monster quickie

Here's a brief review that was going to be published elsewhere, but ended up lost in the shuffle. Sometimes this happens when you travel on the Information Superhighway- it's perilous. This is unlike my usual Final Girl reviews, but I'm posting it/them as a public service. I'm sure you've seen the DVD double feature reissue of Uninvited (1988) and Mutant (1984) at the store or on your gramma's movie shelf and you didn't know what to think about it. You'd never read any reviews of them anywhere, so you weren't sure if they were worth your time...well, I'm here to help because that's what I do. Don't live in fear, my friends. Read on and be at ease.

Here’s a hokey creature double feature that finally proves beyond a reasonable doubt what horror fans have known forever: industrial toxic waste- be it puke yellow or neon green- inevitably turns living beings into blood-thirsty monsters. As a society, we should be thankful that this DVD now exists to warn the ignorant. As horror fans, however, “thankful” may not be the right term, exactly.

First on the docket is Mutant, which begins like all the best movies do- that is, with some angry rednecks running some city boys off the road. With their car in a ditch, the fluffy-haired brothers have no choice but to hike into the one-stoplight town in search of a tow truck, and it’s soon evident that angry rednecks will be the least of their worries. The rest of the local populace is largely missing, and then, they’re turning up dead…and they’re turning up undead, transformed into zombies of a sort. What, did you think they’d actually be mutants?

While the movie is sort of fun in a Dawn of the Dead lite meets CHUD lite way, it’s seriously hampered by the lack of effects. The zombies, as such, are strictly of the blue-faced variety and the gore is all but non-existent. It does, however, have the balls to feature a children-on-child feast scene, so that’s worth something.

Rounding out the disc is Uninvited, undoubtedly the stronger film of the two. Genre stalwarts George Kennedy and Clu Gulager find themselves stuck aboard a yacht with a bunch of frizzy-haired Spring Breakin’ college kids…and even worse, with a pissed-off radioactive cat, on the run from a science lab. While an angry tabby might be easy to handle, this one has…well, it has another, much angrier cat growing inside of it, like a vicious feline Russian nesting doll. Cat #2 busts a move out of Cat #1 from time to time to dispatch the boaters by biting them, scratching them, and as you might expect, poisoning their blood. Veins pulsate, boils boil, blood bleeds, and both cats alternately look like rugs and puppets.

Personally, I don’t see how you can go wrong with a horror movie featuring George Kennedy and a radioactive house cat…except, you know, the movie isn’t actually any good. Neither is Mutant, but hey, that doesn’t mean they’re not enjoyable. Sometimes a big slice of ‘80s cheese is exactly what hits the spot.