TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Paul Evans One of those Series that is very difficult to review as a whole, largely due to the vast degree in quality between the episodes, on the whole though I'd say I love Tales of the Unexpected, it's a unique series, one millions remember very fondly, for good reason.I always preferred the introductions when Roald Dahl was sat in his chair, he added to the sense of Theatre in his own inimitable style.Fair to say the earlier Series were a better standard then the later ones, at the end they became a little sad and repetitive. The 'twist' was always the best bit, and in the first few series, the twists were big.Highlights include Lamb to the Slaughter, Fat Chance, The way up to Heaven and Royal Jelly, but it's fair to say that the out and out best episode of the entire Series, is the opener to the third run, The Flypaper, truly one of the nastiest, most horrifying pieces of television ever made, even to this day it's intensely disturbing.Is that possibly the most iconic set of opening credits and music ever put together, instantly recognisable, impossible to forget, I wonder the mix of emotions that tune creates for people.No wonder Tales ran for nine years, a great series. 8/10

HoldenSpark I'd never heard of this series then one day a couple years back I noticed an episode on youtube and watched it. I enjoyed it and watched another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And.. well, you get my drift. It became like a bag of chips, you can't eat just one, your hand just keeps drifting into the bag almost without thinking when you finish one then pull out another and start on it. Eventually over about a week I'd watched all 112 (I think it was 112 total) episodes. I liked it enough to compile my own list of what I think the top 12 Tales of the Unexpected (TOTU) episodes are. They are:The very best episode of this series is called:"The Flypaper"The remaining top 12 TOTU episodes are (in order):(2) "Number Eight"(3) "Wink Three Times"(4) "The Open Window"(5) "The Way Up To Heaven"(6) "The Luncheon"(7) "Bosom Friends"(8) "Scrimshaw"(9) "Nothing' Short of Highway Robbery"(10) "Who's Got The Lady"(11) "Back For Christmas"(12) "The Landlady"I have to give a shout-out to the episode titled "The Luncheon" (which I've ranked the 6th best episode of the series). When I first watched it I didn't catch all of it. I had to re watch it a couple times to realize how clever this particular episode really is. And, really I should give a shout-out to all these great top 12 episodes. "Scrimshaw" is so so well done. "Bosom Friends" still makes me shudder with a different kind of squirmy horror, you'll see what I mean, "Nothing' Short of Highway Robbery" with its delightfully surprising ending, the fun of seeing it coming in "Back for Christmas", the creepyiness of "The Landlady", the smoothness and coolness of "Who's Got The Lady", the delightfully confusingness till the end of "The Open Window", how crazy the man is in "Number Eight", the psychological twistedness of "The Way Up To Heaven", and finally the delighfully something completely different in "Wink Three Times" that gives this episode cake its icing.And now here is something regarding the remaining 100 episodes in the series, there was one thing I noticed about this series, and that is that clearly a full one half of the episodes, 50 percent or better of the episodes have one common theme unifying them, and that is that half of the episodes of this series feature marital strife in one form or another. This series seems to have mined that particular mine field repeatedly as it's go-to plot structure when choosing which stories to script and film for the series. Thats not a bad thing, but one does eventually get tired of watching Ma vs. Pa and Daddy fussing with Mommy and Honey Bunch rubbing Honey Do the wrong way over and over and over. In these days of marriage equality, if one had this series to study and nothing else to study in order to learn about human marriage, one might not think marriage was all that great. Watch my top 12 TOTU episodes. I suggest you watch these top 12 episodes NOT in ranked order from the top of the list down to the bottom of the list or vice versa, instead watch them in the order they were originally broadcast and you will find its more enjoyable to watch the series mature and unfold in that much better way. So, watch them in this order:The Landlady (1979) s1e5 - **The Landlady** Ranked #12 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesThe Way Up to Heaven (1979) s1e9 - **The Way Up To Heaven** Ranked #5 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesBack for Christmas (1980) s2e14 - **Back For Christmas** Ranked #11 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesThe Flypaper (1980) s3e1 - **The Flypaper ** Ranked #1, Best Episode of the TOTU SeriesBosom Friends (1981) s4e14 - ** Bosom Friends** Ranked #7 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesWho's Got the Lady? (1982) s5e17 - **Who's Got The Lady** Ranked #10 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesThe Luncheon (1983) s6e10 - ** The Luncheon** Ranked #6 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesNumber Eight (1984) s7e5 - **Number Eight** Ranked #2 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesThe Open Window (1984) s7e15 - **The Open Window** Ranked #4 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesNothing' Short of Highway Robbery (1985) s8e3 - Ranked #9 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesScrimshaw (1985) s8e4 - **Scrimshaw** Ranked #8 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesWink Three Times (1988) s9e6 - **Wink Three Times** Ranked #3 in the Top Twelve TOTU EpisodesYou can find that list of mine here:Tales of the Unexpected - The Top Twelve Episodes.http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070141474/Enjoy!

screenman Remembered by my then youthful generation more for its beginning as a cause of erections whilst the naked, nubile dancer cavorted provocatively amongst leaping flames to a music-box anthem. The erotic nature of such imagery belayed the series content, as it cut to curmudgeonly Roald Dahl, outlining what was to follow in the way that Hitchcock had about a decade before.Production values, as usual, inclined towards the cheap end, but Dahl's inventiveness still usually worked its spell. Worth watching again today, as much for their amazing casts. How the makers managed to tempt so many big names into such a small production, which wasn't exactly given a primetime viewing slot on account of the often alarming ideas, is quite baffling. Fun though.

ShadeGrenade At a lavish showbiz party in the late '70's, Roald Dahl approached film producer and television executive Sir John Woolf and made him an offer he could not refuse: "How would you like to make a series out of all my stories?". Sir John jumped at the chance. As well as a bestselling writer of children's books, Dahl was also known as the literary Hitchcock, the master of the suspenseful short story.The result was 'Roald Dahl's Tales Of The Unexpected', made by Anglia Television, which ran for the best part of a decade. Some of the stories had been filmed before as part of the U.S. series 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'. Nevertheless, the show proved hugely popular, attracting the likes of Sir John Gielgud, Joan Collins, Sir Bernard Miles, Sir John Mills, Derek Jacobi, Timothy West, Susan George, Ron Moody, Denholm Elliott, Joss Ackland, Brian Blessed, and American actors of the calibre of Telly Savalas, Joseph Cotton, Gloria Grahame, Janet Leigh, Julie Harris and Jack Weston.The opening titles were an unsettling blend of James Bondian imagery ( a gun, playing cards, a dancing nude woman ) and Gothic horror, backed up by Ron Grainer's carousel-style music. Dahl himself introduced the stories in Hitchcockian fashion. Ronald Harwood and Robin Chapman penned many of the scripts. Predictably, some stories worked better on television than others. 'Man From The South' got the series off to a fine start, casting Jose Ferrer as a madman who tricks a young American tourist into a bizarre wager which, should he lose, means he forfeits the little finger of his right hand. 'Lamb To The Slaughter' was about the only truly perfect murder ever conceived, whereas 'Neck' had a rich husband revenging himself on his adulterous wife. Easily the worst episode, however, was 'Royal Jelly', the ending of which was not so much unexpected as unspeakable.Critics renamed the show 'Tales Of The Bleedin' Obvious', yet many episodes did contain genuine surprise endings, such as 'Genesis & Catastrophe' and 'Skin'.When the production team ran out of Dahl stories to adapt, they turned to the works of other writers. Eventually, Dahl and his name disappeared from the show. Some of the later American-based episodes were a bit weak, often coming across as belonging to a different show entirely.As D.V.D. releases and I.T.V.-3 reruns will attest, this show at its peak is still rattling good fun.By the way, the 'dancing nude woman' in the titles was Karen Standley.