Uninvited

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🎙️ EPISODE 287: 07.27.2020 This is a deliriously bad (read: super fun) late 80s "horror" gem that's, honestly, a diamond in the rough, folks. It makes me want to go check out Greydon Clark's whole filmography honestly. It has it all: the dumbest dialogue and story imaginable, goofy practical FX that will leave your jaw dropping and a corny soundtrack with some of the greatest musical cues I've ever seen. Shoutout to Red Letter Media for putting it on MY radar, but you may have seen it or heard about it via Riff Trax or via Vinegar Syndrome's 2019 remastered 4K release. It's anything but a household cult movie title, but maybe it should be?

The action centers around a radioactive cat that escapes a lab after killing a bunch of scientists who were doing tests on it. Don't worry, none of that comes back into play for one second. All you need to know is that there is a normal looking house cat on the loose that can and will, seemingly at random, spit another mutant cat out of its mouth to rip apart and poison humans. This OTHER cat ranges in size from medium dog to sock puppet, depending on what shot or angle was needed for the film. It's almost impossibly bad, and difficult to describe. So here's a montage of the mutant in action during its first couple kills...

You could go crazy picking apart the plot-holes or gawking at the absurdity of it all; there's a never-ending treasure trove of WTF moments over the course of these 90 minutes. Basically, the cat ends up on a yacht en route to the Cayman Islands with some vague criminal types played by George Kennedy and Alex Cord, a blonde lady boat captain, two other blonde "bimbo" types that they just met and their three dude friends (a jock, a preppy and a nerd). Oh, also there's some drunk guy named Albert who is killed by the cat first, naturally. Everyone is killed off except the lady boat captain and the nerd (who fall in love in the process), and they make it to the island via lifeboat as the yacht sinks. The End. Oh, sorry, forgot that the movie actually ends with a freeze frame of a DIFFERENT cat on the island shores being scooped up by a random kid...


In the interim, so much random stuff happens. It's truly a delight. Here's a smattering of short scenes–a baker's dozen worth of clips!–that stuck out to me...

To start things off, I really do believe George Kennedy when he says "young broads are a pain in the ass... old broads are a pain ass" ...

A nice little impromptu dance party busts out when the kids get onboard before George lays down the law and assigns everybody 'jobs' on the boat...

Some awkward sexy flirting has the nerd feeling like Woody Allen...

As previously mentioned, RIP Albert aka 'shark bait' ...

The head honcho gets super rapey before complete hell breaks loose: George Kennedy shoots one of the kids, then the cat attacks George Kennedy...

The nerd, ever the inquisitive and enterprising biologist, inspects the blood sample they found on Albert's torn shirt using a sextant (naval navigation instrument) in lieu of a microscope and observes that the blood cell count is abnormally high. We get a whole lot of exposition in a short amount of time (really the only time they spend on 'nature' of the cat) before George Kennedy's torso bubbles up Alien-style and he dies...

Despite having seen what this cat is capable of, the preppy kid jokes and asks "what are you scared of a little cat?" before making out with Suzanne...

The other chick and the jock share some super awkward closeup French kissing before the jock realizes that the cat is gnawing on his hand. They both freak out and jump overboard...

Meanwhile, the nerd and the lady boat captain are falling in love over cereal and yacht engine repair...

Perhaps my favorite completely inconsequential aspect of this movie is how they run out of water and non-contaminated food and only have champagne and Corn Flakes. It's just one of the aspects which didn't even need to be addressed since all of the action takes place over two, three days tops. But we the audience are better for it...

Head honcho and preppy kid form a cat killer allegiance and go hunting for it with poison food of their own as bait. But the kid shoots some steam thing on the boat and burns his own face off...

My favorite character by far is Suzanne (played by Shari Shattuck), who gradually loses her mind. She eventually finds herself scarfing down on the contaminated food until her neck explodes. So sad. Truly one of the best acting performances I've ever seen...

(FYI: Shattuck is also a writer and has a great website with an 'audio blog' which is not a podcast and I'm not kidding when I say that she's great in this. There's annoying over-acting, and then there's going for it so hard, that it's just completely endearing.)

And, lastly, this final sequence is just perfection. My favorite part about it is how the music transitions from scary to happy and back again. Oh, and also the toy boat of course...

So there you have it. That's Uninvited in about ten minutes or so. Definitely seek it out in its entirety, though... a true hidden gem.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 286 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 288 ⫸

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