User Reviews

Tales of the Unexpected: The Landlady starts as 18 year old insurance salesman William Weaver (Leonard Preston) arrives in the English town of Bath, there he sees a notice in the window of a house advertising 'Bed & Breakfast' & since he's looking for a place to stay a few nights he decides to check in there. The landlady (Siobhan McKenna) seems a little eccentric & strange but in a warm innocent way like a dotty old aunt & since the room & house is so nice William is more than happy. However as he signs the guest-book William notices that there are only two other signatures from several years ago, to his cost William discovers that his landlady has a dark secret along a unhealthy obsession with young men & taxidermy...

This Tales of the Unexpected story was episode 5 from season 1 & originally aired here in the UK during April 1979, the first of nine Tales of the Unexpected episodes to be directed by Herbert Wise The Landlady is a classic tale when the show actually had a dark & sinister edge that was sadly lacking by the time it was canned. I personally put that down to Roald Dahl's brilliant writing skills & being able to turn a seeming innocent situation into something completely different & shocking, his short story The Landlady had already been adapted for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV anthology series back in 1961 before Robin Chapman dramatised it for us Brits here in the UK for this series. The Landlady is one of the few Tales of the Unexpected stories I have seen that I would describe as horror orientated, most are moral tales or crime dramas with a twist so it's a rare treat to see a horror based tale. The basic concept isn't particularly original but it's very effective here with a nice quick build up & an effectively satisfying & memorable twist at the end as the landlady's dark & morbid secret is revealed. At only 25 minutes long it zips along at a nice pace, the character's are good & overall I thought it was a creepy little tale from the show's golden period.

This one hasn't dated too badly at all & it has better than usual production values with nice sets. This is actually quite a creepy episode & therefore is one of the more memorable ones. During his introduction Dahl states that he finds this story funny & also says that if you think it's far fetched just stop & think about it for a minute because he claims it's perfectly feasible & could happen! I'm not sure about that but what I am sure about is there's another good cast here including a great batty performance by McKenna as the landlady.

The Landlady is a classic tales of the Unexpected story that has become one of my favourites & it's nice to see some proper horror for a change, well worth a watch for those interested in the bizarre.

Though as Paul Andrew states, the story is adapted from an old Hitchcock anthology series.

A dotty, seemingly innocent B&B Landlady played by Siobhan McKenna, takes in a young travelling salesman, William Weaver, played by Leonard Preston.

The 'innocent old lady' though has an interest in taxidermy applied throughout the house, Weaver notices the names on the signing-in register of only a couple of chaps that ring a bell in his head somewhere. That somewhere is in and between the time it takes the landlady to drug him sufficiently enough to become one of the taxidermy exhibits. Helped along by us seeing the two 'stuffed' boys who had been in the back of his mind, actually stuffed away in a bedroom just sitting up like bloated corpses, except preserved well in taxidermy style. (Of course the two men/names were where Weaver heard their names after their mysterious disappearance). You can see it coming, but you sort of don't really believe it to be the case, then in the usual 25 minutes, you get to exactly what you weren't sure was going to be the outcome. Gruesome, compelling, horrific! Strangely, Leonard Preston, the actor, seems to have disappeared from IMDb! Probably along with 'The Flypaper', the very best of the series.

In his introduction to the story, Roald Dahl states that 'it could happen to you'. Well, on the face of it, the circumstance faced by young Billy Weaver (Leonard Preston) when the door of the bed and breakfast opened to welcome him didn't appear to be all that ominous. Although my antenna would have gone up right after the landlady stated that she was expecting him, same as it would have if called by three different names in the span of a short conversation. If only Billy had a better memory, he might have been able to connect the names of the prior guests listed in the register with some grim headlines he read about beforehand. Siobhan McKenna was perfect as the landlady, charming to a fault, yet hiding a subtly deranged menace behind those smiling eyes of hers. I can relate to comments of viewers who saw this episode as a child, my own youth was upended when I saw Vincent Price's "House on Haunted Hill" when I was a kid. Some things just stay with you, and for the landlady, they stayed with you permanently.

I've just had the opportunity to watch this episode again, having first watched it on its debut broadcast on what I now know was April 1979. I was 11 at the time and this one was the one I always recall when anyone ever mentions Tales of the Unexpected. It is, to me anyway, one of the weirdest and frightening things i've ever watched. The scene in the 'other guest room' has lived with me for the last 38 years and, even though I obviously knew what was coming this time, I was still chilled and freaked out a little. For lovers of horror, it'll seem trifling and without the required level of ghoulishness. For those who like their thrills somewhat more subtle, this is vintage TV at its best. There's a touch of the Arthur Machen about it which I adore. If you're going to pick one Tale to watch, I'd recommend this one.

I was on Facebook tonight and chanced upon an article that Rolad Dahl produced a Twilight zone show in 1961-ish, i think. so i googled and found this show. i love twilight zone and this show is on the same level from what i heard but this episode was meh. Gullible kid on a train, a priest who i thought would have something to do with the episode unless i missed something (he did recommend a B and B) and a land lady who seemed too nice. She opened the door too quick, said second floor was hers, seemed to interested. Of course she would be bad. Episode reminded me of that serial killer from Britain, that was gay and killed guys he met so they would never leave them and kept there bodies that never decayed somehow til he burned them in the back yard. he would go onto moving and then live in a second floor flat and have to flush parts down the toilet til a plumbing problem and that was the end of him. so if you watched this show and weren't completely suspiciously affirmed of the ladies badness when the kid mentioned he knew the names of the guest book, then you shouldn't watch this show, or twilight zone show.

Siobhan McKenna is a creepy landlady under the dotty and genial veneer. Menace is hinted there from her first appearance. This is a woman who seeks fulfilment by preying on good looking young man, killing them, stuffing them and turning them into her pets.

Billy Weaver is meant to be a naive 18 year old victim, but the actor playing him is perhaps too old for the part which makes him an unconvincing teenager. It would have worked better for Leonard Preston to have simply portrayed him as a besuited rather formal stuffed shirt of a young businessman checking into the bed and breakfast not knowing that his future is about to be stuffed.

Despite the stress on the youth and beauty of Grégory Temple and Christopher Mulholland, the actors playing them as marvels of taxidermy are also too old for their stated ages. It would have been more effective and disturbing to have left their fates, and that of Billy, inferred rather than shown so explicitly at the end.

Perhaps the greatest weakness is that Billy's backstory and character are not sufficiently developed for us to really care what happens to him. Ronald Dahl warns us in his introduction that he finds this tale funny and, while not played for comedy, there is something comic and amusing about the landlady and the plot. We ultimately find Billy's gruesome end and that of the other boys to be amusing rather than frightening. Overall this is an entertaining tale.

'I think this story is funny', remarks Roald Dahl in the intro. Maybe - if you have a pitch black sense of humour. By far the most macabre, creepy episode of 'Tales ...' - close to an EC comics horror story, in fact, though it lacks the ironic punchline that wouldve been compulsory for EC, and one would expect from Dahl to be honest. It's a minor masterpiece of TV grisliness, reliant on shock, since there is little of a story and not much in the way of the aforementioned irony. It must have sent many to bed troubled upon original broadcast, and I'm glad I was too young to have seen it at the time - definite nightmare fodder for youngsters, especially if they had been lulled into a false sense of security by previous weeks tales of crooked vicars, lovable pickpockets, umbrella thieves etc., Even the grand guignol of losing a finger for a bet, or an implied bludgeoning with a leg of lamb are light releif compared to the 'Psycho'-like oblivion unveiled here.

Roald Dahl makes an appearance in front of a fireplace to introduce his episode. I wonder if the intro was filmed at his residence, or in a studio. Still it looked authentic. This has the typical hallmarks of a Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected, and you can sense much foreboding in the bed and breakfast. Get out of the house now!!!! No carpets in the bathroom!

Based on what happened, I doubt this bed and breakfast will get a positive write up on a web review site if you know what I mean. It makes me think twice about bed and breakfasts in the UK, but still, they are a common part of the UK accommodation scene.