Wes Anderson went a long ways towards “rescuing” the reputation of the dark and twisted fiction writer Roald Dahl from his “children’s author” image with his gloriously cast and production-designed-to-death short film version of “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”

The author of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Witches” and “James and the Giant Peach” had something to say to adults, too.

Now, celebrating that 40 minute “Henry Sugar” Academy Award win, Netflix releases that film folded into into a new package of FOUR Roald Dahl stories. It’s titled “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More.” And as “The Swan,” “The Rat Catcher” and “Poison,” the added stories make clear, Dahl’s sophisticated, sometimes sadistic fiction could pack on suspens, despair at the human condition and touch on themes with the cold, wet slap of cultural criticism layered-in.

“Henry Sugar,” the story of a greedy rich heel (Benedict Cumberbatch) who masters the transcendental Eastern art of seeing with one’s eyes closed and seeing through things to win at blackjack, only to reform after winning bores him, showcased Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley. It was an acted/all-narrated story within a story within a story, with every actor named speaking in voice over or directly to the camera, often deferring to the author himself (Ralph Fiennes) as he sits and edits and speaks from a soundstage version of his writer’s “shack” behind Gipsy House, Dahl’s home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.

It’s classic Anderson “twee,” a fast-talking, candy-colored animated film sans animation, with actors telling the story, passing the narration back and forth, dryly reacting or under-reacting to the words, the actions and the stage hand who shows up to remove or add props and change stage backdrops and settings.

Every man has his moment — for this is an all-male enterprise, not wholly out of place for the sometimes-sexist Dahl — and many of those moments are underscored by a Max-the-Dog move from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Each and every one turns and stares, befuddled or annoyed, at the viewer.

The precious effect is repeated throughout “Henry Sugar” and the three newer and darker stories added here. Only now, Rupert Friend joins the ensemble, all of whom play multiple roles in the stories.

In “The Swan,” we’re treated to a grim and horrific tale of a young birdwatcher being kidnapped and tortured by bird-murdering teens — tested by being lashed between the rails of railroad tracks, forced to watch crimes against nature and bird sanctuary laws. It is a sad, almost bleak dip into magical realism, here tinged by Dahl’s trademark sadistic edge.

“The Rat Catcher” features a feral Fiennes as a bloke who’s been summoned to deal with rats in a 1950s British village. By focusing the script on Dahl’s actual words via the constant narration, Anderson immerses us in the lovely, exacting descriptions of a cynic and a master craftsman.

The title character “was lean and leathery, with a sharp face and two long, sulfur-yellow teeth protruding from the upper jaw over the lower lip.”

Cumberbatch, Kingsley and Patel are featured in “Poison,” a tale from just-before-independence India in which a Brit (Cumberbatch) has had a poisonous krait snake crawl onto his chest and doze off. A colleague (Patel) summons a Bengali doctor (Kingsley) to try and protect the seemingly-doomed Englishman and neutralize the snake. But will his efforts dent the Brit’s inbred racism?

The way Anderson uses the actors, deadpan performances (mostly), narrating in a stacatto style, parked in front of clever settings in varying degrees of surreal “realism,” is almost animation, a reminder that “The Fantastic Mister Fox” and “Isle of Dogs” have been the pointilistic Anderson’s most wholly-realized triumphs — created in stop-motion animation.

His style can be grating, especially that self-aware mugging-to-the-camera that he insists on. But here we see its greatest application, deadpan turns played underneath screwball-comedy-speed dialogue, all of it, pretty much every juicy, biting word, written by a mercurial, sometimes mean-spirited wit who was always entirely too brilliant and too adult to be “just for children.”

The real Dahl was a real piece of work. But the work is timeless, and Anderson has rendered it in its most entertaining cinematic form with this short story collection feature film.

Rating: PG, closer to PG-13 thanks to human and animal cruelty, racism

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, Richard Ayoade and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Wes Anderson, based on four short stories by Roald Dahl. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29