I Just Saw

I just saw 1977’s The Uncanny, an anthology horror film starring Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance just prior to his role as Dr Loomis in Halloween, at my local art centre’s Classic Horror Nights and it was fantastic. Your mileage with it may vary, depending on your taste for camp and tolerance of cheese in your horror, but while I can’t say that it’s a masterpiece to rank with anything made by John Carpenter in his prime, this knowingly silly film is one of the most entertaining things I’ve seen this year and a front runner for best Horror Nights feature.

Cushing appears in the frame story as an author who sets out one night with a manuscript about how cats are secretly harbingers of supernatural evil. (The film begins and ends with quotes from poetry about these animals’ savage nature.) But as he walks the streets to his publisher’s house, he’s followed by a mysterious black feline…

From his consultation with the publisher we get three short stories very much in the old horror comics tradition, focused on people who do bad things and are punished for their wickedness by supernatural agents, in this case kitty cats. The stories are named for their settings and dates, respectively “London 1912”, about an old maid and a will that’s jealously guarded by her cats and beneficiaries; “Quebec 1975“, in which an orphaned girl and her whiskered companion find themselves among nemeses in her aunt’s house; and “Hollywood 1936”, where Donald Pleasance plays a hambone who disposes of his wife but finds getting rid of her cat much harder. (The frame story is referred to as “Montreal 1977”.)

A lot of ropey effects, acting, and set pieces define this film, making it a prime candidate for “bad movie” nights among friends. It’s of a style that embraces its cheesiness and allows itself to have fun with it, realising crucially that it’ll get a lot more real estate out of appealing to the audience’s sense of the absurd and winking, macabre humour than it will by taking itself too seriously. As such it’s one of the most purely entertaining horror films of this type, due in no small part to the legion of furry critters that scratch and bite and rig up medieval execution devices to ensnare bad boys and girls.

The best of the stories is “Hollywood 1936”, for a few reasons. Pleasance is on top form here. He understands the kind of film this is completely and delivers far and away the most engaging performance, enunciating zealously from underneath a ridiculous fake barnet. The story balances shock and comedy fabulously well, beginning with a surprisingly tense moment where a “Pit and the Pendulum”-style prop turns lethal and ending on a gruesome pun.

All of the stories are fun, although “London 1912” arguably drags on a bit while “Quebec 1975” has some of the worst child acting you’ll ever see. But “London”’s use of cat vigilantes is hilarious and “Quebec” has a black magic angle that’s pure Dennis Wheatley, with some nicely staged effects. Definitely seek out The Uncanny if you’re a fan of murderous moggies and cheese.

Rating: 3/4