Directions Unit: TV Drama: Tales of the Unexpected/ Alfred Hitchcock Presents

A Television drama that really inspired my piece was Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected. It's this satirical humour that closely relates to Mackendrick's The LadyKillers. It includes the lives of ordinary people from different backgrounds. Each of the stories presented in the series has a twist at the end which its audience struggle to predict. Its this twist at the end that relates so closely to The LadyKillers. All the robbers tragically die from blustery and greed leaving Mrs Wilberforce behind with the money. When she goes to do the finest thing at the end and explain ti the police she is laughed at because of her age and the stories she has told them before. This ending was completely unpredictable. Even watching it several times over I think Professor Marcus will get away with the money before he's hit on the he'd by a train signal.

Something else I admire greatly about this series is the fact that it was produced on such a low budget. Despite this setback, it doesn't affect the storytelling in any way, and the low budget isn't too noticeable. My own film needs to be created on a low budget, so if I can make my own film seem as high end as possible without such a large budget I will be satisfied with it.
A way in which they did this was to include guest star actors, who had mastered their craft. T`his means my first steps to directing this film is to get the right casting.

Tales of the Unexpected was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock Presents a television series which aired earlier. In fact, In the first few series, Dahl included several stories which had previously been televised as Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes. Both share this dark humour which is also visible in The LadyKillers. Although more subtle in The LadyKillers due to its age, and censorship of the time, there are still these undertones, where they make fun of something dark. Murder, theft, hijacking and fraud are dark crimes explored in The LadyKillers. 
Alfred Hitchcock Presents is able to adapt in tone and subject matter, but its most common theme is how dark and sinister seemingly unsuspecting respectable people can be, as with Tales of the Unexpected. As Hitchcock explained himself: “When crime is occasionally dealt with (on this show), it will be crime as practiced by ordinary people, like the fellow next door. I think that, by spring, a large number of you will be thinking of moving.”

Having the lives of ordinary people affected on screen really makes us question more the people around us. Everyone has their own story and theres more to the people we live within society, than what we would originally suspect. Hitchcock and Dahl wanted people to be able to relate and question it themselves. A lot of inspiration comes from the things around us. So next time you observe someone on a bus, just think that there may be more to them than a stern anti-social face. 

The stories all start off seemingly ordinary with and innocent which is what they hope to give off. Music is innocent, conversations are innocent and actions are innocent. Its only until the end when you realise that someone these innocent actions and conversations are actually foreshadowing something much darker. In The LadyKillers film, the music starts off innocent, which gives us an impression of Mrs Wilberforce. Music becomes very telling with the more suspenseful music on Professor Marcus' arrival. One of the stories is very similar to The LadyKillers. The episode is called 'The Landlady'. In this, Billy Weaver, a 17-year-old , travels to his hotel for business. Along the way, he catches sight of a bed and breakfast and is strangely charmed by the sign outside the door and the cozy setting within, so he decides to stay the night. He is greeted by a talkative landlady, who insists upon conversing with the young man and serving him tea (Similar to Mrs. Wiblerforce in TLK). However, in this dark story, the elderly lady is the threat. Dahl refers to the tea tasting of "bitter almonds", implying it contains cyanide. Billy is slightly perplexed by the names of the guests registered in the guest book; he has seen two of the names in a newspaper report, but the landlady insists that they are still staying with her in a room upstairs. She also mentions her fondness for stuffing her deceased house-pets (similar to the stuffing of animals in Hitchcock's Psyco. This could have taken inspiration from Psyco in the taxidermy of Norman Bates, who does the same with his dead mother). The story ends with Weaver having drunk the tea, implying he will die because of the poison and be stuffed to be added to the landlady's collection of other stuffed humans.


Given the similar satirical humour, plot twist style, I knew I could also take some filming inspiration from Tales of the Unexpected. When watching an episode, I found the use of a tracking shot interesting, because the director (Liam Moody) could've simply cut between character dialogue. Instead we had the shot track from character to character allowing us to see the moving scenery on the train. I believe this was done deliberately; the audience is being shown this blanc space without a character to fill it to remind us of this journey through Bath, and to make the audience feel more involved in the conversation as we are tilting our own head to follow the conversation. Tracking shots seem to be used quite frequently throughout the show to follow the character(s) around. They pan around a room and zoom seamlessly zoom in occasionally.

Its this and it's editing that make the piece feel so seamless. Cuts are unnoticeable, and the progression of a journey is clearly shown through editing. In the example on the right it shows the gentleman turning left, and the camera pans across through the wall into another part of his journey. This cut is clever and good stylistic choice from Liam Moody.