#14 - Uninvited (1988)

Uninvited (1988)

(dir. Greydon Clark)

A cat afflicted with some kind of genetic mutation escapes from a lab, and leaves behind it a trail of bloody corpses. A couple of college students find the animal and bring it with them on a Caribbean cruise hosted by a shady businessman on the run from the SEC. Of course, the mutant cat starts killing people, and everyone on the boat finds themselves in grave danger. This movie is some absolutely wonderful schlock - it's dumb, goofy, and sometimes gory, and while it is at best b-movie material, it's still really fun.

It'd be easy to write this off as a "so bad it's good" kind of film, which I feel isn't fair. I'm pretty sure the filmmakers knew exactly what kind of movie they were making, and while it's true that there are some very weak elements, they are mostly tied to the budget and not to incompetence. That said, you'll need to have a certain level of tolerance for schlock to enjoy this. The worst thing a movie can be is boring, and I give this one a lot of credit for being fun the whole way through. I laughed harder at this movie than I have at any comedy I've seen recently.

Also worth mentioning is that the last 5 minutes of this film are a masterpiece of trash cinema. Sometimes people will criticize a film by saying "it's like they ran out of money by the end" (which makes no sense because film production does not work that way) but this one really does feel like they didn't know how to end it and came up with the goofiest and most rushed ending possible. I was laughing my ass off, it's funnier than any b-movie parody could ever be.

This probably won't appeal to general audiences, but if you like obscure '80s schlock I think this is definitely worth checking out.