Tales of the Unexpected S01E05 & 06 The Landlady, Neck

Welcome back to midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Fanda Malone and with me looking through the works of Roald Dall in television form, mister Mike White from the projection booth, How are you, Mike? That's just a big old pain in the neck. And we are, like I said, looking at Tales of the Unexpected, which ran for a whopping nine series, topping out in one hundred and twelve episodes, spanning from March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy nine until May the thirteenth, nineteen eighty eight. Tonight, we are looking at the next two episodes in the series.

Those are episodes four and five, The Landlady and the Neck. The Landlady aired on April the twenty first, nineteen nine, written by Robin Chapman from a story by Roald Donald. This one was directed by Herbert Wise, starring starring Chevn starring Chavin McKenna and the Leonard Preston. This one is well, it's a man, Rince B and B the end. Yeah, use verbo.

Yeah, some of these ladies and gentlemen are going to be really succinct episodes of Midnight Viewing. There's let's say, not a lot of plot going on, a lot of story, not a lot of. Plot, no, no, but two settings maybe three. There's in the train at the beginning with the priest, and then uh maybe they talk on the street, if memory serves, And then there's the BMA briefly. Yeah.

Yeah, And this reminds me of those times where I used to go to bmb's where you've got the very overly chatty person that's running it. I mean, that's why I do prefer verbos. It's just get the hell out of this house. I want to was that versus Oh, let me talk with you and fix you breakfast, and you need to live by my house rules and all these things. No, no thanks, I'm good with just a hotel.

At that point, I've left out your slippers. No, no, no, Do you just do this so you can talk with people? Are you that lonely? Do you want to murder me and stuff me and put me in the attic? The answer is yes.

Across the board for all the DNBs, even the airbnbs, this one had narration at the very beginning, and yeah, I was like, this is interesting. A third person, omniscient narrator that doesn't really come back. I thought, that was interesting. And here's something that I like across the board with this series and the previous series, which is that they allow characters to think on screen. It isn't about cutting away and getting to the next.

Thing. I know this episode in particular is I want to say glacially paste, which sounds terrible. I don't mean it in that way. I just mean it. It does take its time, slow burn.

That's that's what the kids love to hear. And so just watching the character, like looking at a sign and coming to a decision and coming in. I like when we get to watch a character think. That's all and I think this series does that a lot. What is interesting too, looking at the way that this is put together.

I mentioned the different settings, and we actually go to the airbnb lady before she's introduced, we see her. She's introduced to us as the audience before even the idea of a B and B is introduced to our main character, this young Chap. That is true. Yeah, which is very odd. It's an interesting choice and I kind of like this makes you think that he's just faded to be there.

And also I don't know, I watch this on the on my Plex server and the image that comes up for every single episode whiles I'm hitting play is her hanging that sign, the bed and breakfast sign. So I for the last few episodes, I'm just like, what is this from? When am I going to meet this lady who's hanging this sign? So I'm glad to have finally met her, and I think that the actress playing her is fantastic. She really what's this kind of It's a tough role to play, right because you're you're mentally unwell, but you're also very cheerful.

Yeah, you have to come off as dotty and not deranged, and that's really fine line to walk because she does have to give off a more sinister edge so that we can at least question her motives because otherwise it's just cuckoo old Elaine. And I like the way that the mystery is set up where it's the oh, be sure to sign the guest book, and then he starts to see the names that he recognizes, and for me as an audience member, I'm like, Okay, where's he know these names? And the way he keeps talking about familiarly, I'm like, were they his co workers? I'm not really sure? And he's just trying to put his finger on it the whole time, as she's introducing creepier and creepier things like the stuffed dog.

Jesus Christ. That was that was rough to watch. It's hard, says creeping out forever. Oh yeah, I'm like, what did she stuff that with? Because and that she admits, Oh yeah, I'm the one that did that.

Oh it's really very easy. It's really quite easy. Oh sorry, you fell out of a tail from the unexpected. You're straight into the dark side. This is can't end well for anyone.

This is Norman Bates territory. Even. I wonder when this was written prior to Psycho. Yeah, it's very similar in tone. It feels like Block.

Yeah. I know he's not part of that core group of Fleming and Doll and all that, but it feels like those guys were contemporaries writing at the same time and yeah, coming up with some really creepy shit. Yeah, they all had a they all had a young Launder story in them. They're somewhere. They all had a poor B and B experience like us, and we're warning us from decades ago.

Why didn't we listen? Of course, when she reveals the dead parrot. I couldn't help thinking about the Norwegian Blue and that it has to be nailed to that perch otherwise he muscle up to those bars and open him up with that beak and boom. It is an ex parent. And then the big reveal at the end is really really creepy.

I think they do a great job of that. Even if it's pretty simple makeup effects that they're using on these people, it works really well. I was reminded there was a Night Gallery episode we watched where a convict breaks into a funeral home and the funeral home director has been arranging the bodies as his family, and they ended up having actors in poor makeup just holding still, so they were all kind of wobbling, or they were just using still frames of them which made it look worse. This was great. This was freaky and fucking weird and believable.

As the room that these these home stuffed humans were hanging out in, goodnight. Boys, good night. Just at the light now. Yeah, they looked like they were very sallow and waxy. Yeah, already posed so that you're forever reading a book and she's going to change that book night after night.

Oh my god, This one really creeped me out for the whole taxid army thing and in ways that I haven't been in previous films. Definitely more than any episode of an anthology we've watched. Well, even just the idea of when she poisons the guy that he can still hear her and interact a little bit, but he's basically powers to do anything else. That whole thing. It kind of reminds me.

There was a Criminal Minds that I saw years ago, which I think might have been the episode that made me stop watching Criminal Minds, where this creep azoid was taking women and turning them into living dolls, and I was like, oh my god, because they were just stuck there forever behind these seeing eyes and they couldn't do any frickin thing about it at all, And that for me was like, no, that's a bridge too far, that's way too horrific to think. About some things to just get their hooks in man the Landlady. Oh yeah, really effective episode, all right. Moving on, The next episode is neck very very simply named. This weired on April the twenty eighth, nineteen seventy nine, again written by Robin Chapman from the story by Roald Dall.

This one was directed by Christopher Miles, starring Michael Aldridge, Joan Collins, John Gielgood, Peter Bowles, and Carmen Silvera. This is it about an adult is a woman who meets her match in the form of the family butler, a couple. Of years before Arthur. What do you think of this. One, Mike, I shall inform the newspapers.

Yeah, interesting, interesting, this whole cuckolding situation. But the butler is all knowing and really does not hide his contempt for Joan Collins and really is very brazen about knowing everything that's going on. And then you have some horrible modern art in the middle of it, which gets really played with very well. Kind of reminds me of I don't know about you, but around me when I was a kid are shopping malls. I always had art displays which were weird, and they were almost always abstract pieces like this, So the whole idea of crawling on them always seemed like something I would want to do.

I don't know, if I would stick my head through an opening, and yeah, I would think that she'd be able to get that head out of there. But yeah, nice, nice little twist at the end here. I think I had a friend who, whenever we would enter the wing of the modern art wing of any art museum, would approach every piece and go, oh. My god, it's brilliant. Wow.

Yeah, I was thinking that a. Lot as they were wandering the grounds with these giant, hideous, welded together bullshit pieces of art. Yeah. I liked this one a lot. As you said, what a weird episode as far as the sort of the wife having an affair that it's an open situation, but it's like the husband has just given free rein to the butler to add cock blocker to his list of chores around the house.

So just throwing open the door when she's trying to trying to make it with the latest house guess. Oh hello everyone, I had some noises here and I told your husband, and he's on the way. Can anything else I can do for you? That was great? Yeah.

And John giel Good, I mean I tend to see him in more serious roles. Yes, Arthur was a revelation, but I saw that first, so then seeing him in everything else that he's done that I'm aware of, it's always very serious. I just watched Chimes at Midnight and Laris as Henry the Fifth or Henry the Fourth, and it's just okay, yeah, big Shakespearean performances and can handle that so beautifully. Even in his little role in Caligula, very great little performance that he does as Tiberius as aide. But here he's just yeah, like you said, very much more in that Arthur mode where he's okay, he's not straight up hilarious, but I do enjoy him just coming in and be like, Nope, nope, I'm gonna let the master know everything that's going on, and yeah, I'm just gonna be very brazen about talking about what a slut you are.

This could be it. This could be a backdoor pilot for a whole other series, a spinoff of Tails of the Unexpected, This Family's travails. It just starts with beheading of of of the matriarch. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, it's what happens the next day. What gets What does John Gilgod get up to with the Lord of the manor Yeah, and Joe Collins, I mean, wasn't she in a movie called The Bitch Like she can play a bitchy woman so well, I mean that became like her stock in trade once she entered into the night of the slot of nighttime soap operas.

But there's always felt a bit manner. By the time we got her in the eighties, she was on here on television here, but here it's yeah, you can see it, man, Like I'm remind She was also obviously in the Tales from the Crypt first feature film, playing a similar role, but certainly now as apoplectic and mean. I tend to think of Billy from Creep Show Adrian Barbo's character and great like to me, that's the that's the prototypical shrewish wife, but this one takes the goddamned cake. Man. She's she's yelling at her husband for buying art with her money, and then like you find out later, it's all of his money.

He inherited, all of it. She's just the latest person he's married. Just like that level of grossness. And then, like you said, brazen is the word, she just like trapeses on into this kid's fucking room and starts on doing his past. There's not even a question that she has the right.

To do this. I just love when John Gilgood is unpacking the kid's suitcase and he's just Oh no, no, no problem, I can Oh, I've got this thought. Oh it's not trick it all, sir, I've got it. I've got oh here, let me take out your shirt. Here, let me do this.

And I'm just like, oh, what's in that suitcase? What is going to get there? And I just love how he's pretending to be so dumb about things. I'm like, this is really nice. I just it's it's a real good two hander between Gilgood and Collins.

And yes, the other actors are doing a good job, they're right there. But to see these two seasons professionals going at it, I'm like, yeah, this is definitely worth the price of admission in just. The right amount of seasoning of both of them. That's what I like that. That's what I liked about the rest of the cast.

And like you said, God Bless, it's not like they're not working as hard as anyone else. It's just that every once in a while, a fucking a brilliant character shows up and steals the scene and makes the episode really fucking cook, and then the other one steps in to do it. Jesus Christ, all my previous fears about this series, I know we're gonna get to the point where it's gonna break me. But for right now, who euphoric time with mister Roddal, even if he's gonna threaten us at the beginning of every episode that we can't handle what we're gonna see. Yeah, and I noticed he's starting to look I mean, we've only seen a handful of episodes.

This is only the sixth one. I think it was in this episode, I was just like, I can really see his age in this. So I'm wondering if he's going to look like the cripkeeper before we're done with this whole show. I certainly hope. I wanted him just to be a desiccated husk screaming about parentheses.

Oh one more thing, I'd love gilgood when he talks to the kid and he's, oh, madam has a problem where her her leg or her foot might travel while they're eating or something. Just left foot doesn't know what her right foot is. Dude, thank you. Oh, I'm glad you remembered that or wrote that down, because that was a great line. Yeah, yeah, I liked that.

That was an escalation too. He kept he kept hammering at home. Well, you're gonna find that she's a bit interesting. Okay, thank you. Yeah, she's really gonna be coming for you.

Okay, pal, I get it. I'm telling you she's coming for you. Be careful, sir, Well, I don't want to be careful. I want to want the soul experience. Give me the give Me, give Me the Blue Plate Special.

Certainly one of the honest endings to any of the episodes. Oh yeah, any anthology series we've seen where are lead protagonists, one of our lead protagonists really her head gets stuck in a piece of art and then they're going to chop it off, and that goes on for a long time. Her head is stuck in that art work. I mean, that's almost the entire second part of the of the episode. I think it's very quickly quick in the second part before she sticks her head in there, I think there's at least ten minutes of her head stuck in that.

There's a lot of glee in the torture of this person stuck in there. Evidently Roaldol must have known that human to be that detailed and string it along as long as he did. Oh yeah, And I definitely see a lot of happiness and Gilgod when he's just doing the thing with the lard on her head and everything, just smearing that around. It's just so undignified for poor Joan Collins. Well, I do love his very presentational carrying of the axe on the silver plaz they've taken down off of the walls.

He has he brought a saw just in case that they wanted to go the other way. Nah, I'm gotta save the art. I don't even want petroleum jelly on that wood surface. Yeah, oh yeah. And I have a feeling to your point if this did carry on into a series, that piece of artwork, yeah, priceless, don't touch it.

We might even open up the episodes with that artwork. And now I want to see that fucking series, all right. Until then, next time we're going to be taking a look at the next two episodes, Tales and the Unexpected, this episode seven and eight, Edward the Conqueror and a Dip in the Pool. Until then, tell people where to find you, Mike White. You can find me over at weirdowamedia dot com, where every week I put out well most weeks, last week I didn't, but usually I put out an episode of the Projection Booth.

So coming over and check that out, and yeah, see what else we're up to. Look all the good stuff that Father Malone's up to. That's true. I'm over there. You can also go to my Patreon page patreon dot com slash Father Malone, where you'll hear exclusive series like well Vault seven oh two where Nukakota, Quantum and I are looking at the television series Fallout and actually all of the Fallout properties and games and whatever.

And on the regular feed you'll hear this show, and you're gonna hear every Friday Father Malones Weekly Round Up where I review movies with my dog. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight, everybody,