You aren’t too far into this film before you see the most interesting part.
Don’t worry, though, you’ll see it again. Quite a few times.
A small detour on the subject of medical science, however: as our scientists (mainstream variety) study one of the cats they’ve been doing genetic research on, they think the odd mass on the x-rays is a “teratoma.” That refers to a type of tumor which contains tissues from other parts of the body, such as hair, teeth or even fully developed organs.
However, when they go to cut up the cat to find out what the results of their experimentation are, it gets loose, kills several people, and when someone corners our adorable (if somewhat radioactive), fluffy orange cat, it opens its mouth and a second, monstrous cat beast crawls out.
What’s really freaky, however, is when it crawls back in!
Now there’s something you don’t see every day, Chauncey!
Once the cat gets away, after killing a few stray people, it gets adopted by one of the sexy girls on spring break, who takes it onto the yacht which belongs to the official rich jerk billionaire, who is about to run off to his bank in the Caymans and live happily ever after with his illicit loot. He’s played by Alex Cord, who is one of those talented TV actors who always seemed to give a good performance. George Kennedy plays his top thug, which was more or less who he played for most of his career. Mind you, he doesn’t stick around for too long, once the cat gets busy.
I was a little amused to note, after the first few deaths, that it is almost forty minutes into the film before the first shipboard murder takes place. That’s a lot more time than this sort of low grade B-film spends on its characters, and it really doesn’t seem that long, which suggests that “cult” director Greydon Clark, who specialized in this sort of trashy schlock may have been more talented than his oeuvre would make us think. After all, it takes a bit of effort to make the latest blood, gore and TNA creature feature palatable, even for the gorehounds out there.
Or in other words, it’s high class trash!
Once you add up the radioactive mutant cat (with venom), the bikini girls in a seemingly endless supply of revealing…ummm, is “outfit” the right word for something that covers so little?…and the series of deaths from various causes, mostly cat related, there isn’t a lot more here, other than a little bit of commentary on how our heroes can have serious clay feet issues. But don’t worry, it’s not enough to make you think or anything.
This is a very silly film. It is also reasonably entertaining, if your expectations are low enough.
And that mutant cat is so bizarre it is guaranteed to stay in your head long after you’ve forgotten better films.
Although, if it is some sort of teratoma, which just happens to be a full grown cat beast, then why in the world does it crawl back inside when it doesn’t have any visible connection to the outer animal? You’d think coming out of the other cat’s mouth would be like getting born…
Oh well. If it made sense, this wouldn’t be a B-grade monster movie.
(For the British TV serial, see here.)
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