29 - Tales of the Unexpected - The Memory Man

10/07/22 • 73 min

General Witchfinders: The British Horror Podcast

Tales of the Unexpected was a British television series that aired between 1979 and 1988.

Each episode told a story, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, with an unexpected twist ending.

Every episode of series one, and a number of episodes in subsequent series were based on short stories by Roald Dahl, collected in the books Tales of the Unexpected, Kiss Kiss, and Someone Like You.

Made by Anglia Television for ITV with interior scenes recorded at their Norwich studios, whilst location filming mainly occurred across East Anglia. The iconic theme music for the series was written by composer Ron ( Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Steptoe and Son) Grainer.

Later episodes were set in different locations outside the United Kingdom, with many being made in the United States.

On Saturday night April 16, 1983, Just after TJ Hooker, on ITV, the episode we watched tonight was aired.

"The Memory Man"Directed by Peter Duffell based on a story by prolific writer by Henry Slesar (By whom the term "coffee break" was coined) and Dramatised by Denis Cannan

The episode featured

Colin Blakely (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, A Man for All Seasons)

Judy Geeson (To Sir, with Love, 10 Rillington Place, a couple of Star Trek Voyager episodes and still working today) John Biggerstaff (not known for much)

John Judd (Scum , A Bridge Too Far and The Prince and the Pauper (1996). Incedendly He has been married to Helen Shapiro since 1988)

And, the reason we are doing this episode, the late great, Bernard Cribbins

Cribbins became known in the UK for his successful novelty records "The Hole in the Ground" and "Right Said Fred" and for his appearances in comedy films including Two-Way Stretch and the Carry On series. His other screen roles include the astronaut Vincent Mountjoy in The Mouse on the Moon , Albert Perks in The Railway Children, the barman Felix Forsythe in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (featured previously on General Witchfinders) and the pretentious hotel guest Mr Hutchinson in the Fawlty Towers episode "The Hotel Inspectors".

On television, he was a regular and prolific reader for the BBC series Jackanory, clocking up 114 appearances between 1966 and 1991, he narrated the children's programme The Wombles and he played the title role in the CBeebies series Old Jack's Boat.

In the 1966 film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., Cribbins portrayed Tom Campbell, a companion to Dr. Who.

41 years later, he began appearing in the revival series of Doctor Who as Wilfred Mott, the grandfather of regular companion Donna Noble and a temporary companion to the Tenth Doctor.

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Tales of the Unexpected was a British television series that aired between 1979 and 1988.

Each episode told a story, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, with an unexpected twist ending.

Later episodes were set in different locations outside the United Kingdom, with many being made in the United States.

On Saturday night April 16, 1983, Just after TJ Hooker, on ITV, the episode we watched tonight was aired.

"The Memory Man"Directed by Peter Duffell based on a story by prolific writer by Henry Slesar (By whom the term "coffee break" was coined) and Dramatised by Denis Cannan

The episode featured

Colin Blakely (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, A Man for All Seasons)

Judy Geeson (To Sir, with Love, 10 Rillington Place, a couple of Star Trek Voyager episodes and still working today) John Biggerstaff (not known for much)

John Judd (Scum , A Bridge Too Far and The Prince and the Pauper (1996). Incedendly He has been married to Helen Shapiro since 1988)

And, the reason we are doing this episode, the late great, Bernard Cribbins

In the 1966 film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., Cribbins portrayed Tom Campbell, a companion to Dr. Who.

41 years later, he began appearing in the revival series of Doctor Who as Wilfred Mott, the grandfather of regular companion Donna Noble and a temporary companion to the Tenth Doctor.

$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$

Just in case anyone has too much money and wants to give a bit to us to help with our hosting n stuff. It would be amazing if you fancied sending us some pennies - thank you.

https://supporter.acast.com/general-witchfinders

$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£

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Previous Episode

FIH004 - Possum (2018 - United Kingdom)

Possum is a 2018 British psychological horror film written and directed by Matthew (Garth Marenghi) Holness in his feature film debut, starring Sean Harris and Alun (Krull) Armstrong. It centres on a disgraced children's puppeteer who returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront the abuse and trauma he suffered there.

Possum is an adaption of Holness' short story of the same name, published in the horror anthology The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease, and partially inspired by the theories on the uncanny by Sigmund Freud. Holness soon forgot about the idea of adapting the story until he had begun working on developing a possible horror film. As a fan of the horror genre, Holness stated he much preferred horror films that resonate with the audience and force them to reflect on the experience afterward. Possum's visual style was inspired by public information films Holness saw in his youth. Other inspirations include Dead of Night (covered by us in the mothership show), George Romero's Martin, and German Expressionist films. Filming began in Norfolk, with additional filming taking place in Great Yarmouth and Suffolk. The film's score was composed by sound effects and experimental electronic music studio The legendary Radiophonic Workshop, and featured unreleased material by the studio's original member Delia Derbyshire. This marked their first soundtrack purposely constructed for a feature film.

In addition to garnering multiple awards and nominations, it was generally praised by critics for Harris' performance, the film's atmosphere, score, and unsettling imagery, though the story prompted several negative reviews.

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Next Episode

30 - Night of the Demon (AKA Curse of the Demon)

NOT The 1980 James C. Wasson film in which an anthropologist and his students attempt to track down a Bigfoot responsible for a rash of violent murders...

OR the 1988 Kevin Tenney film, Night of the Demons’ where Ten teenagers party at an abandoned funeral parlor on Halloween, awakening demonic spirits...

Rather, we all, hopefully, watched the 1957 British horror film, produced by Hal E. Chester and Frank Bevis directed by Jacques (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) Tourneur (or ‘Jack Turner’ as the French Director was referred to in the UK). starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall (Zeus from Jason and the Argonauts) MacGinnis.

Adapted from the M (‘Montague’) R. James story "Casting the Runes" first published in 1911 as the fourth story in More Ghost Stories, which was James' second collection of ghost stories.

Screenwriter Charles Bennett owned the rights to the story and wrote a screenplay loosely based on it, using the title ‘The Haunted’. Bennett later regretted selling the script to Chester, as he was later approached by RKO, to direct the film himself.

Chester decided the Bennett screenplay was “too tame” and "too British" so hired Cy Endfield who had been blacklisted by the House of Un-American Activities Committee as a Communist and forced to move to the UK. Despite his contribution, which was said to be "significant", he was ultimately uncredited. Cy Enfield incidentally was the writer and director of Zulu.

Director Tourneur and Producer Chester had serious disagreements during filming. One argument was about the wind scene; Tourneur tried to convince Chester to replace two electric fans with two aeroplane engines. When Chester hesitated, star Dana Andrews threatened to leave the picture if Chester did not let "the director direct the picture"

Chester also decided to show the demon at the beginning and end of the film, despite Tourneurs protests, he added the scenes in post production:

Cue James’ French accent...

"The scenes where you see the demon were shot without me...the audience should never have been completely certain of having seen the demon".

Original screenwriter, Bennett, was also so angry at the script changes, he said "If [Chester] walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead".

Ray Harryhausen was asked to create the demon for the production, but he was already committed to The 7th Voyages of Sinbad.

To accelerate the pace and make the film more commercial, the 96-minute original feature was trimmed down to 82 minutes prior to its release in the United States. This shortened version was retitled Curse of the Demon, playing in June 1958 as the second half of a double feature with either ‘The True Story of Lynn Stuart’ or ‘The Revenge of Frankenstein’

Kate Bush has said this is one of her favorite films, and it has influenced her on at least two occasions: the song Hounds of Love begins with a quote from a line spoken in the film by Maurice Denham, and somewhat more obliquely, the film ‘The Line The Cross And The Curve’ borrows the idea that the possession of a small slip of paper with mystic symbols can confer great power, as well as borrowing several images and set pieces...

Night of the Demon was also mentioned in the opening song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show ("Science Fiction Double Feature"): "Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, but passing them used lots of skills".

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