Tales of the Unexpected S02E05 & E06 Poison, Fat Chance

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Father Malone, and we are now engaged in the years-long struggle to tackle Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. With me, as always, the Cricht Tamer is the Projection Booth's Mike White. There's a snake in my boot. Tales of the Unexpected ran for a whopping nine series.

That's what they call them in England. Topping out at 112 episodes, spanning from March 24, 1979 until May 13, 1988. Tonight we are talking about two of those episodes, starting with Season 2, Episode 5, entitled Poison. This originally aired on March 29, 1980, written by Robin Chapman, from a story by Roald Dahl. This one directed by Graham Evans, starring Andrew Ray, Anthony Steele, Judy Giesen, and Saeed Jafri.

This is about a young English teacher in India who's on the wagon, inviting his time to be shipped back. All his willpower must be employed when a deadly crit decides to seek warmth beneath his bedclothes. Mike, what did you think of this one? Uh, yeah. I gave the whole story away just then, didn't I?

You pretty much did, yeah. It becomes a whole game of don't move that blanket, there's a snake in the bed. Hey, let's lift the blanket. No, don't do that. Let's move this.

No, don't do that. Don't raise your voice, please. No. No, it's If there was a bomb or something, it kind of reminded me of Roger being stuck in the toilet in Lethal Weapon 3 or whatever that was. Yeah, almost exactly.

Down to the sweat, you know? I'm so tense from sitting here waiting for you to help me. That was a strange one because I'm just like, this is it? That's all we're doing through this entire thing? I was hoping maybe it would get into race or you mentioned the whole thing about drinking and I was like, oh, yeah, this is going to be a metaphor for drink.

No, there's a snake in the bed. Don't move the covers. It was a weird one. Listen, there's not really a lot to discuss, so I'm just going to kind of jump to the end here. But I think it is this really slow, long, clumsy metaphor for alcoholism, right?

Because it's at the very end, they, first of all, do not believe him because they think he has the DTs. When he's quite sure there was a snake there the entire time. And then when he's finally like, fuck it, I'm just going to have one. That's when the snake attacks him and kills him. So is this Roald Dahl, temperance leader?

Yeah. And everything's shot through the gauzy mosquito netting that they have. It reminded me, too, of Monty Python and that guy that gets bit by a mosquito, is it? That thing where his leg is completely... Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right.

You're looking for a leg. Yeah, I love that this one is introduced by Dal, who lets us know the charming story of when he was in Dar es Salaam, and he saw a black mamba attack a member of his camp. And even though he got him to the hospital within 10 minutes, he was dead within the day. By the way, the delivery is just like that. Just as charming and like, oh, what are you going to do?

Black mambas, everybody. Here's another tale for you. The... Indian gentleman that is in this, I'm pretty sure I know him from the man who would be king. I want to say he's the guy who is kind of their aid to camp when they come to the village that they basically, you know, say like, oh, this guy's a god.

Michael Caine or no, sorry, Sean Connery is a god. He's the guy who used to be part of the British military and is explaining the rules of the whole solo match to them. Big little head, little ball, big head. He had a big damn head kind of thing. So I was like, this is the most interesting character, but he's just in there for just a few minutes and that's about it that's where i was like oh they aren't treating him very well they are you know like oh you black bastard kind of thing but maybe not as bad as that but it was still just this is weird but yeah i agree with you that this is very much the metaphor but man oh man does it take a while for us to land this plane.

I will say that i enjoyed the sound of the electric sitar that they have ranging all over the episode and when the snake finally bit him it became this no-wave noise fest of just clanging bass line and stuff. It was like industrial. I thought it was pretty good, actually. That snake should go on tour. Yeah, and they're just trying all these different things throughout the whole...

What is it? They're pouring ether or something into the cone? We're going to make a cone, and then we're going to pour ether into it. But wait, it will avoid the ether. Let's try this.

We have to know if we feed it The whole time, Mike, by the way, as soon as they said, as soon as the guy, Grimsby, I believe his name is, the one in the bed says, I've been sitting like this for hours. It is coiled on my belly. It's there for the warmth. I thought, do you guys have any ice? If you maybe put that on his belly, the snake will slither away.

Instead of these elaborate plans of, I'm going to grab the corners of the blanket, get that dame out of here. It just seems a little silly. There are easier ways to get rid of a snake. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like you said, there's not a whole lot to talk about with this one.

They're almost literally always in one room, you know? I will say they did build that crazy... cottage set for an exterior that they keep swinging around it felt a little like doctor who when they were doing that but when they showed it initially even though doll mentions india and he has a predilection for india for all intents and purposes i thought we were getting a voodoo story because it looked like a it looked like a louisiana bayou kind of a house but i guess it works in both both directions anyway. Yeah sure why not they just needed a haitian priest to. Be there Brock Peters. Yes.

All right. That's it, folks. We're sorry. We're not arbiters of the quality. We can vamp when we talk about snakes.

Hey, did you ever see a snake in real life? I just saw a snake today, and he looked pretty happy. Yeah, we're not that podcast. No, no. Season two, episode six.

This aired on April the 5th, 1980. It's called Fat Chance. For the first time, I think, in the entire series, we have an episode that's not based on a doll story. This one's based on Robert Block with a teleplay by Dennis Kanan, and this one was directed by John Gorey, starring John Castle, Sheila Gish, Jeffrey Baldin, who was in Asylum, which is another Robert Block adaptation of the Amicus film. He's an inmate, but he's been pretending to be a doctor the entire time, and when he's finally found out, he laughs in this really high, scary nasal way, like that, Oof.

And Miriam Margolis, who's apparently an Australian citizen now. Really? Yeah. She's got a whole series about exploring her new Australian-ness. She tells the best stories.

I don't know if you watch Graham Norton, but whenever she's on, am I lying about how great she is? No, she's a raconteur extraordinaire. Oh, and she gives no fucks about anything. Not at all. right next to you, right to your face. And she does that here too.

So this one's about a pharmacist's mistress who's demanding a faster timetable for him as abandoning his obese wife. Mike, what did you think of this one? I actually really liked this one a lot. The whole idea of the main male character being this pharmacist and helping out his buddy who he obviously knows and even just pretty much says right out, hey, You're taking these pills on your own, aren't you? And uses that as the leverage to get his...

I can't say she's that even obese. I think they were going for like a Shirley Stoller type, but Margolis is not that heavy, you know? And it's like, I thought she looked absolutely captivating myself. Yeah, she's short and weight appropriate for her frame. It's not exactly, it's not some... creature that, that they keep describing.

Everyone keeps describing her as this fat, fat, fat pig. Oh God, she won't ever stop eating. And I'm like, that's how I look my whole life. Like, what are you talking about? Like that's a normal citizen in Chicago.

Right. Yeah. And yeah, like she definitely has a lot of issues with food. I mean, she's constantly eating chocolates and bonbons and these kinds of things. So maybe a little bit of, you know, Control around that would be good, but I'm just worried about her health, really.

Especially if she might get some diabetes or something, but it's like, okay, she's not the Herodin that he makes her out to be. And he just wants to have this other woman. So it's like, okay, I got to figure out a way to get rid of this wife of mine. And you know what? How about I switch her doctor and then I will poison her.

And wouldn't you know, the doctor is too effective and says no. And she starts to say like, oh, no, no, I'm giving up all this and I have a new lease on life. This is fantastic. And I even gave away those chocolates that you gave me to your mistress that I don't know is your mistress. It's a nice little knife twist.

This is what I... I like so much about these shows is that that last minute where you're just like, okay, and what happened to the poisoned bonbon? What happened to that? And it's always, it's like Chekhov's bonbon or something. And it's like, we know something bad is going to happen.

What is it going to be? And I think we're missing that from a lot of these episodes where it's like, okay, give me that twist. Give me that little knife in the side. And I just really like an episode like this where it does give you that even better than some of the other ones that we've seen where it's like, oh, the woman comes home and the, the guy is dead and he's in the elevator and the one who was never on time, those kinds of people. But it's like this one, I like that.

It's like, now he's stuck with her. Now the, Girlfriend is probably dead. But another positive is now Miriam Margulies is headed in the right direction when it comes to her weight loss journey. Yeah, she's losing all kinds of weight. What do you figure that woman was?

About 140 pounds? Yeah, probably. But I guess, why didn't she leave? Was there like an airline strike? It seems like a common thing in this show that there are problems with the airlines.

I think maybe this is a shared universe, right? That's the same strike that kept, what's her name, from leaving? Yeah. It could be. This is maybe the same teleplay writer sort of weaving that together.

Dahl, in his introduction, describes the charming process of Maharajas of the past who craved tiger whiskers, which they would cut up into little pieces and feed to their wives, and then it would perforate their intestines and kill them. And then he laments, we don't have access to tiger whiskers, so we husbands have to devise other ways. How about divorce? Yeah, yeah. Very pro-murder.

I mean, I guess that's Dahl's way. And ultimately, he will fall on whoever's in the right, and it isn't gender-based. So this isn't just pure misogyny on his part. Because of that previous episode, the same other, the airport episode, we were totally on her side. She got away with everything.

Right. I think Miriam Margulies might be Jewish. Maybe he just had that against her. Oh, yeah, probably, if it's real, Dahl. Yeah. probably, but no, she's still great.

And I just like watching her in this and I'm just like, Oh, professor sprout. She's so cute. And yeah, she just really was very captivating for me. Also, I think it was, what's it right around this time that she was probably in the apple. So also another, yeah, 1980.

So she was also in the apple this year. So you haven't seen the apple folks better get out there and see it. Oh, or don't. You know what? Watch the trailer for The Apple.

That's my suggestion to you. And you'll go, wow, that looks amazing. And you'll go, yes, it's not going to get any better than that. It's so good. It's so good.

I like that what you're saying here, and I think we've said it in other episodes, is sometimes it just feels like a nice little slice of life Roald Dahl's giving us. And I just like hanging around with the characters. Not that I'm overly stoked to be hanging around with this pharmacist and his harridan of a fucking... mistress but the human drama is enough to carry this thing if it didn't twist at the end if she just said i'm gonna get well and i threw those away that would have been a satisfying thing the fact that the girl's gonna die is just is icing oh yeah. No i like i said you have to have somebody eat that poison candy so why not the mistress that works for me I like. This weird backdrop where evidently the two lovers are in a community theater production together.

Just an unusual choice, but it feels right and only deepens my interest in the story going on here. Right. It's a really nice touch of verisimilitude for that. And I was really glad, too, to see that they were filming this in a real location because you see the breath coming out of their mouths when they're making out backstage, or not backstage, they're outside the theater. I think the guy comes to the stage door and is like, hey, you're needed on stage.

And just seeing their breath and everything, I was like, okay, yeah, they're shooting this in a real location. Either that or they're turning down the heat on the set a lot, but I thought it looked great. If they shot it in winter, they should open the soundstage door, right? Right, exactly, exactly. The play apparently called Free For All by Horace Pemberton, which I looked up and it doesn't exist, damn it.

Now you can write that play yourself. I am going to. Like the Coen brothers before me, I will take that title and make it my own. There you go. Anything else on this one?

I told you everybody it was going to be brief. Yeah. No, that's about it. Nice little story. It was probably this one.

I can't say it was a favorite, but it definitely is going the way that I like these stories to go. They always feel like the bad ones don't ever feel terrible. And then these ones, by comparison, always seem to buoy it. But I think we are experienced enough with these anthologies that I don't think we, by comparison, inflate the appreciation of the ones that are pretty good. Because this is pretty good.

But if you've got to watch the two together, then clearly this is going to be better for you. Anyway, I'm just saying what's obvious. Mike White, where can people find you other than here? Like this show being on weirdingwaymedia.com. I'm also on weirdingwaymedia.com with a few other shows, The Shabby Detective, The Projection Booth.

So yeah, come on over to the website and check it out. I think that you will find a lot of things to entertain you. As for me, check us out twice a week. Every Monday it's a fest or an anthology or now a button or switch or a console. Our new series, Button Switches and Consoles, about old tech in movies that I do with Laura Grillo, which we have a sister series over on the Patreon channel, patreon.com slash father Malone.

That's where you're going to get Shows like Step Off, The White Rapper Show, and Vault 702, The Fallout Podcast. Check us out over there, everybody. Until next time. Oh, wait. Our next two episodes of Tales from the Unexpected are Taste and Lady Love My Dove.

Until then, try to enjoy the daylight.