“I don’t need a vet to teach me how cats behave. I know how they behave, that’s why I have a dog.”

Justin’s rating: It’s a overblown cat-astrophe!

Justin’s review: Full disclosure, I am not a cat person. I do not like cats, I do not “get” cats. Anyone who is a cat lover and tries to tell me why their little pussums is the absolute tops ends up sounding to me as if they’re in a dysfunctional and abusive relationship.

“Oh Luna? She’s the best! She ignores all my advances, tries to scratch my eyes out when she’s had enough cuddling, randomly destroys crap in my house when she’s angry, and only shows affection when she wants something from me. But the best!”

All I’m saying is that I don’t need a TV movie from the early ’90s to convince me that cats are the demon spawn of the animal kingdom, tiny tigers that we fool ourselves into believing that they are “domesticated.”

But I’m going to watch this USA network special anyway, because Strays sounds like the worst thing I could shove into my eyeballs this week, and I’ve watched two pretty good flicks back-to-back this weekend. I don’t deserve that much contentment.

What Hitchcock did for birds, Strays does for… commercial breaks. Never know when one might sneak up on you and scare you with a message from our sponsors!

Directed by John McPherson, a cinematographer who worked on shameless sequels such as Fletch Lives, Short Circuit 2, and Jaws: The Revenge, Strays follows a charming little family of scratching posts who move into a freshly abandoned country house. The place is beautiful and idyllic and comes with about sixteen hundred stray cats that roam the property like so much land-piranhas. This is disappointing news for the dad, who’s incredibly allergic to felines and also, incidentally, death.

But it might not be the little feral cats — as nasty and mean as they are — who are the main concern. There’s something far bigger roaming the woods, and it meows about four octaves lower than the rest of the pack. And then there’s Claudia Christian showing up as the wife’s sister who’s got the hots for her husband (who is representing her in divorce court) and keeps making moves on him to earn her homewrecker merit badge. I guess she’s… catty?

Ahem. Sorry.

Strays tries pretty hard to build up a lot of tension and brooding horror with the idea of grumpy cats, and it’s not very successful in this. Mostly, it’s a dorky family drama with USA network music singing chippy in the background and adorable snuggly cats jumping and sitting and mugging for the camera. When we finally do get some nature wars, the filmmakers used a whole bunch of real cats along with Cat Cam(tm) and some animatronic puppets.

Eventually in this 82-minute flick, we ease into a full-blown cat terror campaign designed to kick out and/or eliminate the family. They cuddle the phone repairman to death, pee all over the family’s bed and clothes, slink through air ducts like John McClane, maul the family dog, and always go for the eyes, Boo.

Of course, there is a giant obstacle to believability when you try to accept that any tabby, no matter how animatronic, could give a full-grown human being a challenge. If anything, this movie should/ve been over the moment he picked up the cat(s) by the scruff of its neck and drop-kicked it into the woods. But they try to pretend that the dad needs to wrestle with the alpha cat to emerge triumphant.

It amuses me to no end that USA network decided that the best slot to air Strays was the Wednesday before Christmas in 1991. I guess there’s a strategy with counter-programming, but this decision does seem to overestimate the number of feline film horror fans who weren’t into the holiday spirit that year.

It’s too bad that they didn’t go all-out to make Strays either full-on R-rated horror or bonkers weird. Instead, it spends far too much time on family drama and extremely mild touches of tension before finally getting to some man-vs-feline action in the last few minutes. Does that sound like a good use of your time? Because it wasn’t mine.

Intermission!

• Kill count is a disappointing three: Old lady, phone repairman, and homewrecker
• CAT CAM! Better get used to this, folks.
• Cats can downshift in the middle of their meows
• Claudia Christian looks smoking in her professional black realtor dress
• There are cats here that also starred in Pet Sematary, Christmas Vacation, and Scrooged.
• Yes, the creepy ill-lit and ill-ventilated attic would make a great “play room” for your doomed kid
• “Broke’s a strong word. I’d go with ‘vastly depleted.'”
• “Why don’t you take me out to the vegetable garden and ravage me.” what? Your kid is RIGHT THERE.
• Rat scare jump!
• Cats like to randomly jump on car windshields at 40 mph
• OK we don’t need dorky yuppie lovemaking
• And we don’t need you to kiss your lawyer on the mouth for a full five-count in front of his wife
• Oh no! He’s being cuddled to death!
• How did the cats pee all over their bed and pillows without them noticing as they slept?
• The washing machine is in the kitchen?
• Aww, not the cute doggie!
• Vets often give customers water pistols to fight cats
• That little girl is easily the creepiest thing in this movie
• LOTS OF CATS IN A CRIB! False alarm, the crib is empty, boo. I would’ve given this film five stars if the cats moved away to uncover a little girl skeleton in there, picked clean.
• Dang, that lady is just winging cats left and right, the SPCA did not approve of that scene
• Something cats can do is punch through doors
• Pillows are not effective vent-blocking barriers
• Driving before GPS was a nightmare of bad directions and maps
• You’d think someone would have come to check up on that repairman, but no, he’s been rotting away for over a day in that cellar. Also, didn’t he leave his van there?
• RIP Microwave Cat