Tales of the Uncanny Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Tales of the Uncanny Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 13, 2021

Maybe just a little surprisingly, aggregations of trailers can actually make for relatively enjoyable viewing experiences, as evidenced by a few previous items that have shown up in my review queue, like Kung Fu Trailers of Fury, Return of Kung Fu Trailers of Fury, and the much more recently reviewed The AGFA Horror Trailer Show, but perhaps most saliently given the film under review's focus, The Vault of Amicus. But to think of Tales of the Uncanny as "only" providing a veritable glut of trailers would probably be a mistake, since it's also more of a subgenre overview replete with an equal glut of often very interesting talking heads, along with other archival material like stills and key art. The result is a winning and well edited trip through so called "horror anthologies", both feature film and television variety, which some may think started with efforts like Dead of Night, but which Tales of the Uncanny makes clear arguably started much earlier, something that the included bonus film of Eerie Tales, a German silent from 1919, is a fascinating example of. While a lot of this documentary is given over to feature films, there's also a "detour" of sorts through well remembered television outings like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery.

The interstitial talking head snippets (many done via Zoom or the like due to the pandemic, as is pointed out early into this enterprise) feature a nicely diverse set of folks, including Roger Corman, Joko Anwar, Jovanka Vuckovic, Larry Fessenden, Rebekah McKendry, Kim Newman, Tom Savini, Eli Roth, Joe Dante, Richard Stanley and Greg Nicotero, among many others. In terms of some of the many films covered at least in passing, in addition to the above linked Dead of Night, fans may also want to check out some of these that I personally have reviewed (and in no particular order):

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors

Note: I found the technical merits of this region free German release to have superior technical merits to the above linked domestic release.

Asylum

Tales from the Crypt

Vault of Horror

Tales That Witness Madness

Trick 'r Treat

Tales of the Uncanny Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tales of the Uncanny is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in a wide variety of aspect ratios, depending on source material, but with most of the contemporary interview segments, as well as some whimsical interstitial vignettes with "chapter titles", in 1.78:1. As can be pretty easily seen in some of the screenshots accompanying this review, while the "traditionally" shot talking head segments look nicely sharp and well detailed, a lot of the internet video elements can be pretty shoddy looking by comparison (take a look at Joe Dante's feed in screenshot 4 for just one example). The film clips can also vary in quality, as is typically the case with documentaries cobbled together from such widely variant material.

Tales of the Uncanny Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tales of the Uncanny features a perfectly serviceable DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that frankly doesn't have much to "worry" about, in terms of some kind of overarching sound design. Instead, all of the interview and/or talking head material, as well as the frequently sonorous narration on trailers and the like are offered with fine fidelity and no real quality issues. Optional English subtitles are available.

Tales of the Uncanny Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Eerie Tales (720p; 1:42:50) is a German portmanteau from 1919. This features the great Conrad Veidt as Death, just one of several supposedly "fictional" characters who come to life after hours at a bookshop, kind of presaging a central conceit of the Night at the Museum films. Optional English subtitles are available.


• Unusual Tales (1080p; 1:28:27) is a French anthology film from 1949 that beat Roger Corman to the Poe adaptation market by more than a decade (there are some non-Poe elements as well). Optional English subtitles are available.

Tales of the Uncanny Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While not an aggregation of trailers and frankly a much more exhaustive overview of cinema in general, the recently reviewed Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema reminded me of Tales of the Uncanny in one central and I think important way: both of these documentaries are incredibly well edited, weaving together a wide variety of material in an artful and enjoyable way. While you probably could just think of Tales of the Uncanny as yet another crazy quilt of trailers, the talking head material is quite often very interesting, and the connections that are made between films help to sustain interest. There are some quality issues with regard to some of the Zoom like interviews in particular, but overall technical merits are secure, and Severin's inclusion of the two foreign anthologies is commendable. Recommended.