TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: UNINVITED (1987)

UNINVITED (1987)

Flick opens with a genetically tampered with feline escaping from a genetic facility and leaving a bloody body count in its wake. Meanwhile, party girls Bobbi (Clare Carey) and Suzanne (Shari Shattuck) charm their way onto shady millionaire Walter Graham’s (Alex Cord) yacht along with three guys, Lance, Corey and Martin (Beau Dremann, Rob Estes and Eric Larson respectively). The cat creature finds its way onto the craft, too, and soon a party trip to the Cayman Islands becomes a fight to survive, as the genetic mutation with poisonous venom in its fangs starts to decimate guest and crew alike.

Cheesy fun 80s flick is written and directed by Greydon Clark (Without Warning, Satan’s Cheerleaders) who made a career of these kind of movies. There is plenty of bloodshed, and the killer kitty is delightfully rubber prosthetics. Director and cast play it straight, despite the silly story, and let the looney material provide the fun. It’s unintentionally (or is it?) hilarious each time the rubber monster crawls out of its adorable feline host and gruesomely dispatches folks a good twenty times, it’s size. The effect of its poisonous bite gives the FX crew plenty of opportunity to showoff lots of rubber and red stuff. The pace moves fairly quick, and Clark has fun with his isolated-at-sea yacht setting. The gore and make-up FX are all cheesy, as the young partiers are all attractive youths, with veterans like Cord, George Kennedy and Clu Gulager adding a little star power to the amusing proceedings. This is a good example of the type of silly, cheesy and colorful horror flicks that came out in the later part of the 80s, when the decade moved away from the more somber and serious slashers that populated the first half of that era.

Sure, this technically is not a good movie, but it is a cheesy fun and blood-spattered, 80s good time. The plot is ludicrous, but Greydon Clark takes the fur ball and runs with it. None of the acting will win any awards, and neither will its nostalgically rubber creature. The veteran cast barely escape this silliness with their dignity intact and writer/director Clark adds another cheesy fun B-movie to his distinguished resume. Late 80s horror fun! Also features a cameo by Assault on Precinct 13‘s Austin Stoker as a Caribbean police office.

Flick can be watched with ads on Amazon or purchased on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome!

-MonsterZero NJ

Rated 3 (out of 4) deceptively cute kitties!

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TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: CHOSEN SURVIVORS (1974)

CHOSEN SURVIVORS (1974)

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70s disaster/sci-fi flick has a select group of people sent into a bomb shelter deep below the earth’s crust as nuclear war breaks out on the surface. This diverse group of people were chosen to ensure the human race’s continued existence in case such a scenario occurred. Mankind’s survival comes into question, however, as the group find that they are not in the shelter alone.

While this flick had the right premise for an entertaining chiller, it is directed with deadpan dullness by Sutton Roley from a script by H.B. Cross. Roley’s body of work is predominately in episodic television and it shows, as the film looks like the episode of a TV show. For the most part the film is extremely talky with characters whining, crying or yelling at each other over their predicament for most of the run time. The idea of vampire bats invading an advanced bomb shelter is amusing, but Roley has no idea what to do with it and what few scenes of bloody bat carnage there are, are by-the-numbers and have very little bite. While we have some veteran actors here, the characters are not very interesting, or all that likable, so we really don’t care if they end up as bat food. The SPFX are pitifully bad with the bat swarms being terrible animated blobs swirling about and the bloodshed is strictly routine. The pace is rather slow and it all adds up to a waste of what could have been a fun idea.

Roley doesn’t get much out of a cast of decent actors, either. Jackie Cooper is the stereotype arrogant and angry businessman. Bradford Dillman is the nerdy scientist with a secret. Richard Jaeckel is the military representative who knows more than he is letting on and Alex Cord is a character simply there for breeding purposes.  The cast also features Diana Muldar and Barbara Babcock as female members of the ‘chosen’ who also seem to be just there for procreation. A cast of veterans completely wasted.

This is a sad misuse of a good exploitation movie premise. It’s extremely talky and is directed very by-the-numbers by Sutton Roley. When the bats do attack, the FX are laughable and even the PG rated bloodshed is too tame to make an impact. If there ever is a flick that could use a remake by a director that gets the material, it’s this one.

-MonsterZero NJ

rated 2 vampire bats.