John Collier (writer) - Selected Short Stories

Selected Short Stories

• Another American Tragedy — A man mutilates himself in order to murder an aged rich relative and impersonate him, to change the will in his own favor - only to discover he isn't the only one who wants the old man dead.
• Back for Christmas — A man plots a foolproof way to murder his wife, but the murder is exposed because of an unexpected gift she left for him to find. Originally published in The New Yorker (October 7, 1939). (Grams erroneously cites a different publication: 13 December 1939 issue of The Tattler.) This story has been dramatised many times: once for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, three times for the Suspense radio series (Peter Lorre portrayed the main character in the first broadcast in 1943; the 1948 and 1956 broadcasts both starred Herbert Marshall), as well as once for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected.
• Bottle Party — A jinn (genie) tricks a man into taking his place in the bottle.
• Cancel All I Said — A couple's young daughter takes a screen test. The couple's lives are torn apart by the studio head's spoken offer to make the child a star.
• The Chaser — A young man buying a genuine love potion cannot understand why the seller sells love potions for a dollar, but also offers a colorless, tasteless, undetectable poison at a much, much higher price.
• Evening Primrose — Probably his most famous; about people who live in a department store, hiding during the day and coming out at night. Betty Richardson wrote that the store is "the Valhalla, of course, of a consumer society ... populated by acquisitive people who pose as mannequins by daylight; by night, they emerge to grab what they want": "Happy to sacrifice all human emotions—love, pity, integrity—for the sake of consumer goods, these denizens have their own pecking order and police. The primary duty of the latter is to suppress any rebellion against this materialistic society." The story was read by Vincent Price and recorded on an LP record by Caedmon Audio in 1980.
• Interpretation of a Dream — A man experiences disturbing and serial dreams of falling from the thirty-ninth story of the skyscraper in which he works, passing one story every night. In his dreams, he looks through the window and makes detailed and veridical observations of the real-life inhabitants as he passes.
• Over Insurance — A loving couple puts nine-tenths of their money into life insurance and becomes so impoverished as a result that each spouse decides to poison the other, unaware that the other has made the same decision.
• Special Delivery — A man falls in love with a department-store mannequin. This was later adapted for an episode of the 1960s TV series Journey to the Unknown, retitled "Eve", which starred Dennis Waterman and Carol Lynley.
• The Steel Cat — Inventor uses his pet mouse to demonstrate his better mousetrap to an insensitive prospect who insists on seeing the mouse actually die.
• Three Bears Cottage — A man tries unsuccessfully to poison his wife with a mushroom as retaliation for serving him a smaller egg than the one she served herself.
• Thus I Refute Beelzy — An odiously rational father is confounded by the imagination of his small son.
• The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It — A man tried for murder and acquitted for lack of motive tells his story to sympathetic friends.
• Wet Saturday — Stuck indoors on a rainy Saturday, a family must deal with a problem. The problem turns out to be murder, and how to frame an innocent visitor for the crime. Dramatised in the Suspense radio series broadcast on June 24, 1942, and as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents broadcast on September 30, 1956. The episode was actually directed by Hitchcock himself. It was also later adapted for Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.
• Youth from Vienna — A couple, whose careers (tennis player and actress) depend on youth, are forced to deal with a gift of a single dose of rejuvenating medicine that cannot be divided or shared. This story was the basis for The Fountain of Youth, a 1956 TV pilot for a proposed anthology series, produced by Desilu and written, directed, and hosted by Orson Welles.