A mutant radioactive cat has escaped a laboratory and stowed away with a group of spring breakers who have joined a crooked millionaire on his yacht. Writer, director and producer Greydon Clark milks this premise for all of its worth with his straight to video cult classic Uninvited (1987). Clark’s reputation for barely coherent genre films is richly deserved. This low budget effort gets by not on the acting of veteran character actors George Kennedy and Clu Gulager, nor on the beauty of the three leading ladies; but on the charisma of a cat.
This cat is no ordinary cat. Within its mouth lives a demonic cat capable of shredding human flesh with the slightest touch. This oral inhabitant is a manifestation of the wants and desires of our protagonist cat. Those desires, those fantasies longing to be fulfilled, just happen to be the deaths of a handful of scum bags who were never that nice to the cat in the first place. Clark understands cats and feline viewers are likely to find this representation most gratifying and refreshing.
All humor aside, it’s important to note that there’s a kind of AIDs allegory at work in this cheap mess of a film. Not only is the cat within the cat a lethal monster, it also is poisonous to humans. The poison from its bite causes red blood cells to multiply out of control until the victim either experiences heart failure or begins to erupt with blood filled boils. The allegorical representation of AIDs should not, however, be mistaken for any kind of sophistication. Uninvited is an unpretentious little movie that sets out to be a lot of fun and delivers.
