William Lauder - The Uncanny

[ripper]

Decided to give The Uncanny another reading after many years. I'm about half-way through at the moment. I thought the first story dragged a bit, which was my thought when I first read it. Several things about the story jarred slightly, possibly the sign of the book being written quickly or re-writes. Firstly, when discussing the Malkin case with his publisher, Wilbur Gray says he has talked to policemen and doctors involved in the affair. The story is set in 1908 and the conversation between Gray and his publisher in 1977, 69 years later, so it stretched my credulity to suggest Gray had actually talked to them. Secondly, Janet tells Michael she put the copy of the new will in the safe, when it was actually the solicitore that did it. Was she telling a fib or was it a case of an error on the author's part?

Now reading of naughty Angela's campaign of spite against poor Lucy and Wellington in the second story.

[dem]

Feb 26, 2015 14:17:03 GMT ripper said:

I thought the first story dragged a bit, which was my thought when I first read it. Several things about the story jarred slightly, possibly the sign of the book being written quickly or re-writes. Firstly, when discussing the Malkin case with his publisher, Wilbur Gray says he has talked to policemen and doctors involved in the affair. The story is set in 1908 and the conversation between Gray and his publisher in 1977, 69 years later, so it stretched my credulity to suggest Gray had actually talked to them.

That bit is just about plausible if the police and medics involved in the case lived to a ripe old age and Gray met them several years after the cats had shredded Janet, but ...

I don't think Michel was overly impressed with "William Lauder"s adaptation of his screenplay. Once asked him about it and he - rather gleefully. it must be said - replied that he'd never got beyond the first page. Michel had originally intended to base the movie around stories from his début anthology, Beware Of The Cat, (don't know which ones, but I'd like to think it was Byron Liggett's The Cat Man, Ernest Hamilton's The Child Watcher, Ramsey Campbell's Cat And Mouse, and the traditional The Vampire Cat), but for some reason that never came together so he wrote the whole thing from scratch.

[ripper]

Hi Dem. Whatmade me think that Gray had only recently been researching his cat dominance theory is a line where his publisher is shocked how old Gray now looks as opposed to his more youthful appearance months before, which made me think it was this research that had changed him, but, you are right, Gray could have spoken to the witnesses in his younger days.


Finished the second story and Angela is but a nasty stain on the floor. Oddly, though, Gray tells the publisher that Lucy's aunt and uncle also came to bad ends at the hands--or paws--of Wellington and possibly Lucy.. That seems to go against the grain of the story in that Lucy and Wellington appeared perfectly happy living with her aunt and uncle, only the presence of Angela causing problems. This story, like the first one, also seemed too long to me. It was just lucky I suppose that there was a book on ceremonial black magic in Lucy's uncle's library. I thought this would have been better if a non-supernatural fate could have been arranged for Angela, as the hocus-pocus just comes out of the blue.

After the end of story 2 there is a scene where a cat looks into the window of the house where Gray is talking to his publisher and there is a line about a hansom cab going by. A hansom cab in 1977?

I thought I needed a rest then so it will be story 3 tonight.

[dem]

Forget my trying to make a case for Gray conducting the interviews in his youth, etc, Rip. In light of the glaring flaws you expose above, it's almost certainly just another lapse in logic on the author's part.

It really should work better in print than it did on screen - where it died the death of the zero budget "special" effects - but seems neither of us think much of the Lucy & Wellington versus Angela story, though I seem to recall having a good time with the maid and horror actor in peril stories.

Of course there's nothing for it now but to fast-track The Uncanny to top of the stack marked 'rematch required' ....

[ripper]

I finished off The Uncanny last night. I got on a bit better with the last story than I did when I first read it. I only noticed one line that seemed out of place. Blood capsules were placed under Madeleine's dress for the fake pendulum blade to puncture. The story is set in 1949, when films were practically bloodless, so that didn't ring true. There may have been other odd moments but by then I was just concentrating on finishing the book. I did notice, however, that the author seemed to take great delight in making us understand just how hot Madeleine is, and the rather suggestive pose of having her tied, arms and legs open, to the pendulum table.

The framing story ends as you would imagine it would and that was that.

The book gives the impression of having been written rather quickly and not getting the proofreading it should have. A common failing of the novelisation and film is that I think it could have done with shortening the 3 existing stories and adding an extra one. There just seems like a lot of padding was added to the stories to bump the page count up to novel length. In contrast, both the Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror novelisations manage to fit more stories into a similar or possibly shorter page count by keeping the stories tight.

Despite all this, though, I do like the film, dodgy special effects and all, and it is a pity that the novelisation was not given more time and care over its writing. Just my opinion, of course :-).