User Reviews

I love cats. I love horror. Well then I should just eat up a horror film centered primarily around killer cats, right? Well, I was hoping that'd be the case but sadly it wasn't meant to be. STRAYS is neither good, nor campy, nor entertainingly bad. It's sometimes slightly amusing in a "Well that's ridiculous / stupid..." kind of way but mostly it's just a bland, talky TV movie about a bickering yuppie couple, their lame marital / financial problems and their "precious" and "adorable" 4-year-old daughter, who is neither precious nor adorable and will have you hoping and praying she's bitten and clawed to death by the end of the film. I have a 4-year-old niece and she's beautiful, awesome and smart, unlike the stupid little troll featured in this movie, who gives all 4-year-olds a bad name. During one of the few "scary" moments, the surprised mother walks into the girl's nursery and sees her crib (why is a 4-year-old still sleeping in a damn crib?!) filled with about twenty cats. Initially I burst out laughing and said "Yes!" but my joy was stripped away little by little as each cat was removed and there was no sign of a bloodied, shredded child's corpse underneath. Does that make me a bad person?

Things open with an amusing low-level cat's POV shot (done in just two takes) that begins outside, trails through the woods, moves all the way around a house, up a flight of stairs and through a doggy door. It then heads through a kitchen up to an empty food bowl, under a chair and under a table, then leaps up on an ottoman and finally onto a fireplace mantle. It's actually a pretty cool shot but alas it's also the best part of the entire movie. We then meet an old cat lady (Eve Brenner) who lives in a large country home with her dozens of "babies." Something eventually rushes up to her as she's exiting the cellar and kills her. The house is put up for sale and purchased by divorce lawyer Paul Jarrett (Timothy Busfield) and his unsuccessful writer wife Lindsay (Kathleen Quinlan), who want out of the big city so they can raise their little brat Tessa (Heather and Jessica Lilly) in the safety and tranquility of the country. That little fantasy doesn't last long.

Due to neglect and being forced to resort to their natural instincts in order to survive, the cat lady's once-docile fur-balls have transformed into an army of feral felines who aren't above attacking and killing people who invade their territory. In a silly twist, the cats are all seemingly led by a gray "Alpha Cat" that hunkers over, does that low growl a lot and looks just like the cat who played Church in PET SEMATARY. In between the few attack scenes, we have to listen to the dad whine about wrecking his car after a cat bounces off the windshield, whine about his allergies flaring up, whine about his wife wanting to keep a nice mama cat and a kitten she finds in the attic and whine about their supposed financial problems. Said financial problems seem to end a scene after they're discussed when the husband tries to smooth things over with his wife by buying her a piece of expensive jewelry. A vet (William Boyett) shows up long enough to stupidly claim that feral tabbies are more dangerous than wildcats and, to buffer out the slim story line, the film's major drama doesn't even involve the cats at all, but Lindsay's divorcée sister Claire (Claudia Christian), who seems to be making sexual advances on her brother-in-law because, well, she's pretty much a backstabbing slut.

All of the major characters in this one are thoroughly unlikable (due more to the script than the actors themselves) and any time a movie like this casts a small child, I automatically cringe because I know two things are gonna happen: 1. They'll use the kid to try to be cutesy and that will make me want to puke, and 2. The child will undoubtedly do moronic things to put the adults in danger. And boy does this kid ever do the dumbest kid thing imaginable at the finale: going right back into the cat-infested house that she was almost killed in minutes earlier for no apparent reason. Ugh. The cats themselves are amusing when they're on screen but the director has no clue how to really make them menacing so they're always just cute... even when they are killing and "attacking" people. That's not a good sign.

***SPOILERS**** After moving into their dream house in the country the Jarretts Lindsey & Paul, Kethleen Quinlan and a Richard Dryfuss looking Timothy Bushfield,, soon find out that they are in fact encroaching on a cat pack that's occupying the house. The pack is headed by the scary looking feral gay alpha male who as it soon turns out take no prisoners and are determined to run them out of the place. This all starts when the Jarrett's adopt a stray cat and her kitten found in the woods in order to help them out on the out of control rat problem that their facing. As it turned out it was the cats that were far more dangerous then any rat pack who soon-headed by the alpha male-were driven out by them who occupied the house.

There's also Lindsey's sister the sex starved Claire Lederer, Claudia Christian, whom Paul is representing in her divorce action against her never at home-And always out partying- husband whom she developed the hots for. All this creates tensions between the two sisters to the point of them swinging and throwing drinks at each other in public and making Paul's task of doing his job-as a lawyer and husband-that much more difficult. It's when the cat pack start to come into the open, with the alpha male staking out his territory, that the cat sh*t finally hits the fan as well as everything else in the house.

***SPOILERS**** Shocking scenes of hoards of cats running rampant all over the Jarrett house lead by the ferocious and unkempt looking alpha male who earlier took care of the caring and friendly phone-man, Gary McGurk, who discovered them hiding in the basement while installing the house phone. It's Lindsey and her 6 year old daughter Tessa, played by twins Heather & Jessica Lilley, who are trapped in the house with the feral alpha male leading the charge against them. As for Claire she ends up falling to her death by breaking her neck when attacked by the gray alpha male in her trying to rescue both her sister Lindsey and niece Tessa from the rampaging pack of wild cats. It's now up to Paul, driving to the house in a pouring rain, to save whet's left of his family as his well as pet dog Benny who ended up being mauled by the cat pack for sticking his nose, in the basement, where it doesn't belong. And it's only an electoral current, like an electric chair, that can bring this horror to a final end when the leader of the cat pack the alpha male ends up getting it between his teeth as he tries to finish off Paul!

Paul Jarrett (Timothy Busfield), his wife Lindsey (Kathleen Quinlan) and their daughter Tessa (played by Heather and Jessica Lilly) have gotten a house for an amazing price - too good to be true - away from the big city and that's because, yes, it's filled with stray cats that kill humans. But they're so cute!

Directed by John McPherson, who directed several TV movies and was the cinematographer of Jaws: The Revenge, and written by former teen idol Shaun Cassidy - whose career second act saw him created some great stuff like American Gothic and Invasion - Strays is a movie about murder-inclined feral cats and yet it's boring.

How is this possible? Then again, my mom has an army of orange tabby feral cats that live outside her house and far from wanting to kill people, all they want is pets and food.

But if the pets stop...the death begins.