Severin Films unleashes a "feline trilogy of terror" with their Blu-ray of the Canadian/British anthology THE UNCANNY.

Having conducted extensive research for his latest horror anthology, author Wilbur (Peter Cushing, ASYLUM) has come to the conclusion that cats are really the devil in disguise. He tries to convince his publisher Frank Richard (Ray Milland, THE PREMATURE BURIAL) with three case studies and wants Frank's cat Sugar to bear witness. In the first story set in 1912 London, pretty maid Janet (Susan Penhaligon, PATRICK) overhears invalid employer Miss Malkin (Joan Greenwood, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES) – as in the witches familiar "Graymalkin" from Shakespeare's "Macbeth" – ordering solicitor Wallace (Roland Culver, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE) to revise her will leaving her fortune to her "own little family" of cats rather than her wastrel nephew Michael (Simon Williams, THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW). Janet steals the will from Wallace's bag but Michael tasks her with destroying the other copy secreted in his aunt's safe. When Miss Malkin catches her in the act, Janet smothers the old woman with a pillow and incurs the bloody wrath of her precious pussies. The next case takes place in Quebec 1975 as orphaned Lucy (DEATH WISH 4's Katrina Holden Bronson, adopted daughter of Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland) is sent to live with her aunt and uncle (BECAUSE OF THE CATS' Alexandra Stewart and THE PYX's Donald Pilon). Her aunt disapproves of Lucy's only connection to her mother in the books on black magic she left behind while cousin Angela (Chloe Franks, herself an orphan in WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO?) is jealous of Lucy's pet cat Wellington. Angela gloats when her mother arranges for Wellington to be taken away and put to sleep, but the cat comes back and influences Lucy to consult her mother's grimoire to take revenge. In the final story set in Hollywood 1936, the wife of horror actor Valentine De'ath (Donald Pleasance, THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS) is killed in a mishap with a pendulum prop during the filming of THE DUNGEON OF HORROR. After the investigation rules the death as an accident, Valentine proposes his wife's double Edina (Samantha Eggar, DEMONOID) as her replacement both in the film and his life as he quickly moves her into his home. The only thing left of his wife's memory is her cat which he calls "Scat" and her kittens. After disposing of the kittens, the pair find getting rid of Scat a much more difficult and deadly proposition.

A British/Canadian co-production between Claude Héroux's Cinévidéo (BLOOD RELATIONS, NAKED MASSACRE) and the first of Milton Subtosky's short-lived post-Amicus companies Tor Productions, THE UNCANNY proves that there is a limit to what one can do with cinematic stories of feline revenge. Without the sometimes tenuous literary basis for the film's stories that supported the Amicus anthologies – and even Subotsky's later THE MONSTER CLUB – THE UNCANNY, scripted by XTRO's Michael Parry, feels even more scattershot than the other films with stories that are short yet feel episodic and drawn out. The first story basically adds more gore to the climax of Universal's THE EYE OF THE CAT and the third will feel overly familiar to those who have seen Hammer's THE SHADOW OF THE CAT, while the second story feels like a lazy retread of the "Sweets to the Sweet" segment of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (in which Franks had played the daughter of a dead witch). The first segment provides a smattering of gore, the second some ambitious but dodgy optical effects, and the third some humor with Pleasance and Eggar not taking things any more seriously than the material requires (SAVAGE STREETS' John Vernon is wasted as a film producer along with future soap actor Jean LeClerc as the director). The cats themselves are anything but sinister, tossed at actors from offscreen, docile when they should be sinister, or needing to have meat woven into a rope for the cat to gnaw through. The scoring of Wilfred Josephs – whose original score for CRY OF THE BANSHEE was jettisoned by American International for its domestic release – is as undistinguished as the photography of usually dependable Harry Waxman (VAMPYRES). Director Denis Héroux jumpstarted Canada's softcore genre with VALÉRIE (1969) for John Dunning's Cinépix.

Released to video in the early 1980s by Media Home Entertainment, THE UNCANNY bypassed DVD in the United States while the overseas offerings were fullscreen and non-anamorphic letterboxed masters. Severin Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer comes from a scan of the British internegative and the results are rather inconsistent. The framing sequences with Cushing and Milland have both sporting pink to orange complexions but this may have more to do with the elements and processing since the three stories look more naturalistic – taking into account a degree of diffusion in the seventies exterior photography and the "Old Hollywood" look of the third tale – while saturation might have been pumped up a tad in the digital color correction. Damage is confined to some long stretches of faint vertical scratching along the right edge of the frame. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is clean with low hiss in the silent passages and English SDH subtitles (selectable only via remote) are also provided.