Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected

Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected
Title card with text "Tales of the Unexpected". A card with the text "Quinn Martin's" immediately preceded it during the opening credits.
Genre	Horror/Science fiction
Written by	Richard Fielder Nina Laemmle Carol Saraceno James Schermer Arnold Somkin Ken Trevey Earl W. Wallace John Wilder Robert Malcolm Young
Directed by	Harry Falk Walter Grauman Curtis Harrington Richard Lang Allen Reisner
Starring	William Conrad (host and narrator)
Theme music composer	David Shire
Composer(s)	Richard Markowitz Duane Tatro
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	8
Production
Executive producer(s)	Quinn Martin
Producer(s)	John Wilder William Robert Yates
Running time	60 minutes
Production company(s)	Quinn Martin Productions
Distributor	CBS Television Distribution
Release
Original network	NBC
Audio format	Monaural
Original release	February 2 (1977-02-02) – August 24, 1977 (1977-08-24)

Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected is a 1977 United States horror and science fiction anthology television series hosted and narrated by William Conrad. It aired from February 2 to August 24, 1977.

Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected aired in the United Kingdom as Twist in the Tale.

William Conrad hosted and narrated Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected. An anthology series, the show told a different story and featured a different cast in each episode.

Unlike the majority of series by Quinn Martin Productions, Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected did not have an announcer speaking during the opening credits.

The stories told in Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected are of the horror and science fiction genres. Each episode consists of a single macabre story of the psychological or the occult that explores the vicissitudes of human nature. As its title suggests, each story has an unexpected "twist" or "sting" to maintain the suspense until the very end of the episode and demonstrate to the viewer that one's life is full of twists and turns that cannot be anticipated, and can be horrible.

Each episode begins with everyday images from various episodes of the show, suggesting that the unexpected can be found anywhere, including in the most familiar and common of places. After the opening credits and episode title, Conrad in a voice-over discusses a general topic and then relates it to the central character in the episode. The story involving the character then unfolds, with the character facing a horrific situation that ends with an unexpected twist. At the conclusion of the episode, Conrad returns with another voice-over in which he explains the episode's "sting" or twist, and then applies the story to the general subject first broached after the opening credits.

Eight episodes were produced, one of them two hours long and the rest of them one hour long.

In his 1981 non-fiction study of the horror genre, Danse Macabre, the horror fiction novelist Stephen King mentioned Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected, writing that it was "interesting" and citing an episode in which a murderer sees his victims return to life on his television set as particularly frightening. The program drew negative responses from critics. American television standards of the 1970s required limitations on the amount of violence that could be depicted, with too much emotional intensity defined as a form of excessive and unnecessary violence. The show thus had to limit its emotional intensity while filling an hour-long format, leading to what critics described as sluggishly paced stories that lacked many frightening or eerie moments.