kunzru — hey there’s an actual Indian in India — that the woman knows.

The doctor has an antidote that might work, but they want a fallback position.  They decide to sprinkle some chloroform on the sheets to put the snake to sleep which sounds ridiculous, but I’m no Indian.  All the while, Harry is motionless and glistening.

The woman is afraid the doctor will recognize her even without her feet in stirrups and blab that she is cheating on her husband.  She sneaks out and takes the doctor’s car, which I guess was her only purpose in the episode.  BTW, what better way to not draw attention to yourself than to steal a dude’s car.

Timber and the doctor slowly pull back the sheets and they all see the snake is gone.  Timber somehow knows where the woman is going so he drives the doctor to get his car.

Harry goes to the kitchen, rather than Europe, which would have been my move.  He takes a bottle of Stoly out of the well-stocked liquor cabinet which all recovering alkies keep close by.  He reaches for a glass and the snake strikes, biting him and coiling around his arm.  He dies on the spot — the spot made by his own pool of urine, I imagine.

So we have a great synergistic intro and a great premise, but no real value is added beyond the suspense that is fundamentally baked into the premise.  There is no revenge, no come-uppance, no karma, no irony . . . he just gets bit in the kitchen instead of the bedroom.  Harry was not a bad guy, so what is the point?  The woman was cheating on her husband, maybe something could have been done with that.  Of course, it would be sexist not to point out that Timber was also guilty of adultery.  The doctor says to Timber in the car that he is not a “failed MD”.  What is that about?

Still, the premise was so great that I have to give it a thumbs-up!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  As observed by Norm McDonald.
  • [2]  Pronounced CRITE.  Who knew?
  • [3]  Late Call by Angus Wilson is displayed so prominently that it must be meaningful, but dang if I can figure out why.
  • I see that this is not the first adaptation.  Like Post Mortem few weeks ago, I somehow skipped the AHP version.  Cripes, it’s starting to look like I put no thought at all into this thing.  So that will be the next AHP entry.
  • Proximity Alert:  Anthony Steel appeared in Galloping Foxley just 2 episodes ago.  Give someone else a chance!
  • Kudos to Andrew Ray (Harry) who appeared to do some real snake-handling at the end.  Again, not like me with my bedtime reading material.

Tales of the Unexpected – The Hitch-Hiker (03/22/80)

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Writer Paul Duveen is driving through England. He passes a sign that the Cambridge By-Pass is opening in Autumn 1979.  The funny thing is, this aired in 1980.  That’s it, the only funny thing.

He cruises past the world’s oldest and best dressed hitchhiker.  Then he has a second thought and slows down.  The old gentleman trots up to the car and asks if Paul is going to London.  As they drive off together, Paul is seen to be one of those lunatics that actually likes meeting people, enjoys talking to them, and is genuinely interested in what they have to say.  Wait, I have a feeling I’m rooting for the wrong guy here.

Paul is actually a very affable guy.  He talks to the man about Epsom (the town, not the salts) and the Derby (the race, not the hat).  Then he somehow surmises the man might be a busker.  The man takes offense at that and demands to be let out.  Paul pulls over and the man gets out.  Paul sincerely apologizes and asks the man to reconsider.

They continue on.  Paul gets the car up to a smooth 70 MPH, which seems strange since it is a German car with the wheel on the wrong side being driven in England by an Australian.  Shouldn’t it be in Gobsmacks per Fahrvergnügen or whatever the hell they use over there?   The hitchhiker asks how fast the car will go.  Paul, proud of his new toy with only 2,503 miles on it, claims it will go 129 MPH.  He is offended when the HH suggests the dealer was lying. Whoever heard of such a thing!

Paul tells the HH to fasten his seatbelt, and he puts his on too.  I guess going a mere 70 without them had been OK. They are thrown back in their seats as Paul  accelerates.  He gets the speed up to 125 MPH, then sees a motorcycle cop in the mirror.  The HH urges him to just outrun the cop.

Paul pulls over.  The HH says that model of motorbike maxes out at 112 MPH, so they should have outrun him.  Well then, how did the cop catch up to them?

This is one of those episodes that would just be tedious to recount step-by-step.  The good news is that is because there is character development, ideas, red herrings, foreshadowing, and twists.  Great for the show, not so great to transcribe or read.  With the cop entering the stage for an extended scene, we now have all the characters on deck.  This might be the most uniformly excellent ensemble I have come across since Dan Hedaya’s one-man performance of The Vagina Monologues at The Winter Garden. [2]

Rod Taylor (The Birds) plays Paul Duveen as a cheerful, inquisitive sort befitting his job as a writer (the inquisitive part, not the cheerful part). [4]  He occasionally gets ticked at the hitchhiker, but shakes it off.  He just seems like a great guy.

Cyril Cusak plays the hitchhiker as a seemingly harmless old chap.  His charming Irish accent is empathy-bait for Americans.  He even survived an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater.  Best of all, he seems to be no relation to former actor John Cusack.

I’ve never heard of John Forgeham who plays the cop.  However, he absolutely nails it as the humorless, laconic authority figure who has your future in his hands and knows it.  Alfred Hitchcock would have loved him.

Watching all three of them work is a delight pleasure.  The fact that their performances are also in support of a good story makes this the best episode of TOTU so far.  Bravo!

SPOILER:

I started with the ending when writing this post, so this does give away a plot point . . .

Hey, wait a minute.  That twist of stealing the cop’s notepad is right out of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents Episode.  Just one story beat you say?  Well in both cases it came after an upstanding citizen was goaded into speeding by a sticky-fingered hitchhiker and was pulled over by a motorcycle cop.  Not feeling it yet?  The AHP episode was entitled Hitch Hike — pretty close.  OK, we’ve had a few Tales of the Unexpected episodes based on stories that were originally used on AHP:  The Landlady, Man from the South, and Lamb to the Slaughter (all by Roald Dahl).  The difference is, Roald Dahl was given no credit on the AHP version of this one. [1]

Finally, thanks to the producers for actually filming a scene where the actors get wet in the rain.  Usually it is an effect or a screen of drizzle between them and the camera.  The reality this adds is worth a million Fahrvergnügens. 

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  As nearly as I can tell after 30 seconds of research, Roald Dahl was the 3rd greatest source of stories for AHP.
  • [1]  Odd that I immediately assumed Dahl was ripped off by AHP.  It was days later that I saw Dahl’s story was published 17 years after the AHP episode.   
  • [2]  Though lacking the range of Russell Collins — cited recently by me as the greatest actor in history — Dan Hedaya never fails to amuse or interest me.
  • [2]  Blatant rip-off of JFK’s gag about his Nobel Prize winning guests being the greatest collection of talent since Thomas Jefferson dined alone in the White House.  He had tried it in the clubs as “the greatest collection of drunken a**holes since Ted Kennedy dined alone because he killed his date.”  Luckily Ted Sorenson bailed him out again, crafting the crude jibe into the witty bon mot we remember today. [3]
  • [3]  Details from this era are sketchy at best.
  • [4]  Actually, it makes more sense the other way.  Today’s newspeeps are preening, self-important idiots who are not at all inquisitive.

 

Tales of the Unexpected – Galloping Foxley (03/15/80)

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Roald Dahl’s Intro:  This time he tells us everything in tonight’s episode is true.

William Perkins recalls taking the 8:12 train into work five days a week for 36 years.  He is a meticulous chap in his bowler and 3-piece grey suit.  He actually likes the process of commuting.  He and the other upper class twits even have a specific order in which they wait on the platform.

Hey, you in the middle — get a hat!

Dahl continues, “One of his special pleasures is to have his own particular seat, in the same compartment, with the same good solid people sitting in their right places with the right umbrellas and hats and ties and newspapers.”

One morning he is startled to see another man standing in his spot on the platform.  I’m sure the man’s billowing powder blue trousers had nothing to do with his discomfort.  However the man’s stylish grey hair, stylish neatly trimmed beard, stylish suede overcoat, and stylish walking stick do set this dandy apart from the other gents.

The man sits in Perkins’ non-assigned, unreserved, publicly available seat — the effrontery!  He then begins smoking in this, the designated smoking car — the nerve!  Most egregiously, he breaks the silence the men have enjoyed for 36 years  — to ask permission for his totally appropriate smoking, “as a matter of form”.  This guy is an monster!  He is even a different breed of cat with his reading material which seems more tabloid than the stodgy broadsheets the other chaps are reading. [1]

He shows up for a third day wearing another powder blue leisure suit.  Perkins recognizes him as Galloping Foxley!  This is narrated with the same expectation of awe as the “MY NAME IS KHAN” line that drew blank stares in the Kelvin Timeline, and eye-rolls in ours.

Perkins remembers being dropped off at St. Wilfred’s School in 1907.  From the first day, Foxley was a prick.  He bumped into Perkins’ father and continued on without an apology.  Mr. Perkins’ busted him to the headmaster, sealing his son’s fate.  Foxley tells 10-year old Perkins, “You are my personal servant, valet, bed-maker, dogsbody, washer-upper, boot-cleaner — you’re my slave, Perkins.”

The next morning, Foxley tells Perkins, “You’d better get down to the bogs, the lavatories, the water closets, the latrines, le petit quan (?), the places of easement.”  Not only is he to clean them, he is to warm the seat for Foxley.  “If it is not warm enough, I’ll warm yours.”  Back in the train, Perkins fantasizes over exposing Foxley’s cruelty.

For some unseen infraction, Foxley announces he is going to give the 10-year old boy a caning.  We were told earlier that punishments were usually a number of whacks with the dressing gown on, or a lesser number with the dressing gown off.  To no one’s surprise, Foxley says today Perkins gets no choice — the dressing gown will be off.

Foxley gets a good running — galloping, hence the name — start at applying the punishment.  That night as Perkins is crying, the other boys admire the scars on on his butt.  Rrrrright . . . the scars.

It goes on and is perfectly fine, but tedious to recap.  Ironically (probably not really ironic), Perkin’s proper English reserve undermines the ending.  He gives a speech about his days being tortured by Foxley before accusing the stranger of being the titular Foxley.  Then the stranger introduces himself with a different name.  However, since Perkins did not really work up a good head of steam and make a scene, the denial did not result in the humiliation it should have.  Oh, we can see on his face that he is squirming inside.  It might well have been humiliating to this repressed bloke, but it is hard for the audience to relate to.

Also, even though we don’t see it, I got the sense that this treatment of a “new boy” was not that unusual at such a school.  And that’s why all the men in old Perkin’s cohort were button-down, conformist types.

So while I really liked all the performers, it needed to be tightened up a little to be truly effective.

Other Stuff:

  • WTF?  Young Perkins is 5 years younger than Foxley, but Old Perkins is 12 years older that the man on the train.  Both actors do a great job, but if we are supposed to believe the man could be Foxley, they should have cast age-appropriate actors.
  • Reminiscent of RBT’s By the Numbers.
  • John Mills plays both adult Perkins and Perkins’ father in the flashback.
  • [1]  He even flashes the Page 3 Girl to the other gents.  Those unfamiliar with that last gasp of journalistic integrity should checkout the Wiki article.  Trigger Warning:  The more woke might have their head explode that this was a real thing not that long ago on planet earth.  Unsurprisingly, you have to go elsewhere for pictures.