Uninvited (1988)

Uninvited (also known as The Uninvited) is a 1988 American horror film written and directed by Greydon Clark and starring Eric Larson and Toni Hudson.

Summary
A bunch of young people are invited to a Caribbean cruise on a gangster's yacht, to distract the attention of the authorities. Unfortunately, a mutant cat which escaped from a test laboratory also gets on board, and kills most of the passengers.

Cast

 * Eric Larson as Martin
 * Toni Hudson as Rachel
 * Alex Cord as Walter Graham
 * George Kennedy as Mike Harvey
 * Clu Gulager as Albert
 * Clare Carey as Bobbie
 * Rob Estes as Corey
 * Shari Shattuck as Suzanne

Contemporary
A reviewer writing for The Missoulian gave the film a score of zero stars, calling it an "unbelievably awful horror entry. Even the special effects are third-rate — the mutant creature looks like a carpet remnant with fangs." In a review of Greydon Clark's 1989 film Skinheads, Joe Kane of the New York Daily News wrote that Skinheads "fails to equal the zesty awfulness of [Clark's] last outing, the memorable atomic-mutant-cat clinker Uninvited."

Retrospective
In his 2003 book The Gorehound's Guide to Splatter Films of the 1980s, Scott Aaron Stine called the film "ludicrously silly", and wrote that it "suffers from abysmal continuity [...], an awful hand puppet-style critter, shoddy gore and abused bladder effects, model in a bathtub miniatures, and the worst overdubbing of cat noises to grace a bad horror film." Author Steven Puchalski called the film an "idiotic romp" and referred to it as "mindless crapola for low IQ-ed animal lovers".

In 2009, Kurt Dahlke of DVD Talk wrote that Uninvited is "so monumentally off its nut that it's quite enjoyable", but lamented the "sheer ridiculousness" of the cat as having contributed to a perceived lack of tension in the film's narrative. In 2013, Todd Martin of HorrorNews.net gave the film a positive review, praising the originality of its premise and writing: "I love Uninvited and think that it is just a fun little movie. I know that a lot of people think that it is terrible and if you look up other reviews for it online they are less than positive, but I have to disagree." In 2018, Jay Bauman of Red Letter Media criticized the overdubbing used in Uninvited, but ultimately called the film "legitimately entertaining and fun and weird".

In 2019, Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com referred to the first half of Uninvited as being superior to its second half. He noted the film's use of "B-movie cliches" and "characters addicted to bad decisions", and wrote that the "limited pleasures of Uninvited are primarily contained to monster matters, and while the cat effect isn't great, the creature's rampage is the best thing about [the film]".

Home media
Uninvited was released on VHS by New Star Video. In Europe, it was released on VHS under the title Killer Cat. The film also received a LaserDisc release by Image Entertainment.

In 2009, Uninvited was released on DVD by Liberation Entertainment as a double feature with the 1984 film Mutant.

On January 29, 2019, Uninvited was remastered in 4K and released on DVD and Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome. The release includes a previously unreleased international cut of the film which features alternate footage, including a different ending.

It was also spoofed by RiffTrax on June 8, 2017.

Movie mistakes

 * When the "cat" attacks a truck driver, the truck changes models in the crash footage.
 * Lance is shot in front of a large glass window, and is nicked in the arm. The window behind him is not broken.
 * Lance's bandage is soaked in the blood, despite the fact he was merely nicked.
 * Size of the cat mutant varies wildly in different scenes (gets larger, then smaller, then larger again) throughout the movie.
 * When the cat attacks the driver of the red pickup truck the puppeteer's arm is visible.
 * The boat seen during the "storm at sea" sequences is very clearly a toy model. A wire can briefly be seen pulling it down as it 'sinks.'