Tales of Tomorrow

Tales Of Tomorrow.... I have watched this whole series on Tubi TV. These are like the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. They were 8 years before Twilight Zone. I don't think Rod Serling is the originator of this style. The only thing that made T-Zone different was the unique hosting. The stories in Tales of Tomorrow will stand up to any T-Zone episode. The episode Ice From Space.... I think theres a young, Paul Newman in it.

I have never heard anything about this series, therefore I cannot guarantee whether it was broadcast by the Brazilian TV in the 50's. I have just bought this DVD and enjoyed the three episodes of about 20 minutes running time each:

"Frankenstein", with Lon Chaney Jr., is the less original of the three. It is a theatrical representation of Frankenstein, a short version of the story. My vote is six.

"The Crystal Egg" ("O Ovo de Cristal"), a tale of H.G. Wells, is certainly the best episode. The ambitious owner of a shop, Mr. Cave (Edgar Stehli), has a client with a great interest in a cheap crystal egg, and he decides to consult Prof. Vaneck (Thomas Mitchell) about what might be the weird object. Prof. Vaneck finds the landscape of Mars in the egg, and becomes obsessed by his discovery. He tries to keep the crystal egg for him, and the story has a tragic end. The direction of Charles S. Dubin keeps the attention of the viewer until the last scene. My vote is seven.

"Appointment on Mars" ("Encontro em Marte") presents three explorers - Captain Robert "Robbie" (Leslie Nielsen), Bart (William Redfield) and Jack (Robert Keith Jr.) – that find uranium in Mars. They have to share their findings with the sponsor of the expedition, and the atmosphere and greed seem to affect the group. The direction of Don Medford is only reasonable, and the tragic surprising conclusion does not work well. My vote is five.

In the end, "Tales of Tomorrow" is a worthwhile entertainment as a whole, especially to satisfy the curiosity of how was the first sci-fi series on TV. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Contos da Escuridão" ("Tales From the Darkness")

I picked up a dollar DVD of TALES FROM TOMORROW especially for the Lon Chaney "Frankenstein" episode (yeah, everyone knows he was drunk and thought it was a rehearsal --- he was pretty good nonetheless). I must have a different DVD from the previous posters because everyone else mentions "The Crystal Egg" and "Appointment on Mars" but no one has said anything about "The Dune Roller" which, to my mind, is the best episode of the four. Of all three it suffers most from its low budget. When your title menace is a huge, terrifying "creature" at some point the audience expects to see it, even if it turns out to be only a crude puppet. In this case the menace remains off screen at all times but the story is still very effective, thanks to good writing (reminiscent of 50s British Sci-Fi like X THE UNKNOWN and THE CRAWLING EYE) and a very strong central performance by Bruce Cabot, who up until now I'd never thought of as a particularly impressive actor. "The Dune Roller" would make a good feature film, or would have when modestly budgeted science fiction thrillers were still a commercially acceptable genre.

Well before "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits", there was a similar anthology series on ABC, "Tales of Tomorrow". The show generally was written very well but unfortunately its budget was practically nothing. As a result, some of the shows were just awful (such as "Read To Me, Herr Doktor") because the 'monsters' were just hilariously bad and some were brilliant ("The Window") because these episodes did NOT rely on special effects or aliens. It's a shame, however, that the show has been mostly forgotten--as these later series sure owe it a debt of thanks for paving the way for horror/sci-fi/fantasy anthology shows.

Fortunately, if you want to see the show, you can! Yep, following the links on IMDb or by going straight to archive.org you can download the shows or watch them online for free, as they are in the public domain. Give them a try, you'll likely enjoy them despite their limitations.

I was lucky enough to see this series in first run! Fortunately, the episodes are still available on videotape. (I salute those who preserved the films.) This was in many ways more experimental than "Twilight Zone" and similar programs. And here's an example: I recall the episode where the program opened with a typical and excellent Tales Of Tomorrow science-fiction storyline. Just as the audience got into the live action, the entire play and its cast and even its crew were disrupted by an actual on-stage emergency! (This, of course, was a play-within-a-play, but the "reality" of it was stunning!) Seek out taped episodes, and learn what television once, long ago, could do, and how creative it could be, and what it wasn't afraid to try.