Yep, the cattle-car image was indeed from TZ the movie. The first segment of the film featured a bigot[played by Vic Morrow] who finds himself shifted through time into the roles of various persecuted people- A Jewish man in WWII era Germany, an African-American being pursued by the KKK, etc. In the final scene, Morrow is loaded onto a train headed for a concentration camp.
This segment is most famous for the disaster that occured on stage. At one point, Morrow [in the form of a Vietnamese peasant during the Vietnam War] was supposed to have been picked up by a helicopter. Something went wrong, and the 'copter crashed, killing Morrow, the helicopter pilot, and two child actors. I think the segment originally ended differently than the cattle-car bit, but had to be re-done after Morrow’s death.
Many of Roald Dahl’s short stories have great twist endings. There’s one in particular that i just loved - an Uncle Oswald story where he takes advantage of a strangers hospitality but has it backfire on him nastily.
And i loved that OL episode with the alien/human twist, that totally took me by surprise.
Fran
ooo Not many people remember Dahl’s earlier work, Francesca. People tend to remember his kid stuff (if they remember at all).
I’m going to have to start rereading those.
Roald Dahl had a short-lived syndicated series featuring his stories, and introduced by himself a la Rod Serling.It was called something like “Roald Dahl’s Tales of …”.
I knew of Dahl’s odd stories for years before I even knew that he wrote kid’s books.Did you know that he wrote the screenplay for one of the early James Bond movies, Live and Let Die?It was first one to depart noticeably from the storyline of the Fleming novel it was ostensibly based on, starting a regrettable trend.
I’m a BIG fan of Roald Dahl. As a child i read The BFG over and over again and then as a teenager i discovered the short stories - I have all the books - Kiss Kiss, Switch Bitch, etc. I can proudly say i’ve read every story he’s ever written. I’ve heard about the TV show, but i’ve never seen any of them. I’d really like to, if you know how to get hold of them, CalMeacham.
It’s a shame he was apparently a complete arse in real life.
Fran
The Crying Game offered the biggest twist ending of the nineties (until possibly The Sixth Sense) with the gender thing.
A nightmare-to-this-day Night Gallery, The Earwig, gives me pause with every sinus headache.
(paraphrase/misquote from memory) “Yes, the earwig came out the other ear. I squished it. But not before I noticed it was a female that probably laid eggs.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
The new Twilight Zone (since cancelled) had some of the best TV twists I have ever seen.
“A Small Talent for War” - at last, world peace - oops!
Can’t remember the name - the answer to all questions and to all of life will drive you insane - do you want to know? And can you stop yourself?
Darn - back to work.
Regards,
Shodan
While not a “traditional” twist ending, The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton has always been a favorite. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t the first of its type but is definately the most famous. To me, the whole twist is leaving the solution to the audience. Obviously, this type of writing is meant more for understanding how people think but still it came as a suprise the first time as I read it. The shock value the story had on me is why I list it.
Hey, Folkie!
I KNOW ya!
In real life, I mean!
VERY cool to see you posting here!
(My own personal favorite twist ending is in Richard Hull’s wacky, black comic 1934 mystery novel, THE MURDER OF MY AUNT. I see on Amazon that someone’s bringing it back into print this summer, which is excellent news…this one should NEVER go out of print.)
Hoffa was another of those movies where you knew what the ending would be, but not how it would come about.
Spoiler…
The story is mostly told in flashback, with the 1970s scenes taking place in a truck stop. Nicholson/Hoffa is in the parking lot; DeVito’s character, Hoffa’s right hand, is in the diner, with Frank Whaley (you know, from Pulp Fiction: “Because of the metric system?”), who is supposedly Joe Random Teamster, waiting for a replacement part for his truck. The present-day scenes are far enough apart so that every time I saw him again, I still wasn’t sure what this character was doing there. At one point, he gets kind of pushy and asks DeVito, “Who you waiting for?”
“Mind your own business!” I yelled at the screen.
“You gonna talk union stuff?”
“Shut up!” I said, still thinking he was going to be the poor slob caught in the crossfire.
So when the story is brought up to date, DeVito says to Whaley, “Whyn’tya bring this coffee out to Mr. Hoffa and shake his hand.” Whaley takes the tray of coffee cups out to the car and sets it on the roof. Something seems a little off about that gesture…a feeling that’s confirmed when he pulls the gun from his waistband.
[hijack]I should have put this in one of those movie moments threads, but didn’t. Anyway, when Nicholson and DeVito are indicted, there’s a looooong take of the two of them in the prison van, going through a bleak fall landscape. Why? I wondered…then I heard horns honking, and voices calling, “Yeah! Jimmy! A’right! Woohoo!” A crane shot reveals miles of 18-wheelers, bumper to bumper all the way up to the prison, with their drivers waving and cheering. That’s brotherhood, man.[/hijack]
Shodan, I agree with “A Small Talent For War”–nice shaggy dog on that one.
I must respectfully disagree with the second–I can’t recall the title, though I believe it was based on, of all things, a Sidney Shelton short story. I absolutely despise scenarios such as that (assuming we’re both recalling the same piece) wherein a big mystery is set up and never paid off. I’m gonna go ahead and spoil it for everyone. The “great secret answer to life’s mysteries” will drive you insane. We have 23 minutes of people running about, trying to find out what it is. Hero is cornered and we think we’ll finally find out for ourselves. Nope, it’s whispered to him, he cackles with insanity, FADE TO FRIGGING BLACK. The End. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
Help me out, Cal. You hate 'em, too, doncha?
Disagreeing without being disagreeable.
Sir Rhosis
There is a UK TV series that is currently being repeated, called Tales of the Unexpected. And its awful.
The whole episode is based around you knowing there will be a twist at the end, and it builds up to that twist. Before making the twist something that has never been mentioned.
Take an episode I saw last night.
Two men along with an ex-bank robber plan to rob a bank, by digging under the walls from the antique shop next door.
Several themes are teased through the episode; will they get caught; can they get under the bank walls; one guy starts getting heart pains; can they crack the safe; will anyone back out? etc.
Come the end of the episode, they manage to overcome all of this, get into the bank, and open the safe. The camera pans round to show the robber’s faces… and then shows that
(spoiler warning?!) the safe is fuckin’ empty. End of show.
Wow…no one mentioned one of the best twist endings in one of the best movies of all time:
The Shawshank Redemption
Can I get an amen? 
-Outrider
If you’re asking if I hate such “non-twist” twists, then I agree wholeheartedly. I especially hate the class in which the twit" is that there is no twist. The athor thinks he’s so damned smart (Hah! You thought there was gonna be a twist! But There Is No Twist! It’s a Meta-Twist!), but the truth is tha they take this sorry excuse because they can’t think of a good ending.My apologies to those who liked it, but I thought the Michael Douglas film The Game falls into his category.
I also hate “twist” ending in which the “twist” is trivial. Some critics thought that the movie Black Widow had a twist ending. These people need to get out more.
You want a twist? Not cheap pyrotechnics, but the sudden revelaion by unexpeced action that your assumptions throughout the movie/book have been incorrect? Not a tacked-on afterthought, but an integral and inxtricable part of the ploting? Watch The Last of Sheila– the mysteris are set up in a plausible manner, the mysteries-within-mysteries aren’t forced, the resolution logical. Read The Poisoned Chocolates Mystery– it’s not only a “tour-de-force with no less than six separate solutions” (as andrew Wyke noted in **Sleuth **, it’s also a pointed discourse on the natue and trustworthiness of Evidence. Watch Lawrence Kasdan’s movie Body Heat. For a more recent example, watch The Sixth Sense.
The most obvious- Psycho! 
Love that one, even though I did guess it…
Anyway, also:
Rebecca, and any twist ending of Daphne DuMaurier’s…including the short stories “Kiss Me Again, Stranger,” “No Motive,” and others.
Stuff by Ira Levin, like Stepford Wives and Boys From Brazil…
Presumed Innocent.
Of course, Eye of the Beholder from the Twilight Zone.
And Then There Were None, or Ten Little Indians. Great one.
Dunno if this one counts…but Clue.
The last LAST ending…(spoiler…
When in fact Wadsworth/the butler is Mr. Boddy, and Mr. Green didn’t do it, and in fact isn’t even gay…at least I don’t think. Love that one.