Tales of the Unexpected S02E01 & 02 - Royal Jelly, Skin

Welcome back to midnight viewing. I'm your host, Von Malone, and we are now engaged in the year's long struggle to tackle Roald Dall's Tales of the Unexpected and with me as always drunk on Royal Jelly is the projection booths Mike White. It's two hundred dollars an ounce. Three p fifty baby. Tales of the Unexpected ran for a whopping nine series, topping out at one hundred and twelve episodes and spanning from March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy nine until May thirteenth, nineteen eighty eight.

This is our first episode of season two. We closed out last season with a three parter Last Time. This is season two episode one, entitled Royal Jelly. It aired originally on March the first, nineteen eighty This one was written by Robin Chapman, story by Roald dolland directed by Herbert Wise. Starring Timothy West and Susan George.

This is her second appearance on the show. Of course, Susan George from Straw Dogs and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and Mandingo and Yeah. This is the story of a beekeeper and his wife, Mabel and Albert. They've finally conceived a little girl, but she's not eating well enough, and Albert has a plan to change that. Mike, would you think of royal jelly?

I'm getting a little bit of whiplash from this show. This is the kind of stuff that we would have talked about in years past on other series. It's interesting how we are going into the supernatural. Sometimes there was what the werewolf and those kind of things? Or am I even mixing that up?

I think I'm mixing that up, aren't I? We had a did we have a doppelganger? No, that's right, that was that was hammer House froze, right. Yeah, And we are now an episode of the second season, and yet it's a supernatural episode, though you wouldn't necessarily know it from watching other episodes of the show. But here we are, and I gotta say I'm here for it.

I was very happy to see Susan George again, and yeah, I always love a good twist. But it takes a little bit to get there. I have to say, it takes quite a long time to get there. Now. What I've noticed I maybe keep harping on it, But what sets all of these stories apart ultimately is how well that how well Doll crafts his characters.

His characters are always you think, particularly with an anthology, which usually traffics in archetypes or stereotypes just to get us to the point of the story. This one starts off and it seems to be this dismissive husband and we've seen this trope a million times he wants nothing to do with the kid or whatever. But it's actually not the case at all. This is a nuanced man who was just excited to see himself on television at the beginning of this episode. Before that, I just want to mention Doll he rates are introduced to the story so here this one is no exception where he lets us know that royal jelly is three hundred and fifty an ounce and that Dick Van Dyke once sent him a bunch of vials of it that he gulped down greedily and that inspired this story.

Yeah, yeah, okay, do you put on toasts? I don't really know. He said they were in glass vials and he drank them them one after another. Okay, turn them into a king. Did oh?

So? Yeah? Okay, this one entirely shot on video. I noticed no back and forth, but I'm going to keep noting it because they do stick to it now. I've noticed no format switches.

There are the I think the first two episodes of the season or video. The next two after that are film, But it doesn't matter. The storytelling is good, the acting is strong. There is a twist to this one, but it does, as you said, take a million years to get there. But I was super curious where it was going the entire time.

I think I'd probably seen this story or read the story in my youth, but had no idea what the outcome was going to be. But it's this is This one actually is a letdown to me. Honestly. They take the twist too far at the end. Yeah, yeah, I was really hoping for really cheap special effects at the end of this with the baby with big black eyes and maybe some antenna or something.

That's what I was hoping for, But unfortunately we didn't get to that place. And yeah, it just took so long to get there. I mean, I wasn't sure where we were going with the beginning of this. Once we come in and we see Susan George with the baby, and she starts to complain about how sickly the baby is, I'm like, okay, all right, But then as soon as the baby starts doing better, I'm like, all right, he's up to something. What's going on here?

And the pieces fell into place prety quickly. So I just kept waiting for that jump scare and that it reminded me of. And I can't even put my finger on exactly which episode, but it feels more like a Tails from the Dark Side kind of thing, where it's like, oh, yeah, we did this thing to the baby, and now the baby turned into this and I'm not thinking of the baby the one with the little white creature that was going around the halls and attacking anybody that would rent the Airbnb kind of thing. But I just have felt this, and yeah, to your point, maybe I read it when I was a kid, but I was just like, this feels very familiar. So it wasn't that big of a surprise when it happened, and I was just like, get there, get there, and go past it.

I want to see what happens after the baby is now healthy and consuming all of this food. Okay, they clearly did not have a special effect special makeup effects budget at all, because they do the ultimate cop out in that they go to reveal the baby to us, and then they do this awful Star White level video effect where it just goes back and back. We didn't even get like a Roger Korman like wasp woman like close up of mandibles opening or something. And that could have been acceptable, except right at the ninth hour they make it about the husband that he has converted half their stock to producing nothing but royal jelly, which is why they didn't produce as much honey last year. And he's been taking it the entire time because they were having trouble conceiving, and he figured that that would make him more fertile.

And so we've got this this hint of like a yellow jacket's fuzz sticking out from under his sleeve and he's he's zizzing with all of his vocals. Everything is a z which, by the way, you had and he started doing that halfway through the episode, I would have been totally on board with it, but he just breaks it out at the last moment. Yeah, it's a little too little, or maybe even too much too late, I would have to say, because yeah, give us a little bit of some subtlety there to the point where I was like, is he now going to build an entire army of b people? Okay, if that's the case, let's see it. But no, we ended very once we finally got there, boom, we're done with it.

And it completely dismantles all of the previous drama because we see him get the idea for this when he's watching the interview with himself on television where they're talking about royal jelly and he goes, oh, wait a minute, I could feed royal jelly to the but according to this, he's been slurping it down all the time. He should have just gone and gotten his own personal jar. As soon as she says she's not she's not feeding enough. Here you go, try some of this. This is what I've been using.

So he even tells her I got the idea when I saw myself. What should have been his thought? This should have been like, hey, the baby's growing up so healthy and so fat. Oh yeah, let me tell you about what I'm doing with the baby. There would have been no underfed nonsense.

Anyway, I don't know. This one's a rare stinker from Roald dah. Yeah, And for me, it's like, hey, if you got all that hair growing whis and not growing on your head like this should have been the first thing was the cure for male pattern baldness. And I speak from experience. And by the way, like they imply that they're fucking all the time, they almost abandoned the baby at one point to go off and do it.

So she hasn't seen him naked the entire time. Were we supposed to believe this is some sort of English quirk where he's leaving his shirt on. Come on now, yet he should have had trouble sitting because he's got a stinger growing or something. Really play it up. Yeah, either or just have the baby, have him do none of that and just the baby's now a bee.

Yeah yes, right, yeah, yeah. Because the whole thing of him taking the royal jelly, it's like, oh oh oh all right, but yeah, because you, like you said, it really goes against the logic of the overall thing, where it's like, well, yeah, he already knew that it has powers. Why is he now just figuring out to give it to the baby. But yeah, it's like, what, you're bailing your own logic thing. Not to say that these stories have to have logic I'm not trying to be a jerk about this stuff, but it's like, well, yeah, like the layer the story the right way, and I'm curious if the short story is better or if it just has the same foibles as well.

I bet when you're reading it you're shocked enough to go, oh my god. And then right, but once we've been on this visual journey with these two and this is what they're delivering to us as a shocker, no no, no, no, sorry, right. Yeah, yeah, kind of a disappointment and yeah, like kind of a waste of Susan George too. Yeah, this is, like I said, her second appearance. I think she's going to appear a couple more times though.

So good Season two, episode two that is named Skin This one again written by Robin Chapman from a short story by Roald Donalds, directed by again Herbert Wise. I do want to point out Herbert Wise. He was a pretty prolific tele vision director for the BBC and for British television in general, and directed one of the greatest adaptations of classical literature, I Claudius. I'm sure everyone is seeing I Claudius. Back in the day.

It was on PBS over and over again, and it just stars a fucking murderer's row of the greatest British theatrical talent at the time, including our star here Derek Jacoby has Claudius himself. This also stars Lucy Guttidge. Her second appearance is this No, she was in Hammer House of har She wasn't on Tales of the Unexpected, confusing them as well, okay, making her first appearance here on Tales of the Unexpected. Lucy Guttridge, also with Boris Aisarov and Donald Pickering. This is the story about a beggar in the present day who back in the teens in Paris was friends with Sutine, a famous artist, and he and his wife and Sutine have a kind of a tristy relationship going on, and there's some painting and the tattoo occurs.

Mike, what do you think of this bizarre little slice of roll dolls, tattoo feet dream? Well, their thriple, right, they're like the early thriple. They must be, although this must be their earliest stages because she keeps calling him a pimp, even though she's totally into the scenario. She's totally excoriating him for agreeing to it. The makeup is so bad on Derek chech Bee.

I thought he had ray best. They gave him like big old jowls, like a fucking hound dog. Yeah. It took me a minute to even realize that when the flashback started that it was a flashback. And I'm like, oh, oh, okay, all right, I guess this has something to do with this painting that he's looking at, But is this the same guy?

Because he looks so different and so bad. It's like normally the old person makeup goes the other way where you're just like, oh boy, this looks too similar and just you add some gray to the hair kind of thing. And this one I was just like, wow, he looks so different. I wasn't even sure this was the same person. But yeah again, uh, it's like, all right, as soon as we come up with the idea of the tattooing and what a reveal of her tattoo, wtf the hole like, oh, just take your top off and here's this butterfly and he goes over and just starts suckling on her breast.

I'm like, oh, yeah, this is British television, okay, all right, Yeah, I was a little. As a puritanical American. I was a little shocked, as was I. Now we've seen Lucy Guttriidge on BBC Television, naked in in over on Hammer House of Horror, so that shouldn't be a shock. Nevertheless, right there with you, because the entire time it's this weird flirty thing where I, oh, show him mere tattoo, No I can't, hah, and they're chasing her around and whatever, which on any American thing would have ended with a conversation, and instead she just stands up and pulls her top off.

I was like, whoa, And then yeah, right, he just got that alone would have been nowhere near any television sets in nineteen eighty in America. But then the guy goes up and just start sucking away. I was like, what is happening here? Yeah? But again and again totally based on this puritanical bullshit that you and I both grew up with, you know what I mean, Like, as a story, it's fine.

If this has been an HBO like Tails from the Crypt episode, we wouldn't be saying this at all. And you know what she said in Top Secret is true. Her bosoms defy gravity. They do that tattoo is terrible though, that fucking butterfly. He's like, oh, it is artwork.

I'm like, no, that's really poor. It's so amazing to me to realize that things like tattooing was illegal in a lot of places in the United States. For a lot of years, it was illegal to tattoo people in New York. Can you imagine that? No, it's absolutely boggers to me.

Man. And you know what's funny, Well, watching this episode, I had this thought as well. The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out in nineteen seventy five. There's a moment where Frank and further says to Brad do you have any tattoos? Brad?

And there's a big call call back with the audience and then what about you, Janet? And the callback is showing the anchor Janet. It was so inconceivable in nineteen seventy five that a woman would have a tattoo. Are you out of your minds? Well, it was shocking that Frank had a tattoo, that his boss tattoo.

Oh my god, so crazy to get rid of the thought. Yeah, all throughout our youth, it was for bikers and sailors, and criminals. That's those were in rock stars. Those are people who get tattoos. Yeah, and now it's like I'll just walk down the street and it's like, oh, there's a person, there's a there's It's like more common now to sea tattoos than the nazea tattoos.

Yeah. The rebellious thing is to leave your skin clear. That's me. I'm a no tat. They have to have a cool name for that, right, like a skin free or something.

Something they I don't know, maybe we should make that group. I can't join. I'm completely coated. Well, oh well I can be buried the Jewish cemetery. It's all right, Well, there you go.

Yes, all's well, now, okay, it's this is a very kind of simple story, but it's one of these here's the setup and now the payoff really is just the the act itself. This is a lot like Man from the South, where it's as much putting that block together, nailing in the thing and winding the twine to get his hand down. It's the same kind of setup from Doll except here. And this is crazy to me. Derek Jacoby is a tattoo artist.

His friend is a painter, he's had his friend paint a painting of his wife on his back, that he will now have the friends a tattoo on him. The friend has never tattooed before, and he describes it to him like it's the simplest thing a child can do it, and then puts that ancient looking tattoo gun in his hand that you can see, is there a tesla coil on there? It looks like Frankenstein put that together, and it's just humming and buzzing in his hand. And I'm like, there's no way, there's there's no way. However, we'll go with it for the sake of the rest of the payoff of the story that he makes this portrait.

And I love that she leaned in, by the way, and her first thought was, or her first comment was, doesn't look anything like me? Right, right? Oh well maybe it probably should have. But all right, yeah, he doesn't get drunk as far as I know, or maybe he is drunk. He just seems to have been a perpetual state.

I suppose because he's a libertine. That's right, be happy and drink with me. Drink We'll be happy. Now go away. I want your wife, No, I want my wife to we're drinking.

No boy, yeah, insufferable people. Okay, So that we flashed back to the present, where now Sutine the artist now long dead, as is the wife killed in a bomb in nineteen forty. Again real doll, just dropping in the character bits to flesh this thing out, so to speak. And Soutine's works are now worth ndreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions of pounds or francs, because we're in Paris. And he wanders into a fucking gallery and goes, look, I've got one and takes off his jacket and shows the piece and it's signed by Soutine.

And now we get to the meat of it. We get to where rolldald even decided to make this story happen at all? Is this thought? This this bargaining between two guys for his painting? Oh boy, yeah?

And I could not stop thinking of water World and the map that's on the little girl's back and everything, and just like, oh yeah, well that you could easily take off this, that's his whole back. I don't know how we're going to get all the skin off of here. That's one proposal. I will give you one hundred thousand pounds. It starts off as seventy five, should be noted, it gets up to half a million, doesn't get to a million.

I don't know, but it's I give you this money, and then we're going to have an operation where the entirety of your skin on your back will be removed so it can be framed as a painting. Again, he's guys sixty five years old, he points out. I don't know that he's gonna survive that. Yeah, yeah, it seems like it might be a little bit taxing on his system. Well, and then there's, of course, is the mysterious voiceover that comes in at the end is just like, well, here's the painting, and we never saw this guy again.

Yeah. Well the counter proposal guy is like, well why not. I own a hotel in can and you can live there. And just all I ask is that you walk around shirtless to show off the painting. Come with me.

Sounds like a good gig if you could get it. It did sound great, man, and I was pulling for this guy. That's a good deal. Take that deal, but maybe put some sunscreen on if you're gonna Oh yeah, they didn't mention that part of it. But yeah, and he's gonna be he's going to be paid as well, and he gets to live in the lap of luxury and be admired and that's great, except it's all fucking lies.

What a fucking sucker punch man. This makes up for the ending of the previous one. Yeah, no, I agree. This one felt much more in line with what we've done. I mean, your comparisons to Man from the South are completely spot on.

And now, but the narration you mentioned, we suddenly cut to Buenos Aires where his back is hanging as in a window. Which I wouldn't do. I wouldn't put the skin in the window. Yeah, it seems like a terrible idea, but we get it. We get the point, filmmakers, your shorthand he's obviously been murdered and he's inflade.

Oh I don't think he deserved that. But no, he wasn't that bad of a guy. I mean, that's the thing we're talking with the Royal jelly of going into the supernatural. With a lot of these shows that we've seen, it's does this person deserve it? Is this fate now fingering this person being like, Okay, you've been a very bad person in life, and so we're going to give you this horrible fate.

And yeah, I don't think that Derek Jacobe really was that. I mean, he was a jerk, but they all were. And I think everybody in this episode is a jerk. There's not really a nice person at all. Even the lady who is just walking with her dog in her arms rather than not a leash and bumps into him and she's like, ah, oh, this homeless person has touched me.

Like everyone's a jerk, But having your skin cut off, I think that's a little bit too much of a punishment for him. Yeah, you're right. There are no likable characters in here. It's all by degrees, and by that token, Derek Jacoby is the most likable character in the episode. He at least just wanted to drink and have fun and whatever.

Everyone else was a dickhead to him even and then he survives everything to be mutilated in that way. I can only imagine it happened while he was still alive, because that's how Roal Doll is, right. Oh yeah, no, it feels very fitting that for Doll to be like, oh, yeah, of course he was alive. Yeah, of course he felt every single bit of pain. Why wouldn't you next time?

Right like that, but the most insidious music, and just the ends so quickly it just goes to that happy go lucky music. When the series first started up and I heard that music, I was like, this is the worst bit ever. And now every time it's a counterpoint at the end, I'm like, oh, your sons of bitches, you've done it. It also reminds me of there's that show Death and Paradise where they've got this really jaunty like ska theme to it, and it's almost always you've watched these murder shows where it's like we find the body at the beginning kind of thing, and it's usually pretty gruesome, and then as soon as they're like, oh, yeah, he's dead, and then it's like dad and you're like, whoa what. I give me?

Roger Daltrey screaming instead, and I'll be okay. Hey, murder, All right, now, we're gonna wrap things up here. Next episode join us. Next time we're gonna be taking look at the next two episodes of Tales of the Unexpected. Those are Galloping Foxley and The Hitchhiker.

Until then, where can people find you when they're looking for you, mister Mike White. Well, everything that I do is over at Weirdowaymedia dot com, including the Projection Booth podcasts which have been doing for a little over fifteen years, and that's also available at Projection Booth podcast dot com. Come on by and listen to me jaw on about some movies. How about you father them alone? As for me, Midnight Viewing here is on twice a week.

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