The Uncanny (1977)

Dir: Denis Héroux

Cute horror anthology with Peter Cushing playing a writer who's pathologically suspicious of cats (oddly enough, I could relate to him, which may explain my curious liking of this script). He tries to convince his agent that cats are controlling humans. To do this, he spins a series of eerie yarns about them, each a cautionary tale that ends with some kind of nefarious (and often bloody) feline intervention. Call me a sucker, but I like this one more than I probably should. The tongue-in-cheek final section, a nifty Poe homage with Donald Pleasance as a murderous, platitude-spouting actor who gets his comeuppance is particularly enjoyable, but the film is worth the admission anyway, just for an earlier scene in which a young maid is pounced up by about a hundred flying stuffed cats being hurled by offscreen crew members. Great stuff! This certainly won't change your life, but it's an easy enough, unpretentious slice of mindless, macabre fun and you could do a lot worse. Cushing is spot-on, as ever. ***