Three laughs: Uninvited

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Three laughs case #17:
Uninvited (1987)
Director: Creydon Clark

We've had killer rats, now let's try killer pussy. Pussy cat, that is. For this straight-to-video clunker features the ingenious high concept: what if some gangsters, some horny teenagers and a runaway mutant cat were stuck on a yacht together? It's probably much of a spoiler to tell that the cat starts to kill people. For from within its mouth emergers a smaller, more vicious cat or similar critter. The cat looks in parts like a plush toy, in parts like a wet rat. And also the cat's bite is poisonous.

It's probably safe to say that this film borrowed a lot from Alien, but as far as aliensploitations go, this has got to be among the most bizarre ones. Much of the film's budget went to the casting of some B-name actors such as Alex Cord, Clu Gulager and of course George Kennedy, who I have trouble seeing every time and not think of police chief Ed from the Naked Gun movies. Some more money could have been used here and there, the film's miniature boats are quite funny as they look like toys in a bath tub. Cash should have been shed also on gore scenes, since the film pussies out of them pretty fast. But even so, for a gorehound this is quite fun to watch.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Good monster movies take their time to reveal their monster. Here, it's shown in the very first scene in a laboratory setting, where a sinister corporation has created the mutant for some reason. Whenever it's seen walking around, it's just an ordinary orange cat, not unlike Garfield. But when it's cornered by some scientists in hazard suits, it opens its mouth where a smaller kitten emerges, and apparently kills everyone. Whenever it's shown a bit more it appears to be more like a cute muppet-like little monster, like they have in the Critters series. The cheesy synthetisizer music seems to belong more to a comedy, but in these scenes it at leat tries its hardest to create something resembling suspense. It fails, of course.

2. After the cat runs away from the scientists, he is being fed by a kindly stranger at a gas station. Who then gets immidiately mobbed. Luckily, the cat is familiar with the concept of revenge and attacks the attackers on their pickup truck. Which is then ran off the road into a river. In slow motion!

3. I did mention how George Kennedy makes me crack up. Most of the movie, his gangster character is a bit lackluster and uneasy while talking to his fellow mobsters about their ideas of taking spring break kids along for their cruise in order to distract authorities. But he gets slowly madder and madder and the scene where he finally boils over is a hoot. He comes out blasting, trying to kill the teen boys, but is stopped when the cat again protects his favorites and bites off his achilles heel. Too bad he doesn't get a proper death scene, here he's screaming his mouth off, but the cat's poisonous bite gets the best of him off-sceen and he's soon buried at sea.

I got to add, as far as it's-not-dead moments in horror movies go, this one has a really funny one.