Now come on. You all knew as well as I did that the moment I learned of this film's existence, I was going to review it at some point. A movie about a mutant cat that has a smaller, angrier cat living inside its mouth that emerges whenever it feels angry or threatened? The only problem I have is deciding whether or not Uninvited counts as "catsploitation".
At a research laboratory, a cat scheduled for vivisection escapes and, when the doctors and security attempt to recapture it, the cat attacks and kills them via a smaller cat that emerges from its mouth and savages them to death. Escaping on to the streets, the cat eventually makes its way to the docks and onto a boat owned by "Wall Street" Walter Graham. Graham finds himself having to make a quick departure from the mainland after hearing that the FCC is coming for him over some dodgy dealings and a minor murder. Also on board his yacht are his two goons, the ship's captain who he is blackmailing into working for him, two college girls that Graham picked up the night before, and three college boys that the girls picked up to protect them from Graham's wandering hands. It isn't long before the yacht runs into trouble, Graham turns nasty and the cat starts attacking anyone it sees as a threat. Will the humans on the boat be able to survive against a mutated, venomous cat?
Uninvited is an odd film - just in case you hadn't already figured that out. Primarily, the film seems to be set up to have the cat as the evil monster of the movie... except that the cat is actually a pretty chilled out character, and even heroic at times. It attacks a pair of robbers who beat up a man who was feeding it at one point, and when one of Graham's good squad attacks two of the college students, the cat attacks him too. It's not the cat's fault that it transforms into a giant mutant carpet creature with a smaller, more evil cat in its mouth whenever it gets angry and has deadly venom it passes on to anything it bites or eats; it was experimented on by evil scientists. Basically, and perhaps wholly unsurprisingly, I'm on Team Cat here.
Also, regarding the cat... I saw some people discussing this movie online who were concerned for the way the cat was treated during the film. Now I can't be 100% certain, but it looked very much like the cat playing... well, the cat was treated very well during shooting. In nearly every scene we see it in (that is, when the cat's not been replaced by its shaggy carpet puppet stuntcat) its tail and ears are both up - clear signs of a calm an happy cat. So calm, in fact, that its meows are dubbed in throughout the movie, regardless of whether or not the cat looks like it's meowing at the time or not. Trust me, if I thought the cat was being mistreated, I wouldn't be watching this film.
Uninvited is a Greydon Clark film. You should recognise that name - he's the same man who directed Without Warning, that proto-Predator film from 1980. Here again, he is not only director, but producer and writer as well, and the film's budget looks to have been roughly the same as well. If you remember how things went with Without Warning, it seems like half the budget went on one or two big-name actors - in this case we have George Kennedy and Clu Gulager - a quarter of it went on the special effects budget (or at least some of the special effects budget, because the exploding veins effect is suitably gory and B-movie levels of impressive, but the monster cat effect... less so) and then the rest of the budget on everything else. With Uninvited we can probably also add in about 5% of the budget on cat food and treats as well, to keep the star happy and less likely to start using the set as a litter box.
Uninvited is not going to win any awards any time soon, unless an animal version of the Oscars starts up and they're awarded retroactively. But you know what? It's original, and fun in a goofy B-movie, holy-crap-are-they-serious-with-that-cat-puppet way. I recommend watching it, with friends and beverages of choice for extra enjoyment, because it's highly unlikely you'll ever see another film quite like it.
Amazon UK (region 1 only)
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