DVD Release Company: Liberation Entertainment (http://www.libent.com/)
Language: English
Length: 189 Minutes
Image: Color
Year: 1988/1984
Rated: Not Rated
Release Date: September 29, 2009

Uninvited / Mutant

“You want some of this, you little pussy?” — Albert (Clu Gulager)

Uninvited MOVIE REVIEW

I always knew cats were the devil’s spawn. Now, I have proof! This is one bad mutated pussy and when I say bad, I mean so awful it wreaks of weeks old kitty litter. But, really, what is so scary about a cat except the fact that they are the most independent little shits on the face of the earth? This movie delivers a knock out of laughter instead of chills and thrills. It is purrfect for a Friday night backup-backup plan and it is a cheesy, 80′s creature feature contender.

In the depths of a genetically altering animal experimentation laboratory lies one of, if not the most, dangerous felines. Make sure you feed it and be nice to it because if you’re not, it mutates – a cat within a cat – a ferocious, horrendous creature that spews out the mouth of it’s host and if it bites you, you’re poisoned with its genetically altered DNA. The cat escapes the labs, making his run to freedom. It is discovered and taken on a luxurious yacht by two spring break coeds Bobbie and Suzanne and their three college male companions. Being invited by the fraudulent yet sophisticated murderer Walter Grahams, the scenario spells disaster for the group friends as if worrying about criminals wasn’t bad enough but now there is a hungry, monster cat on the loose spreading his mutated blood.

Right from the get go, you know this is going to be a classic campy film when a cat, who has diarrhea of the meowing mouth, stalks and kills genetic engineers and security guards. The creature is the very similar to the qualities a werewolf but instead of only turning rogue by full moon, this furry feline goes buck wild whenever it gets cornered or hungry. Oh, by the way, it likes human fingers – they’re basically catnip. What I don’t understand the most about this creature, is that there is an evil cat within the cute and cuddly cat and when it attacks, the cute and cuddly just vomits it out and … well, you’re dead by then.

Why the mouth? That is my question…

To my surprised, there are some cast members that took me by surprise. Why are they in this, I thought to myself. Naked Gun captain, George Kennedy, plays as Walter’s partner in crime. The large, white stringed haired veteran actor, and veteran war hero, was the most legit part of anything that is related to the movie biz when it comes to the Uninvited. His character’s name is Mike Harvey, the toughest of the tough and he hates these “young punks” who have taken a liking to the yacht cruise – they just might get in the way of him and his money. Though Mike is the most prolific actor in the film, he is completely overshadowed by Clu Gulager’s character Albert. Clu, a legend of film and the father of Feast director John Gulager, makes Albert this quirky lackey with bad teeth and a taste for cheap alcohol. At one point, the very hot captain Rachel lets Albert steer the liner and, of course, the obvious happens – he screws it up. That silly Albert.

The rest of the cast are a bunch of unknowns but were decent enough to keep Uninvited watchable. The two coeds were basically a tease the entire film. I’ve never seen this an 80′s horror movie that didn’t have seductive women show off their goods. This is a first for me. When you’re first introduced to Bobbie and Suzanne, they’re barely wearing anything – high cut-off shorts, shredded shirts with tiny bikini tops underneath. They also unbutton their shirts to where only cleavage shows, Suzanne is topless but shield by her damn pillow and Corey, and the thick but curvy Bobbi wears an 80′stastic workout outfit. Where is my gratuitous nudity!? Let me stop talking about Bobbi and Suzanne – they just pissed me off too much through the entire film. The three college guys that accompany them are Corey, Daryl and Martin. Corey is the pre-law student with cockiness as big as his blond mullet, Daryl is the wrestling jock with a A.C. Slater impersonator complex and Martin is the most predictable character as it is revealed he is a biologist working on his doctorate – genetically mutated cat and a biologist who just happen to make the same cruise…yeah, it is obvious to what is going to happen. Whenever there was a close up scene of these kids kissing, there is nothing more nauseous than the detailed slurping dubbed in – much like the meow turrets the cat is cursed with.

Martin vs The Cat – pre-match showdown

When you can visually tell that a movie is being made on a production stage, that is when you just can’t take it seriously. There was just too much to stomach with the phony rain, wind and lightening storm sequences. The toy model ship, that looked nothing like the real liner they showed earlier, floated in what looked to be someone’s pool or bath tub. But in a way, it gives it that classic creature feature look and feel – something you would catch on TV at 3 a.m. Having seen Plankton, aka The Creature from the Abyss, I thought I was having deja vu. I swear that this was the American version of that and with a cat instead of killer almost microscopic plankton. The evil cat was a mere hand puppet which in some scenes you could see the arm of the, I’m sure embarrassed, puppeteer. When the cat fully transitioned, you couldn’t tell the difference between it and a dirty green old mop head. The only decent part of the effects had to be the violence and brief gore scenes. They were C+ passable which is really saying a lot for low-budget in the late 80s. There was a sense of realism and nastiness about the pulsating and exploding veins, the chewed up and punctured ankle, the eaten fingers, and the fatally gashed faces. This is one issue they did right and I think it saved it from being a boring snore. I would ask myself, “what will this cat do next?”

It took the term catnip seriously.

I’ve seen bad endings before in my life but this tops them all. I don’t want to give it away for whomever is willing enough to be a victim of such a project. I took it on because I have an understanding and an appreciation but for the most of society (like my friends), I would get a disconcerting, contorted “what the hell” look from them. But, this is an ending that has to be seen to believe in the absurdity and for shits and giggles. I still have the last image of that scene stuck in my head, on loop and it is haunting me in a comical kind of way.

Toy boat!

The overall review of Uninvited is very low. Don’t confuse it with the more current movie of the same name; they’re nothing alike and have nothing in common. However, don’t neglect this Uninvited totally. I didn’t give it the lowest rating for no reason. There are moments of comical and horror fidelity that should be recognized. Keep this in mind too – there have been moderately successful movies out there that contain killer felines such as the original and the remake of the Cat People, the demon lions of The Ghost and the Darkness and the undead cat from Pet Sematary who had more than nine lives. If you have nothing better to do and this movie is staring you in the face, pop it in and count all the goofs – check out the scene where the pickup truck crashes just before an overpass and about 10 panes of glass break – literally, the same pane sound breaks over and over.

All images and logos provided by Liberation Entertainment & Badmovies.org. (No disc drive on my netbook so I can’t provide my own!)

Trailer

Mutant MOVIE REVIEW

Mutant

(Night Shadows)

(The Pestilence)

“How can I get a chemical reaction from a little girl?” – Josh (Wings Hauser)

A sort of sleeper from the 80′s, Mutant embarks on the effects of neglected chemical waste upon the human body and mind. This small world apocalyptic film has a familiar Night of the Living Dead appearance and a smidgen of a hard to imitate feel. The desperate need to know what happens next grips you to the last breath while progressing to feed your mind with camp candy. And though rightly under the radar of most horror films during this groundbreaking decade, it is certain that Mutant is without a doubt a favorite among most horror enthusiasts.

Brothers Josh and Mike take a road trip from the city to the great outdoors in hopes for some rest and recreation. What they get is a welcome wagon of city-hating hillbillies, a drunk sheriff who’s only solution to no trouble is to banish the brothers and is a small town called Goodland where most of it’s residents start to feel the effects of a chemical waste that transforms them into bloodthirsty mutants! With his brother missing, Josh is stuck in a middle of nowhere town and will go anywhere and do anything to find him, but when some of the population ends up missing, some end up dead and some end up something far more worse, there seems to be little hope of finding Mike and escaping Goodland alive.

Josh & Mike on R & R

I went into this film with a bit of pre-judging. You have to show a little mercy on me because it is double featured with Uninvited and, having never seen Mutant before, there was doubt that it would be much of the same – a wish washy attempt at trying to make horror through the talents of the untalented. With a good amount of guilt and without any excuses what so ever, I do admit that Mutant was not even in the same godawful category that it’s double feature cohort is so rightfully placed. Favored with a particular gloomy charm and brazened with its spectacular transformation scenes that give it an 80′s modern day cinematic creature feature value, I came out smiling from cheek tip to cheek tip. There isn’t even a slow start in this fast paced script as we are in full thrust of Josh and Mike’s troubles with the hillbillies and then with the disappearance of Mike.

Zombie/vampire attack!

The mutants stagger to the top spot in the best portion I take away from a film. Mocked in full Dawn of the Dead grey and black skin coloring and chalked full of scenes of similar tightly bunched horde groups extending their arms and fingers for their victims, one can not help but to think that these zombies had a bit of influence gliding through their veins instead of the green, hot-as-lava chemical waste blood substitute. If the same look was used in today’s movies, a straight fire of vicious negative bullet comments and opinions will have that flick coming out full of disgraced holes, but the look works here and I do believe there are factors that make it work: For one, it is made over two decades ago and that is instilled in our minds and we look past outdated effects (to a certain point); secondly, there is the cinematography that does well with the act of desolation; lastly, a few differences separate Romero’s zombies with these mutated rednecks besides the cause and effect – these mutants are leeches who drain their victim’s blood through a goo spewing slit in their hands and they have a fear of all kinds of light making them more like vampires than actual zombies.

The blood sucking slit.

This top spot pick doesn’t come without its doppelganger, however. The mutants are also what make this film as cheesy as cheddar. The sounds that exited their mouths were generic roars like you might hear from a low-budget dinosaur epic – the Carnosaur films comes to mind or the stop-motion Clash of the Titans. Its bad enough one of the mutants do it but when they’re all on the screen roaring together, you can’t help but to press a few times that negative symbol button right under the word “volume.” The other issue is how the hell did the people get exposed to the chemical waste in the first place? This is my and the film’s biggest problem. We know the chemical waste and the blood hungry effects are connected but how does point A get up with point B to make point C? There is a little, damn near brief, hint about what might had happen when one of the chemical workers say that the wastes “goes on for miles.” Is it in a free flowing body of water like style ? Is it in a river of slime? Are gremlins carrying barrels labeled with cross bones and skulls on their backs to the town of Goodland? The enigma doesn’t put the film in any kind of mysterious status or any other kind of notoriety.

What amazed me the most about Mutant were the moments of mise-en-scene awe. Everything came together perfectly for a particular scene, making it powerful, attractive, suspenseful and an example of one of those scenes is when Mike and Josh stumble on what they think is a town drunk, lying face forward toward the train tracks. As Mike turns the fellow over to the audience, a wide-eyed face full of death glares at us and a speeding train screams past at the same time. Josh and Mike are forced into silence as they literally have no idea what the do in the situation. That is a great scene – a moment in the duration that can be analyzed and appreciated. This, my friends, brings out the film student in me.

Lack of sleep or chemical waste product?

The overall review for Mutant is moderately high. Who can say no to a film that overuses the fog machine, who uses gross pulsating horrors creating the timeless effects and who can get a lead actor named Wings Hauser to star as the lead. This movie can. Overlook the poor poster and DVD cover and come to realize that the beauty is within.

Uninvited / Mutant DVD REVIEW

The overall review for Uninvited / Mutant is the lowest of the low. The Liberation Entertainment single DVD release of Mutants & Monsters is a skeleton release. Drenched in full frame, and I believe Uninvited was VHS ripped, the quality doesn’t take most of the fun away, thankfully. In fact, Mutant has a rather smooth transfer with minimal image imperfections. The extras, as I said, are bare to the bone with only a trailer for each film is available. The menus for both films use the same soundtrack made for Uninvited. The only thing really going for the appearance is the cover – the cheesy, throwback cover. It’s a cheap release – good for a quick fix of horror amateur hour. Check these films out when Liberation Entertainment released on September 29!

All images and logos are from Liberation Entertainment and a random flickr account.

Trailer