THE ONLY thing unexpected about them being, of course, the identity of the uber-celebrity playing the part of the doomed protagonist this week. And then it was usually JOAN COLLINS. ROALD DAHL personally introduced the early series of these self-penned sting-in-tale half hours, but that was after you’d had to sit through the dodgy silhouetted woman dancing in flames, the tarot cards, the spinning revolver, the roulette wheel, some skulls and anything vaguely sinister-looking. Highlights from a decade’s worth of expected deception:
- Royal Jelly where TIMOTHY WEST fed the stuff to his son until he started to turn into a bee.
- That one where a bloke’s widow keeps his brain and one eye alive in a tank so he can watch her shagging another bloke.
- That one where a practical joker dies suffocating in a room.
- The Sound Machine: A bloke invents an ultrasonic hearing device, and discovers the screams of plants whenever they’re pruned, leading the ubiquitous pained outburst: “The plants…they’re intelligent and defenceless…every time we uproot one, they scream in agony and we are oblivious to their misery…oh god…in farms across the world, whenever a combine harvester cuts the wheat – thousands of voices – screaming! Screaming for their lives! (buries hands in face) Oh my god!!”
- First one ever: A professional gambler bets with people that he could light his lighter ten times in a row, starting with the old man’s Jaguar as prize but moving to the loser’s fingers. Blah blah blah and then, come the end scene, the prof. gambler’s wife holds her hand out with the car keys in it and half her little finger is missing. Ripped off by Tarantino for his part of the rubbish and now thankfully forgotten Four Rooms film.
- Georgy Porgy: A vicar who wakes up one morning to find he’s irresistable to women. The coffee morning takes on an air of erotic menace as hitherto indifferent women rub up against him. He’s even seduced on a river bank by, of course, JOAN COLLINS.
- Lamb To The Slaughter: The one where this woman (SUSAN GEORGE) murders her husband by clubbing him with a frozen leg of lamb. When the cops turn up (under the aegis of ex-Z Carser BRIAN BLESSED) she makes them a nice roast dinner with the evidence
- Skin: The one about this tramp with a tattooed back who gets looked after by this bloke (DEREK “I, CLAVDIVS” JACOBI) who then tops him for the artwork.
- The Krait: Some bloke living in India, gets hold of a deadly Krait snake, but loses it. Final shot is him going for the sherry decanter, and getting slow painful death in the wrist courtesy of the Krait…
- The one where this surgeon places a key underneath the mattress of an X-Ray machine when this bloke he obviously doesn’t like goes for a scan. Outline of key pops up on scan result, bloke gets cut up to remove key, no key there, goes for scan again, surgeon puts key under mattress again, bloke gets cut up again…etc etc. Comes to a sticky end for surgeon who shits himself when police come around and swallows the key.
- JOAN COLLINS as rich-bitch wife, pissing all and sundry off at a garden party, only to get her head stuck in massive modern art sculpture construction, in front of all the guests. Browbeaten butler takes great delight in being told by his master to fetch an axe to cut his wife out of said expensive bit of art (without damaging the sculpture), and subsequently decapitates Joan with great relish.
- A pair of poncey wine connoisseurs and spouses meet up to drink an ancient bottle of wine that is priceless – the holy grail of wines by all accounts. But what’s this? Wine Connoisseur #1 knows that Wine Connoisseur #2 is a) having an affair with his wife and b) affected by a heart condition. Connoisseur #1 bigs up the bottle of wine and how good it is going to taste before promptly changing his mind, as it’s “probably gone a bit off” and proceeds to pour it on the carpet in front of horrified wine loving onlookers. Connoisseur 2 drops dead on the spot from a fatal coronary, after a prolonged bout of red faced blustering disbelief.
- JOAN COLLINS (yet again) is the pretty sister, PAULINE “LIVER BIRDS” COLLINS is the dumpy one. Joan is cheating on her husband, JOHN ALDERTON (of course), whom Pauline is also in love with. Joan gets caught. Joan and Pauline then cook up a scheme that has Joan dressing in a white dress, taking pills, Pauline finding her in time and her husband taking her back in sympathy. When Joan takes pills, however, Pauline posts the suicide letter and lets Joan die, marrying the bloke herself.
- Pretty girl and artist get miserable old fat French woman drunk and pretend that they painted her nude. Blackmail her. Get money and take off, but they were having her on all along. Much histrionics from miserable old fat French woman in big car driving around Paris, or some such continental overseas filmed extravaganza.
- Bloke ditches wife JENNIE LINDEN for second wife SUZANNE DANIELLE, but she’s a gold digger, shoots her, disposes of evidence, but leaves proof of guilt in easily found suitcase. First wife changes her mind on the remarriage.
- The one where a con artist cum antique dealer turns up at a farm and persuades the yokels there that the Queen Anne desk (or similar item) that they’ve got in their kitchen, covered with old sacks and chicken shit, is of no value in itself but the legs are quite nice and he’ll give them a (pathetically low) “good price” for the desk to take it off their hands. When he comes back with the van, the yokels, glad to be of help, have sawn the legs off the desk and present them to him.
- Young man looks for digs, finds an apparently perfect place, run by a sweet little old lady who has her pets stuffed once they’ve shuffled off their mortal coils. Turns out that her previous lodgers have never left, and are upstairs in their rooms, sitting up in bed, also in a state of taxidermic perfection.
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