26 Misc Laff: Исчезатель ("The Disappearer" or "The Vanisher")

“Seven-Day Terror” is one of those Lafferty stories that everyone seems to enjoy. It first appeared in the March 1962 issue of Worlds of If and belongs to Lafferty’s early series about the precocious and cheerfully dangerous Willoughby children. This time, nine-year-old Clarence constructs a “disappearer” from a beer can and two pieces of red cardboard. His experiment wreaks havoc on cats, fire hydrants, automobiles, houses, and finally a grocer.

Now for some extreme Lafferty trivia.

A claim has long circulated that the story was filmed as Four Day Wonder, a CBC drama written by Bruce Martin and directed by René Bonnière. The production was broadcast during the 1971–72 season among the CBC filmed dramas shown under the umbrella title Sunday at Nine. These dramas were sometimes known collectively as Anthology. Both the History of Canadian Broadcasting and Blaine Allan’s CBC programme catalogue confirm that a production of this title was broadcast.

Was it really adapted from Lafferty? I have not been able to determine that. Ralafferty.org traces the claim to an old AbeBooks discussion, but that discussion is dead, and the Wayback Machine's sole capture merely redirects. Neither surviving CBC source credits Lafferty or provides a synopsis. I would therefore describe Four Day Wonder as “possibly inspired by ‘Seven-Day Terror’” rather than as an established adaptation. That is as far as the evidence carries us for now, although someone out there surely knows.

One adaptation, however, is certain. Oddly enough, the story quickly found an audience in the Soviet Union. A Russian translation appeared in the August 1965 issue of the children’s technical magazine Yuny Tekhnik and was later reprinted in several popular anthologies.

This history helps explain the story’s curious reappearance in 1987 as Исчезатель, a ten-minute Soyuzmultfilm puppet animation directed by Mikhail Kamenetsky from a screenplay by Alexander Korin.

The film takes extreme liberties with the story. It keeps the homemade device but gives Clarence a new motive: he hopes to help his poet mother finish her poem. We are far from Tulsa. Most of Lafferty’s genius for creating amoral children has disappeared, replaced by the gentle domesticity of a children’s film. A Russian animation catalogue nevertheless lists “R. Lafferty” as the author of the source story.

The film appears below. I've added some English subtitles.