The Uncanny

Three-part horror-anthology, and, like most anthologies, uneven. The first story is comparatively the best (and the bloodiest), the third is the weakest. The second one has interesting elements, but suffers from fake-looking special effects. Despite the cast of veterans, the cats give the best "performances".

Replete with endless shots of disinterested moggies (presumably being teased by an out-of-shot toy mouse) and fluorescent red paint (supposed to be blood), 'The Uncanny' is a tedious dud. Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence are fabulous actors notable for giving their best to even the most irredeemable of projects. But here they both throw in the towel and deliver depressingly lacklustre turns. The stories are dull, predictable and poorly executed. There is little more to be said, except for "Avoid". However, apparently an IMDb review requires a minimum 10 lines of text, so I will elaborate: "Avoid like the plague".

I used to enjoy the portmanteau horror films that used to appear regularly in the seventies.This one has escaped me,thankfully,till now.It is without doubt the silliest of the genre that I have ever seen.It is just an impossible task to make all these mogives seem like malevolent monsters.The first episode does have moments of gore,the second is daft and the last one truly ridiculous.Peter Cushing has a small amount of screen time with Ray Mill and in a framing device.

Writer Wilbur Gray visits his publisher Frank Richards after dark to discuss his new book about cats. Wilbur believes that they are supernatural animals and he tells three tales to prove his belief. With the standard of the cast this film showed much promise but actually fell well short of any reasonable expectation. The segments do not work as a whole and overacting does not help. Stars Peter Cushing and Ray Milland.

It doesn't help "The Uncanny" that it starts with a ludicrous premise - cats are supposedly the masters of the world, with humans as their playthings. But what really hurts this movie is that the three stories are painfully predictable, with elements that you've seen in countless anthology films of this kind. Film also has a grainy and cheap look, typical of a Canadian film. Movies like this make me ashamed to be a Canadian. At least it wasn't one of Canada's countless, stupid, and cheap sexual perversion films.

After a fine opening credit sequence (thanks Robert Ellis) there follows three tales of feline revenge in various times and places; One about an old woman's will. one about a orphan girl being bullied and one about a horror film actor and his new paramour. This is all framed by a writer telling his publisher these tales as he wants to warn the world about the real nature of cats. It is a slow moving film and entirely predictable. Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence stand out where the acting is concerned. Apart from them the best performers are the cats themselves and there are a lot of them, all shapes and colours. It's a shame none of them were credited.